Black Rhombus

OK, so on my way to work this morning, there was a huge, adolescent (still a bit gray around the edges) mute swan (thanks Tammy) smack in the middle of the road. There were a couple of people there, helping to direct traffic around the poor thing. It was seriously enormous, though; I think its head was about even with the peoples’ shoulders. Six cars, including me, had to go around the “little” guy. He was obviously very confused. Tammy (out for her run) said that the swan had been successfully coaxed out of the road by the time she’d gone by, & that it was trying to navigate the railing on the boardwalk to get to the river (& having an equally difficult time).

Matty, on the other hand, had a completely different morning ride to work:

“Some 45 year old doofus-looking white dude passed out on the metro right at the takoma park stop. This woman was trying to call the train operator and she was an idiot so I had to point out where the call button was. Meanwhile the dude gets up and everyone was asking the guy if he was okay. he’s all “i’m fine, i just felt a little sick.” He’s like kind of adjusting himself and turning around . . . kind of trying to find a corner to hide in a little and become anonymous.

“Very quickly the car starts to fill with a horrible stench. Within a minute it smells as if we’re trapped in the diaper of a baby that someone’s been feeding Indian food to for a week. I mean people are gagging. All the while the guy is still fidgeting and adjusting himself and apologizing “I’m sorry. i shouldn’t have gotten on the metro. I’m sorry.” and you can see the back of his pants are glistening. It looked like someone pulled open the back of his pants and dumped a whole pot of stew down there.

“So we’re all about to start breaking windows on the train to get some air in there, but at the same time everyone’s trying to pretend like they don’t know what happened because obviously the dude is going to go shoot himself in the face later. I mean he’s a 45 year old man standing in the middle of a metro car in rush hour with his own feces running down his legs and everyone knows it. but the car is taking what seems like 10 minutes to get to the next stop. So we’re all trapped in this awkward purgatory.

“Finally we get to the stop and he gets off and we tell the train operator that the dude is fine and got off the train. That smell will haunt me for a while though.”

I think that if it came down to: developmentally-challenged mute swan, or 45yr old father of three passing out & pooping himself, the geezer gets it; hands-down.

More beers than you can shake a stick at, & the Yard Dogs. What more could you ask for? Not much, I tells ya. Rebecca, Drew, Heather, Kristlyn, Joe & I all hit the Capitol City Carnival over the weekend. It was a blast. I personally saw the Yard Dogs three times, & each time was just as fun as the last. They are a great show. The Saturday night show was my personal fav, with Tobias swallowing a red-lit glass tube & the lights out so’s you could see it glowing in his throat… awesome. After the show, we even got to hang out with Zoe for a bit. She was very cool, & Kristlyn got some photos of her with the girls. Heather was, needless to say, close to drooling

I also really dug a couple of the bands. American Dumpster was really good, & I liked the D.J. Williams Projekt. American Dumpster’s hard to describe, but they’ve got a washboard player who really tears it up. ‘Nuff said. D.J. Williams Projekt sounds a lot like a Karl/Soulive mix.

The beers were ridiculous, as expected. It’s always a good thing when you can start your Saturday with a full pint of Siberian Night straight from the tap. Good news for MD’ers, too: Stone’s finally distributing. We had a long talk with the head of the Mid-Atlantic distributor account, who reassured us that they were coming out in force.

You can grab some videos of the show (primarily the Yard Dogs) here (~45MB). I only was able to get them to play with Real Player. Dunno why, but likely something to do w/my phone. Photos have been posted!

Yard Dogs: you need to come back to the Mid-Atlantic… SOON.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything on here.  Mostly, the reason is that we’ve moved hosts, & I really have been getting the site back together piecemeal.  I think that I’ve finally gotten everything together.  Even the old links to the photo albums work again (shocker).  The new hosting is even way faster than the old one, so maybe we’ll actually start using the site again more regularly.

Enough about that, though.  We just had a long weekend in VA for the 4th of July, & it was pretty sweet.  Even though we only got to sail one day, we took Irie out three days straight.  I’ve got to see about cleaning up her centerboard, though, because it’s now wedged solidly into the hull.  I’m thinking it’s the corrosion… ANYWAY, it was a great weekend, though very HOT.  Colin came by on his way back down from Peter’s wedding, & we finally got to meet Allison.  Good times had by all.  On to the pics!