Cyclocross Nationals

Hulk has been in KC for a few days, riding his bike in muddy circles. Career high for him. He's on his way home now, a twenty hour drive.

Baby stays put and works. She motivates herself with popcorn breaks, inventing new toppings like, "Butter that makes magical fairies roost in the sink and wash your dishes." Come on, guys!

HulknBaby have been playing a relay game that's not very fun. It goes something like this: Baby has a writing deadline, so she hides behind her desk to finish it. When she's done, Hulk has a writing deadline and can't come out to play. Hulk goes to Kansas, comes home. Baby goes up North (no, Hulk, she's not an elf with special work to do. Leave her ears out of your hypotheses).

But soon they'll be together for the holiday, and then traveling together for a few days. Relay is over. Lesson learned: tandem bikes are better.

October Country, Hulk Is Old, Baby Published Again: More News at 11:11

Well, as advertised, Baby is on The Very Serious And Most Professionally Important Academic Job Market (TM). She is rocking the house. She also just had her most recent manuscript of poems, a li'l chipbook (mini chapbook) accepted for publication some time late this year. It's a sextet of sestinas called "The Kissing Number". Hulk is reminded of jazzercizes that really good musicians do, setting challenges for themselves when the art form itself is not enough; like playing Coltrane's "Giant Steps" in 7/4, transposing tunes into funny keys, like A, stuff like that. The poems are great, Hulk is proud.

Piggie is 10, which is ancient, and she is extraordinarily tall. She loves school, and at the moment, it is loving her right back. Today she is asking questions about cells and molecules and what everything is made out of and where it all came from.

Hulk is down to just one class and a stack of books for his tutorial exam, which will occur some time in the spring. At least he thinks he is. Baby is always quick to remind him about a pesky incomplete that looms... but in any event, the tutorial exam seems (according to Hulk's wise and distinguished academic advisors) like a better route to simply demonstrating what he has learned, without pretense. The thing about that is, then he'll need to start thinking about what one does with an MA in English lit. One might make a paper airplane, I suppose, or work in a bookstore, perfecting the art of looking as though one had something better to do. Or one might be just lucky enough to eke out another season of racing bikes full time before the cold realities of grown up life come smashing-crashing down on one's poor, wittle head.

And on the subject of bikes, Hulk is in the midst of what looks to be his finest cyclocross season yet. Same team plus a new sponsor and the addition of a new teammate who is one of the top 10 'cross racers int he country are all making for a good Fall. Finally Hulk has realized that lots of rest and showing up to races feeling fresh and ready to go really hard is a better recipe for fitness than dragging himself through really hard intervals workouts on Wednesday, from which he rarely recovers in time for Saturday's race. Bike racing form is a funny thing, and the recipe is highly individualized and hard to perfect.

Oh, also, on 9/12/08 Hulk got old. 31 times old. He feels old. Old. Like gray-hairs-in-the-beard, I-listen-to-Jackson-Browne-because-I-want-to, my-kid-is-in-the-5th-grade kind of old.


Perhaps most importantly, there was the aforementioned canoe trip. Which looked like this:

On this abbreviated weekend in late August, up in the St. Regis wilderness of the Adirondacks, Hulk and Baby rediscovered what being in love, and being friends, and breathing air, and living slowly are all about. Really, they discovered a portal into a parallel, clock-free universe of clear-water ponds, blueberry bushes, firelight, and incomprehensibly sound tent-sleep. Plus Hulk splooshed spectacularly overboard and landed up to his neck in quick-mud, much to Baby's delight, and they learned what portaging a canoe for 3k feels like, and they saw a bald eagle, many loons, and just enough bear poop to make them cautious.

Now it is October, Hulk heads to beautiful Gloucester harbor once again for his annual pilgrimage, and another weekend of rediscovering himself through hypoxia and high speed. Baby is locked in her tower, with occasional forays out into the world for suguar and exercise. The job market doesn't know what hit it, and the other creative writing scholar kiddies on the block haven't got a chance.

Until next time, and the flying snow,

-n&c-

Changes, Crisp Air, a New Nest, and Other Adventures

Baby has a new nest. Pictures to follow. She moved on out of the ol' one that she shared with whatsherface, and found a li'l spot right in Hulk's neighborhood. And right around the corner from the new Suguar store (aka Crisan bakery, aka Heaven).

She's all settled in with her books and her candles and she is so happy. This makes Hulk happy. Plus when his own nest is filthy and he doesn't want to clean it, he goes to her house! That is what you call a short term solution to a long term problem, but anyway...

Piggie is back from camp and school will start soon. Baby will be on the Very Serious And Most Professionally Important Academic Job Market (TM) and her poems are all bouncing along nicely. Hulk is getting ready to commit to a thesis for his MA. He is hoping it remains a MA and does not become a WAAA because he does not want a degree in weeping. Oh no.

And, there was a canoe trip. Hulk, Baby, a canoe, some mud monsters. Pictures to follow.

-n&c-

Uh oh...Late, late, Hulk Updates!

Baby says Hulk doesn't feed Bloggie enough.

Prolly true.

So Hulk starts with a blog-snack and promises more to come.

Recently Hulk-n-Baby packed Piggie off to Super-Fun-Summer-Camp in Vermont. Then they rode their bikes up the east side of App Gap in the pouring rain. Baby is tough. Hulk overcooked a turn on the way down and went around the bend with one foot unclipped and almost hugged a dumptruck. Nice truckie.

Before that Hulk was in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Connecticut and everywhere racing his bike. Baby was in Maine having snacks with famous poemsters. Baby is a super-fantastic famous poemster herself. Today she entered a poeming contest and Hulk has his fingers crossed that she wins. After this fun (which was, of course, preceded by ice cream, but not crrfee because everything in Waitsfield, VT closes at 2:00 on a Saturday. Uh...ok) H&B had a lovely dinner date in Middlebury at a restaurant in an old mill building down by a waterfall. Baby wanted to swim up under the kitchen and see if we could find any suguar-lobsters or cake-fish there. Hulkie said no cuz no dry towels and lots of spectators.

And good news! A brandie-new sugursnackshop in Albany. "Crisan" bakery on Lark St. Hulk-n-Baby need a grown up to limit their bakery visits. Oh sugersnackshop how we love you.

So that's all for now. Details and pictures to follow. Baby is raising of her eyebrows at me like I still don't feed skinny Bloggie enough, so I will have to be consistent for awhile. That or maybe cut my hair bad like Kevin Bacon in the bad vigilante movie we just watched. Oy...

This week it's back to Fitchburg, tending the garden, and learning about being grown-ups in love for the summer with Piggie away. But Hulk does miss his Piggie, for sure.

Good night world.

-n&c-

High Art

Something a little spooky, a little funny. I think Baby misses gardening with Hulk.

12 Days of Missmas

Baby is housesitting. Hulk is doing his usual thing. The problem is that they're in separate cities, different countries even: for the next 12 days starting tomorrow, they won't see each other.

This state of the union makes Baby think about Christmas: she's going to gift Hulk (creatively, since UPS couldn't keep up) every day they're apart. 'Tis the season, after all. Allergies, long weekends, and thinking about how to be together when apart.

Spring

The bulbs are up. Here's a picture of one of our daffodils from Captain.

Dandelions are roaring awake now, too. Sad to spend time on Earth Day weeding, but such is life. More went in the ground than came out of it in our small patch, so we're ahead of the game.

Planted: windowboxes with edible flowers.

Gardening, Take Two

HulknBaby are gardening again. This year, we started E-A-R-L-Y.

Lessons learned:

1. Plant tomato, herb, and pepper seeds early. Some flowers, too. (Here's a pic of our little guys about a week into the world).

2. Water frequently. Separate the plants when they get their secondary leafs and begin to be a little crowded. And, ugh....Kill the weak or damaged ones...

3. Weed early. Seen here: Baby lookin' like Elmer Fudd on the hunt for a rabbit...
Things seen on Saturday: a grub with little tiny legs, lots of worms, the garden boat, dandelions beginning to flower (already?!), old pumpkin vines, flutterbys.

Filthy

Although at first glance this sprinkle of salt looks like a mess...














viewed from another angle, it looks an awful lot like a heart.

(And if you pay attention, old gum on the sidewalk often ends up looking like love, too).

This 'n' that

Hulk and Baby have been too busy with ThisNThat to keep their blog updated, but we're back after many, many conversations that go like this:

This One: "We should update our blog."
That One: "You're right, we should. I'm going to. Tonight."
This One: "Me too."
That One: "Do we have any ice cream?"

Today, we're happily springing in Albany. Hulk's kitchen is brimming with peat pots bursting with green sprouts (so there's hardly room to eat at the table until we turn over the garden), and Baby's books are overflowing with poems (some of them hers).

(When her poetry is happy, Hulk calls them prrrms...not like what '80s aerobic instructors did to their hair, but more like happy creatures that make the cat Ampersand a little jealous).

Hulk hasn't been making enough music, but he's racing his bike again.
Baby hasn't been wasting enough time, but she's caught up on reading again.

That's basically where we're at these days. But prepare yourself for some flashbacks, some daydreams, and some gimmicks.

Much love to all.