Wiggins Catching Up
10/08/2002
well, buddy, i'm finally settled into an apartment back in portland, and back at
work on the next contract. found a beat up easy chair in the communal laundry
room, and it's the only chair in my place.
i sit here now in the chair, listening to the stereo i found in the same laundry
room, one of those 1960's piece of furniture stereos with built in turntable and
radio receiver. it's a later model one, so it is solid state (you don't have to
wait for tubes to warm up, like with the one my parents had when i was growing
up) and it even has a couple RCA "tape input" jacks on the back, so i can run my
MP3 player in there and set it on "shuffle" and hear tunes all day.
over in the kitchen are a load of mugs and plates that i found wrapped in
newspaper in the laundry room. looks like some old lady forgot one of her boxes
when she was moving out. they suit me fine.
the rest of the room is big empty carpeted space, my guitar propped in one
corner and my bike resting against the opposite wall. but here next to the comfy
chair i have a windows machine, a linux machine (spray-foamed into a milk
crate), and a new laptop on my lap. the linux box is uploading tons of MP3s to
my server in seattle.
now i sit here nipping at a glass of ice cubes swirling in a good shot of
everclear and tap water. is there a more perfect drink? especially in an old
grandmas forgotten coffee mug.
so i finally have time to catch up with your travels. i've been plowing through
india (aka: I'll Never Do It Again) and am now enjoying the annapurna trek. it's
fun to imagine where i was hiking in CH as i read about where you were on a
given day. and it's fun to remember those places from 1995. bagarchap: there had
just been a mudslide that took out the whole village and buried many people. we
trekked over their deep graves. there were no wire bridges in '95. apparently
there are strong connections between CH and nepal. perhaps the swiss put the
bridges in? they look to well made to be nepali constructions.
there... i made it to july. whew. only several months still to go... ;-)
-jw (in portland, oregon)