Begin 1:21AM: After completing the last item on my “Jersey to-do” list, which had me in Bayonne until 8:15PM, I got in the car and split back up to Vermont, taking the New York Thruway and any number of smaller numbered highways. I had been looking forward to making the trip at night because I figured the roads would be empty, and I was right. At one point I went a solid 25 minutes without seeing another moving car. Fantastic.

I kept track of the evening’s playlist for anyone interested…

Deep Purple, Made in Japan (second disc started the trip)
Arc of Ascent, Circle of the Sun
Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf
Colour Haze, Tempel
Neurosis, A Sun that Never Sets

There you go, just in case you want to recreate my driving to VT experience later. Amazing that it’s only really five albums. Felt much longer than that at the time.

I should take a moment to explain the blurry-ass image above. Firstly, when I got back here I was going to take a picture of the sky, the stars, the very-visible Milky Way, etc., but it’s cloudy (rained off and on the whole way up), so that’s out. Instead, I took a picture of what’s probably the biggest non-captive spider I’ve ever seen, currently residing outside — thankfully — the bathroom window of the cabin in which I and The Patient Mrs. are staying. We’ve named him Richard Nixon, because no other name would do.

You can’t really see in the photo here, it being night and all, but his web is actually a complex three-dimensional series of webs, and it’s pretty impressive. The Patient Mrs. looked it up and apparently he’s what’s known in the arachnid-centric community as an “Orb Weaver,” which is about the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. If I don’t get a demo mailed to me in the next six months by a band called Orb Weaver, I’m going to be seriously let down.

Richard Nixon the Orb Weaver. Awesome.

I’ll be back in Jersey next week either Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday, but until then, it’s back to school-type work up here. I have a lot of reviews I want to get to though, and interviews that need posting, so stick around. More to come. End 1:49AM

Got here yesterday in the evening and it was still light enough for me to appreciate the view. The sun sets across the lake that’s maybe a half-mile straight line from where I’m sitting on the deck as I type this. It’s beautiful here, and though that’s not necessarily a change from the usual (it’s beautiful where I live as well), its novelty acts as an exaggerating agent. I hope it lasts the full month.

The cabin is two rooms: part kitchen, part work area, part bedroom, two rocking chairs, a separate bathroom and a walk-in closet obviously intended for more than one person’s stuff. We brought our clothes in laundry baskets. The town of Belmont, Vermont, which is where I am, is basically an intersection of two roads and a small area surrounding. As I said to The Patient Mrs. when I got out of the car last night, when she gets away, she really gets away.

It’s a ski resort area, so of course it’s empty now, the heatwave engulfing the Eastern Seaboard having made its way too up here in the mountains, and the cabin is on a piece of property belonging to an elderly couple the masculine half of which I believe built both dwellings. I could never do that. I do this instead, and I don’t at all doubt that’s my loss. We can’t all be useful.

But I’m here and shortly to get breakfast at this or that local whathaveyou. Last night for dinner The Patient Mrs. and I successfully tested out the local Irish pub, which I’m glad to say had Boddingtons on draft and a burger brushed in pure maple syrup. This is, as I said, a beautiful place. More when I have it.