no beach this past weekend, but i did manage to throw my back out. so i've been trying to stay mostly horizontal. heck, last night i slept most of the night on the floor. if i sit too long, then i can't stand up straight, which means that i have to waddle around. it looks funny, but feels not funny at all. i blame it all on too much slouching at a workstation with poor ergonomics and a bad night on an under-inflated air mattress. actually, a nice day at the beach would be the perfect thing for my back.

In other news, my roommate should be coming home today. He was supposed to be back earlier, but they wouldn't let him back in the country. oops. we need him in america! he pays half my rent!

my car was putt-putting along just swell,
then one fine day in PA it all went to hell.
okay, after a while it wasn't all that bad,
but it got me nervous, and it made me sad.
see, it was running really rough.
was it the spark plugs, a bad tank of gas, or some other stuff?
i didn't know, so i brought it in for a look-see
but when they called me today, they said it was as fine as can be.
what the crack? i thought something was wrong with it?
aww, who cares; i got back my Altim8.
 
by Josh, the unpoet.

Maybe this blog should be called the The Weekend of Homer, since all I do is blab about what I did the past weekend.

so... This past weekend was a road trip, and it began on Thursday - whoo-hoo! I left work about 2:30ish, walked to the only parking spot I could find that morning after 40 minutes of driving around, and left the hood at 2:45. I zipped over the bridge to Manhattan, wound my way through the city to the west side highway and over the George Washington bridge. I was well into new jersey by 3:15. But the roads in jersey were pretty full and eastern Pennsylvania was jammed with road construction. At one point, two lanes of traffic just stopped for about three minutes. It wasn't too fun, but it was better than sitting on my duff at work!

I stayed at my grandpa's house... home to three people and near a dozen cats. I also saw a family of skunks on my drive in as well as a raccoon another night; there was plenty of wildlife. But the farm is beautiful, and it was great to walk around it with mom and dad and plot the future. On Friday, grandpa took me for a walk around the farm. (this means that we took his four wheel drive subaru and drove through the fields and into the woods, just hoping that we didn't hit anything or fall into anything hidden in the tall grass.)

Saturday was great. Well, bad because my car was acting up, but the Amish Byler reunion was fun. I drove up with my mom, and she went in with all the women preparing the food, which left me to head over to the cluster of men outside. I went around using the Amish handshake to say hello to all my uncles, and I met a few cousins and a bunch of second cousins that I swear I never saw before. But who can keep track, really?

so we had a lot of fun. The food was great, and the desserts were amazing, as always. We played a bunch of games of "washers" outside throughout the day, and topped off the afternoon with hand-cranked, homemade ice cream. They were all vanilla this year, but each tasted different. I LOVE the stuff. I don't think this was a full reunion, so there weren't as many people as some other years; maybe 80? I think I heard something like that.

late in the afternoon I took off with my dad to get back to the farm to pick blueberries. I try to bring a bunch home whenever I get out there. It's worth going just for them. soooooo good.

but now I'm back at work. I stayed late last night to finish something up and get it sent out, but now I ran out of work... hmmm.

what a relief! it's like i got rid of the elephant on my back. see, last week i had to share the devotional at choir practice. i had something like three weeks to worry and stress about it. even though i didn't really dwell on it much until the final week before, it always weighed heavy in the back of my head. and now that it's over, i fell like a new man... guy, whatever. you'd think that being the 'son of a preacher man' would mean i had better oratory skills. thanks for nothing, dad! aww, i'm just joshing you.

i hope to visit the beach this weekend - whoo-hoo! last saturday was a bust. it was kinda cloudy when i left the house in the morning, but down on the south shore it was completely cloudy and foggy and cold. they weren't even charging to get into the state park because no one was there. and it rained on and off all day. so i just drove around all day. a day of driving cannot not be fun, if you know what i mean. well, if you love driving like me but hardly ever get to do it. i visted port jefferson on the north shore and ate my beach lunch in my car overlooking a gigantic harbor filled with boats docked out in the middle. it was sunny by then.