Lost and then found

Today was shaping up to be an "Oh my God, what the fuck have I done?" kind of day. Overcast (the beginning of 6 months of it according to my Mom). Colder. I spent the morning doing chores and watching a cheesy docu-drama re-enactment of a Congressional visit to Jonestown in Guyana, until I felt I was wasting my life entirely and just got up and got out of the house. Then a visit to the Gas Station of the Damned. A huge line. Just before me, a man with dirty hair and a loose belt, rocking, rocking. Arhythmically. How do men end up like this? Tall-boy of Budweiser, seemed to be how. Behind me were three little boys, unsupervised. One kept saying, over and over and over, "He said, it was like a school that, that'd been hit by a plane full of blind bunnies. He said it was like a school that'd been hit by blind bunnies. He said, he said that, it was like, blind bunnies and deaf kids. Lik a plane full of blind bunnies and deaf kids." I have no idea what this meant. I guess he wasn't getting the response he was after from his other two friends.

Then I drove up Eisenhower Road on the wrong side of the 441 because my research had suggested there was a movie theatre up that way. I didn't find it, just a $1 shop and a giant discount liquor store called Festival, and all sorts of inbred hick-looking people walking in the parking lot, but all of them in couples. And then I tried to drive around to get back on the road and was directed way off the other direction through a neighborhood full of houses with weird inflatable pumpkin decorations up in the yard, still, and then a stop where you couldn't turn left because of all the traffic, the big 4x4 trucks barelling down, just exactly wrongly spaced.

Grump grump grump. Maybe everyone else was feeling bad because it's overcast, as well.

But then I drove into town (found that I was in fact on the right road), and saw how very gorgeous College Avenue is with its promenade of yellow trees, and I saw some elegant old houses which satisfied my need to feel snobby, and then I drove around a bit and saw a whole bunch of nice houses for sale and could sort of imagine it, the neighborhood had a really nice feel.

And then I found all sorts of things essential to life, all in about two square blocks:

The public library.

The Harmony Cafe, which is not open on Sunday but is open late on other nights, has live music, discussions, poetry readings, and a social conscience. Would be a much more appropriate internet place than Extreme PC with its grime and gamers. And could be a very good venue for Philorum.

Right across the main street (although you have to walk around) is the Art Center. Not open on Sundays, but close by. In the future I will make Saturday my day for entertainment and Sunday for shopping and chores.

Right across the side street from this was a maternity and babywear shop with rock and roll designs. So there must be enough cool moms in town to support a market for it.

And back on the main street across the road from that is the best coffee shop in town, per advice from the only Aussie I've met so far. It has an ambience half-way in between a Starbucks and a groovy college hang out. For a little bit almost everyone in the place was a woman - lots of yuppie women coming out for a coffee in pairs.

It's a perfectly suitable place to sit and write your travel diary in a Moleskine notebook, which is what I'm doing right now. Or to read a book, which is what I'm about to do.

So, library, art museum and two groovy cafes, all within about a two-block radius.

Maybe I haven't made a horrible mistake after all.

___

Found the "alternative" radio station - The Zone 106-point-something-or-other from Green Bay. Not very alternative. The first two tracks I heard were rather old numbers from Lenny Kravitz and Soundgarden, and they announced c oming up something by Jimmy Hates World or Eats World or whatever it is. And the DJ sounded just exactly like every rawk dj I've ever heard on US radio in my life = "The Zone, 106-point-something-or-other. All alternative, all the time." A non-stop block of alternative. I'm sure they have alterna-two for Tuesdays. Actually I can listen tomorrow morning and find out.