constructive summer (we're gonna build something this summer)

how to get through a sudden and terrifying thunderstorm in the heart of Ohio: crank up the Beastie Boys, be careful with the gas, and if you're in the passenger seat, just keep knitting.

how to survive Chicago in rush hour: let Alan Rickman take the wheel, yell "MARCO" out the window till your best friend responds with "SCUTARO," let your inner Southern belle give advice on life as you crawl thirty miles in three hours. when all seems to be lost and the sky opens up with another monsoon, break out the Rick Springfield.

how to find a hotel in South Bend, Indiana on an hour's notice: call the Quality Inn, it's cheap and there's free breakfast. turn on your high beams if your headlights burn out; Indiana makes that kinda shit happen, but you still end up loving it more than Ohio.

how to get in a Minnesota state of mind: look at the sky. look out as far as you can because it's the flattest land you may ever see, turn on the Replacements and marvel.

how to enjoy Ohio: Rancid, Offspring, Green Day, blue skies. not necessarily in that order. try not to get off the interstate more than once. also, be careful which exits you take or you will find yourself in Alabama very, very quickly.

how to sleep an average of five hours a night and drive six to seven hours a day: take full advantage of the following: coffee. Rich Harden (ooer - leave it). pop-punk. the lack of state cops in Ohio.

how to ensure that you will be up way too fucking late for anybody's good in Chicago: start showing your best friend pictures of ridiculously attractive baseball players and, any time the conversation lapses, yell "HEGGEDY". this is a better idea than you might think, as it sometimes leads to the writing of brilliant Creed parodies. at four in the morning.

how to get to Wrigley Field: Red Line train to Addison, north of town. put on your Cubbies hat when you get off the train and pretend like you fit in. subtly take pictures of the Ernie Banks banner and marvel at the fact that you're in the Friendly Confines for real.

how to get moving on a gray, soaking wet morning in northern Indiana: "This Year," the Mountain Goats. do it.

how not to tackle Ohio efficiently: stop in Columbus looking for an open public restroom on a Sunday afternoon. assume that Columbus will be a normal city, or at the very least, no more asinine than Pittsburgh about things being open. I tell you this for free: do not count on Columbus for anything, ever. even a McDonald's.

how to come back home: cross the Allegheny and get a little teary, railroad tracks winding back into the woods like they wanted to construct the most Pennsylvania-like scene possible, just for you.

waiting for a door back into the life he wants, the confession of the bench

okay, one more post.

as they say - or at least as I often seem to say - Boston is the reason. in junior high I was playing sports but had essentially wandered away from watching them; I had bands, it was all good. then hockey came back into my life in a huge way, and I could write a novel about that, and probably will at some point. but that's not what this post is about.

there was hockey, and there were the Red Sox. then there was this kid Dustin Pedroia, five-foot-six on a good day and beating the shit out of major league pitching by sheer force of will. I stumbled across him one rainy night in Fenway Park, fell in love very suddenly, and the ten-year-old kid in me woke up and was like "HEY. remember baseball?"

fuck yeah, do I remember baseball. my dad had all these books about the greatest players of the century, top 100, big black and white pictures of Tris Speaker, Walter Johnson, Ernie Banks, up through Cal Ripken and the guys who were big when I was a kid (fuckin' Barry Bonds, I still spit at the mention of his name, almost more because he fucked the Pirates over and broke my dad's heart than because of any of his many steroid abuses). I lived with those books. I did multiple reports on Jackie Robinson, read all the books I could on that dude. I mean, I had it bad.

Pedroia, he brought it all back. kid can't go an inning without getting his uniform dirty, diving, sliding, covering every single inch of the ground he can. kid tells people he's gonna be the best thing their team's ever seen, and then he goes out there and he is. I watched the Red Sox lose to Tampa Bay in the ALDS that year - 2008 - for him.

I watched them lose to Anaheim in the ALDS the next year for him, and because I was living in Boston in a tiny-ass dorm room, sitting on the floor pretending to write a paper but really just holding my breath for Jonathan Papelbon not to blow it. (and man oh man did Papelbon blow it - gets two outs on the Angels and blows a two-run lead as all of New England gapes in horror, REALLY BRO? I went out on the street to run about an hour later and there was still Fenway traffic as far as the eye could see, people sitting there shell-shocked.)

and then I spent the offseason getting way over my head with baseball. the Sox first, because let me explain to you, if there is anything in your soul that loves the game of baseball, it comes out with terrifying force when you live a tenth of a mile from Fenway Park. you become desperately invested in Jon Lester's every move. you instinctively yell "YOOUUUUUUUK" when the situation calls for it. you suddenly need to understand Theo Epstein's approach to building a championship team.

I stole my dad's copy of Moneyball and read it cover to cover as fast as I could. then I read it again. I quoted it at people. I called my mom up to explain how great it was that the Oakland A's had been able to draft Nick Swisher as late in the first round of the 2002 draft as they did. I came to regard RBIs and wins on a pitcher's record as laughably outdated relics of another time. I developed a huge fucking crush on Billy Beane. I still possibly aspire to be the general manager of a hockey team. we'll see about that one. I have a crush on Marco Scutaro's on-base percentage, so you can draw your own conclusions.

I've basically spent this summer so far forming opinions on baseball and baseball players, and it's great. I was coming in with very few specific prejudices (fuck the Yankees, fuck the Rays, Southern California teams are generally bullshit) and almost no players I was really attached to. last time I was big into baseball, the Pirates' 2-5 hitters were Jack Wilson, Aramis Ramirez, Jason Kendall and Brian Giles. I love Freddy Sanchez to the point of tears now, but his time in Pittsburgh was kinda during what my friend Em would call "my black hole years."

so I've kinda just jumped in and started loving everyone this year, everyone who hasn't pissed me off right away by a) wearing a Yankees jersey and not being named Nick Swisher, b) being a bitchass, or c) being fat. (but Evan Meek and Kevin Youkilis are the good kind of fat, see.) I'm fucking fascinated by Tim Lincecum, his weird-ass delivery and how his scrawny little body doesn't blow up with the force of it. I actually gawk in awe at Barry Zito's curveball, when it works. I watch Neil Walker dig in at the plate and I hold my breath and pray, because I believe in him like he's a fucking miracle. I groan and fall off the couch when Garrett Jones chases pitches in the dirt. I want desperately, for reasons that would take a real essay to explain, for Bobby Crosby to succeed, even though he does it about once a month.

I'm back in love with baseball. I decided to do it, back in October as Papelbon was melting down, but I kind of lost control of the magnitude. I didn't mean to adopt West Coast teams. and I didn't mean to end up rooting for the Braves to go to the World Series for the sake of Tim Hudson (and that McCann kid, he's the good kind of fat too). but that's how I know I'm really into it - it's carrying me now, this baseball thing. I feel like it could carry me out to San Francisco and up to Toronto and down to Texas if I'd let it.


but there's nothing - never will be - like Fenway on game day.

here comes a regular (am I the only one here today?)

this thing is all but discontinued - I use it more at school, I guess. and all that happens is I make a post and then people attempt to send me Asian porn in the comments, lololol. I'm thinking of starting up a Wordpress thing for my actual, yannow, writing. but we'll see if/when that happens.

I'm leaving on route to Chicago, then Minneapolis, in fourish days. it's hard to express how fucking excited I am. here is something I wrote about Minnesota around eight or nine months ago, in Boston:

"I’m a little bit afraid to go to Minnesota. I’m afraid because I think it won’t measure up to the way I think it will be. When I think of Minnesota, I think of the guitar sound on “Here Comes a Regular.” For some reason, to me, Bob Stinson’s guitar is ringing off this huge, open sky, probably in the fall, just as the last leaves are falling, and it’s heart-achingly beautiful.

The vast open sky is what I think of the most – I have this idea that it feels different there than in any other flat state between Pennsylvania and Colorado, that it’s colder, and a little lonely, but not the way you would be lonely in Nebraska, the kind of lonely that inspires poetry.

Maybe it’s because a couple Replacements songs that immediately come to mind mention the sky (I write this as I look at “Waitress in the Sky” and “Skyway” on my iTunes player, and I remember how I felt when I first drove over the Chicago Skyway into the great Midwestern city). I think of “On the Rainy River,” possibly my favorite chapter from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, of driving through an entire state with something called an Iron Range, and on to Canada beyond. I want Minnesota to be breathtakingly beautiful, but not in an obvious way. And if I get there and it looks like Ohio, I may be slightly disappointed."

if it's possible to be obsessed with a state you've never been to? yeah. Mighty Ducks, up through Chuck Klosterman, through the 'Mats, to everything hockey. it's ridiculous how many of the important things in my world involve this state. between MN and CA you've got a good half of my life.

I am still living with your ghost, lonely and dreaming of the West Coast.

how's this for ridiculous: at school, most of what I wrote was about Pittsburgh. almost everything set in Pittsburgh or the vicinity, everything about what it's like and what it means to be from where I'm from. (maybe because at school, everyone thought I was from Philly no matter how many times I told them - it was like being from nowhere at all, after a while.)

and now I'm home, in the middle of the Appalachians again, and all I want to write about is...California, a state in which I've spent a grand total of five days. all I want to read about too, between Kerouac and rereading Moneyball again (I wonder how many people are fascinated with Beat writers and baseball statistics simultaneously, to the point where they seem to be connected? not many, probably).

it's a little stupid. I am following two baseball teams from the Bay Area (or trying, anyway, while keeping up with the Pirates and Sox, not to mention hockey); making a playlist entitled "going to California"; wondering how realistic it is to plan to live in San Francisco at some point if at all possible. wondering how I could handle being that far away, if 3,000 miles is any different than 600. wondering when I can get back to the Pacific Ocean because I need that shit in my life as soon as I can get it.

on top of it all, every time I see Fenway Park on TV I miss Boston to the point of physical pain. it's weird things I miss about Boston. Fenway on game nights, of course, and all the places I can lie in the grass and read and write. the random spots on campus, Boston Common. the fact that I can take a fucking train to a fucking beach. tall buildings, looking out my window from fourteen floors up instead of two. sidewalks. places where I can be by myself, or at least not bothered, being easily accessible. other things I don't miss at all, but almost none of those have to do with the city itself.

I feel like wandering. I feel like I'm waiting for something to happen right now, except I don't know what it is. I'm in a minor writing lull - that is, what I want to say isn't coming as easily - which always makes me kinda restless. sometimes when I'm not writing, I feel like I need a change elsewhere in my life to get me moving.

pictures of cool stuff I've done in the last 24 hours

Fenway Park, foolz. one of the greatest places in the world. contrary to how it looks here, it did not rain.

and the Sox won in epically clutch bottom-of-the-eighth fashion and my two favorites were heroes. Pedroia = favorite human.

Blue Line train to Revere Beach today. I take pictures of the T a lot.

THIS IS NEAR ME. an hour out on the T, anyway.

oh hallo I am in the ocean

living there someday. or a comparable place in New England or Northern California.

distraction #74. blogger still won't let me upload images

there's so much I want to say. most of the time I don't have anyone to say it to here at school. I'm sure that's part of why I've written so much this year (on Wednesday or Thursday, when I have nothing to do, I might count up all the words I've written this year, outside of the epic stuff I've had to do for class). I've always written better than I talk.

I'm not excited-without-reservations to go home. after the Bruins game on Saturday I sat outside in the sun just looking at the North End, being in this second city of mine and enjoying it. today I went to the badass record store on west campus for the first time. walked there. can't walk anywhere at home. there's a whole lot I love about Boston, and about being here (and I am seeing Jon Lester pitch at Fenway tomorrow night, and it had better not fucking rain because I am 2EXCITED4LIFE).

but I'm ready to go home. I'm ready to speak freely and be comfortable just about all the time. I'm ready to have my car back and not have to wake up every time my roommates get up, because I won't have roommates. I'm ready to drive into Pittsburgh and get to know my first city a little better. I'm ready for the Pens on my TV, not on a shitty internet feed that routinely breaks down during the second period. I'm ready for my friends and family and epic adventures and summer. and oh yeah, shit, I turn 19 on Thursday. what a weird age.

georgia on my mind? forgive me, it's my last week of class

While contemplating my possible future in an all-girl Beatles cover band (where I would, of course, be George - I've even been told I play guitar like him, which is not exactly the highest compliment a guitarist can be paid, but I'll take it), I realized that my name could totally be shortened to Georgia if I so desired. I tried to go by Georgie for about a week once in first grade, and I seem to remember that this was because of a girl in the Nancy Drew books I was reading named George. It didn't take.

It's kind of weird that I never, ever think of myself by my given name, and I don't think anybody else does either. I don't even think about it, aside from when I'm preparing on the first day of a new class to say "I go by Annie." I still have to take my time signing my full name on checks because that big unwieldy cursive G just doesn't come naturally. I have an A-name. I've always had an A-name. I kind of forget I'm Georgianne most of the time. But if I ever need a pen name or a clever alter ego I might just fall back on Georgia.