ranking delivery vehicles - postal chronicles #1

introduction 

this summer (and winter) break, i worked as a rural mail carrier for the united states postal service. there are a lot of interesting stories to tell about this job, and i hope to make my way through them on this blog. to begin, i'm going to provide my opinions on the different vehicles i have delivered mail and packages. 

there are several important factors to consider when rating a postal vehicle. as a result, i've developed the following five metrics:

1. comfort: does it have ac/heat? does it have a speaker? is it really loud? and so on.
2. mail/SPR delivery:  is it right hand drive? is there a mail tray? how are the windows? (SPR stands for small parcels and rolls)
3. package delivery: how smooth are dis/re-mounts? how much cargo space is there? can you access (or at least see) the packages when you're in the front? what are the doors like?
4. handling: how's the acceleration? traction? cornering? how're the mirrors and/or backup camera?
5. juice: anything else that can't be described via another metric.

LLV/FFV

the grumman long-life vehicle is the classic postal truck, at least in my home town. it is, as of right now, the most used postal delivery vehicle in the country. they are profoundly old, having first entered service in 1986, and were manufactured until 1994

1. i fear the llv straight up looses this category. maybe it had functional ac when it was first manufactured, but it certainly doesn't now. this truck is an oven, and i am a baked potato in 90º heat. i don't think i've ever been as hot for as long as i was on a few days this summer. i knew it was bad because i would get out and be glad about how much cooler it was. does it have heat? also no. she's not very well insulated and doesn't have good air movement. she generates too much heat in summer, but nowhere near enough in winter. additionally, the llv has no onboard sound system, leading me to bring a bluetooth speaker which would often die before the end of the day. on top of that, it's absurdly loud. imagine everything rattling around forever. if that wasn't enough, the inside gets really dusty because there are open vents and all the whole dirt road comes right in. the seat is fine i guess, although the seatbelt is somewhat uncomfortable, and the ergonomics of the controls are ok.
2. despite its failure in the first category, the llv does very well in this category and sets a gold standard. it has a big adjustable mail tray, a big window at a good height, and it's right hand drive. the side profile of the llv makes it very easy to get close to a mailbox, and it's built like a tank in case you slide into one (yes that happens a lot in the winter.).
3. the llv is also quite good at package delivery. it's the only vehicle with a door between the back and front, which is a crazy huge advantage. you can kind of fit any number of imaginable packages into it, and the shelves are solid despite being absurdly noisy. there's space up front for packages in addition to my bag and mail. the dismounts/remounts, however, are not very good. the door is solid, but the movement in/out is awkward. the seat belt is hard to get on sometimes, as the lap belt gets caught. sometimes the back door is horrible but that's usually not an issue.
4. she's so sluggish. i can't blame her, she's old as hell. she doesn't corner well either. she is a tank though, and people expect you to be going slow. the mirrors are sexy (i love you front left pot mirror) but don't provide great view when backing up. no backup camera or rear window to speak of. she is the best of any vehicle in the snow, but that's not saying much. carriers at my office would joke about ramming their LLVs into mailboxes on accident because it's just that easy to slip in the snow.
5. it is impossible to describe how sexy the LLV steering wheel is. it's smooth, it's thin, it feels good to turn, it's just the best. she's also just by far the most iconic vehicle, and driving her fulfills my postal cosplay fantasy, or at least as close as i can get without a uniform (uniforms are sadly only for city carriers).

 

metris

 

the mercedes-benz metris is really just a van. the post office leased a bunch of them to replace LLVs, and they've been around longer than they were supposed to. it's a contemporary vehicle though, and it's rankings very much depend on that.

1. the metris wins this category easily. it has exceptional ac and heat, a sound system that immediately connects on startup, and is smooth and quiet. the seat is pretty comfy too.
2. at a small scale, the metris is alright for mail and SPRs. it is right hand drive and has a mail tray, but the mail tray is rather low and small. for a short route like the one i was usually doing it was pretty lovely, but it doesn't scale well. the windows are at a sort of odd height, and the mirror is really easy to ram into a mailbox.
3. mounts/dismounts are good, and the sliding door usually feels nice, but the metris falls short in this category. you can't access packages from the front, and there's no space up front or in the back. again, for a small route it's good but if you're doing anything serious it tends to get in the way. for doing just amazon it's ok, for amazon and mail it kind of sucks. it's kinda awesome to do everything in one smooth motion though.
4. in summer, she's great. beautiful acceleration and cornering. mirrors are lovely, and the backup camera is beautiful. she can't handle snow or mud at all though. 
5. if you're in good conditions, the metris is the cushiest vehicle ever. otherwise, you'll be struggling a bit. it's kind of cute how her door gets covered in paint from every mailbox door.

promaster

  

(this is my moving van)

the ram promaster is also just a van, but it's a bigger van than the llv. these are mainly for city carriers, and i technically never drove one of them as i wasn't trained on them. however, at the end of the summer i was given a chance to drive one of these when i rented a van from uhaul to move into my new apartment. funnily enough, when i returned in the winter the office had rented a van from uhaul and i got to drive that as well for package delivery.

1. the promaster is pretty comfortable. it has good ac/heat. the speaker is somewhat medicore, as it takes a long time to reconnect. it's a quiet drive though, and the cabin is cozy. 
2. i only did package deliver, so i can't speak to mail delivery. i imagine it would be good for city route nd kind of extremely annoying for a rural route.
3. it's kind of high off the ground, but there is a lot of cargo space. no access to the back from the front, but the doors are pretty solid.
4. she handles about the same as the metris, and the mirrors/camera are both quality. slightly better in winter due to higher weight. 
5. it's kinda fun being that high off the ground.

 

ethan's van

(i don't have a photo of the outside of this one but here's the inside)

there was a carrier at my office who used a specific van that there was only one of. more of a minivan than off the ground, i believe it was a ram of some sort. he asked me out one time which was weird, but he was otherwise a very friendly guy. his van though... oh boy...

1. it does have ac/heat, but no sound system. it's pretty quiet, but the particularly silly thing is that the door doesn't properly close so it is always wet on the inside when it rains. and yup, i pretty much always was driving it in the rain.  
2. i never delivered mail in it, but i did do SPRs and it kind of sucked. no mail tray to speak of, just a second seat. it's left hand drive as well. you have to get out for every SPR. horrible. 
3. dismounts aren't too bad, but the door is really insufferable. it was always broken. it even got fixed once and broke again. cargo space is lackluster, and there's no access between compartments. ultimately fine, but not great for anything tricky.
4. it's just a car. normal car stuff. works fine.
5. horrible horrible air freshener smell.

those big city ones

 

i can't for the life of me figure out what these are called, and we don't have them in my hometown. no clue what they're like to drive. seems scary. 

self-provided vehicle

(i trust you can imagine a normal car. subaru and jeep are common brand choices.) 

i am very very grateful i was never forced to drive my own car for mail delivery. it's absurd this is technically part of the job description, and the worst routes are often the ones where the carrier has to supply their own vehicle i imagine delivering like that would absolutely suck. 

 

conclusions

and with that i have given you my opinion on every postal vehicle. have fun knowing more whenever you see one on the street. postal chronicles will return at some point.

elvis & his pet cloud

another internet research rabbit-hole for you! this one was sparked by the professor of my creative writing class, who read us the following poem:

Elvis Moving a Small Cloud: The Desert Near Las Vegas, 1976

David Wojahn

after the painting by Susan Baker

“Stop this motherfucking limo,” says the King,
And the Caddie, halting, raises fins of dust
Into a landscape made of creosote,
Lizards, dismembered tires. The King’s been reading again -

Mind Over Matter: Yogic Texts
On Spiritual Renewal by Doctor Krishna
Majunukta, A Guide on How to Tap the
Boundless Mental Powers of the Ancients.

Bodyguards and hangers-on pile out.
His highness, shades off, scans the east horizon.
“Boys, today I’m gonna show you somethin’
You can tell your grandchildren about.”

He aims a finger at Nevada’s only cloud.
“Lo! Behold! Now watch that fucker move!”

it's a nice poem, and it's got a quality image to it with a bit of humor. the professor said that despite looking it up he was unable to find a picture of the painting. he joked that if anyone managed to find it, they would get an A and not have to come to class for the rest of the semester. now i want to go to class, it's likely my favorite i'm taking at the moment, but i also couldn't resist the challenge.

i began in the straightforward way, trying to find copies of the poem. it barely exists online, but i found it in a couple places, one of them being some random person's blog from 2013 with a dead image. using wayback machine i discovered the image is sadly just a photo of elvis. of course it couldn't be that easy. the comments section illustrates how those who trod this path before me have failed:

astute readers will note that that comment was posted earlier this year, doubtless by another student of the same professor. my journey continues, and having failed to find my quarry through the poet, the poem, or elvis, i resort to the remaining piece of information left to me: susan baker.

annoyingly, susan baker is a very common name. i search susan baker in any combination of the poet, elvis, vegas, nevada, anything that might get me closer. i come up empty handed. i am beginning to think this is the end of the path, but then i realize i can do something unthinkable: contact the poet.

so i find his website, look at his contact info, and send an email. i expect to wait a while, or maybe not even hear anything, but he writes back the next day. below is his email. 

 

his point about writing from an image is probably good advice, and something i find applicable to me, but it's not what i'm looking for. however, he has given me a crucial piece of information: a place and time to find susan baker.

i search up "susan baker provincetown" and am immediately rewarded. my results include an interview with her, listings of her paintings for sale, a book for an exhibition about her early work, and the website of the center mentioned in the email. i comb through these results, but none of them seem to be the painting i'm looking for. i like her art though, and it's fun to see her evolution as an artist.

luckily, included in these results is the susan baker memorial museum. this tells me that she's dead, but it also gives me a very clear next place to contact. i email them.

it's been a few months now and i haven't heard back. i imagine i won't. if by some miracle i do, you'll be the first to know.

i wish i could stop biting my nails

in the summer of 2021 or maybe 2022 i was sitting on the grass with blake and he said he bit his nails as a nervous thing, like when he was anxious. this is stereotypically why people bite their nails. i said i did it when i was bored and i didn't know myself well enough to know that i was lying. 

in 2024 i painted my nails a lot. i got a polish with flecks of white and black that was otherwise clear and it worked well because it stayed on for a while. i did red for a vampire party when it was halloween and redid it a couple times. it worked but the habit didn't stick. i have very clear memories of scraping it off in my art history class. that probably was because i was bored.

it's really not fun to bite my nails. it's not a satisfying activity. sometimes a bit breaks and then i have to bite them to fix them. but it doesn't fix them, it's worse, and eventually it gets to a point where i can't bite them anymore and i have to get out clippers to fix them when they're barely even long enough to cut. not that cutting them makes them smooth and even either.

i tried filing my nails for a while, but i hated the way it felt. when i was a kid i would scream and cry about getting my nails cut. i don't remember what my mother did about it.

i think i have fairly weak nails. they always have those weird little white spots in them, my cuticles are kind of a mess, it's all around not super cute. even if i didn't bite my nails, i don't understand how people get theirs to look as good as they do. 

in february, i tried to keep a list of every time i bit my nails. there are 2 entries on the list, 4 days apart. 

i think guitarists are supposed to have consistent, nice fingernails, but i'm probably not good enough at guitar for that to matter. maybe if i get good at fingernails i'll be better at guitar. or the other way around.

biking

memoir for creative writing class. please be aware of the format as you read. there are some things i would likely say differently if i was writing for myself.

I don’t remember the first time I rode a bike. I probably lived in Burlington then, only a few years old toddling and around some patch of grass or asphalt. I’m sure I was a little terrified and giddy when the training wheels came off. You don’t need me to tell you all this — the image in your head from countless Hollywood-produced mock home videos is good enough.

I don’t remember the first time I fell off my bike either. Surely it was while I was learning. If I was a biking prodigy, my mother probably would’ve told me. I don’t remember the first time I kissed asphalt and realized just how much something so intriguing could hurt. I don’t remember learning that stoves are hot, but my mother has relayed the story — I kept wanting to touch the burner, and eventually she let me, albeit only for a moment. I reevaluated what I wanted after that.

I don’t have any scars from falling off my bike as a kid. I have a scar on my lip from splitting it on a jungle gym, but that’s not even visible if I don’t show it to you. We biked a lot then, all over town. We biked before I could bike independently, a contraption attached to the back of my mother’s bike that gave me half a bike of my own. We biked through the dead of winter, long underwear layered and muffs on our handlebars. We biked to campus, we biked to my preschool, and we biked along the waterfront.

I do remember flipping over my handlebars when I was in first grade. We were going down to the intervale, probably to pick up our CSA, and I, impulsive child that I was, decided to bomb the hill. I would do the same now, but just as I was reaching top speed, I made the fatal error of only pushing the front brakes.  My bike bucked me, and I went tumbling.

Thankfully, I wasn’t badly hurt. The fall shook me up, though. It took several years before I felt comfortable going down a hill with that much reckless abandon. When we moved to Brattleboro the summer after my accident, I didn’t ride my bike nearly as much. The town was smaller, hillier, and my new school wasn’t really practical to bike to. I don’t remember much about moving to Brattleboro — it’s all sort of in a haze of locations. I have only vague senses of the people I left behind, and I know the people I met through later versions of them. Now that I’m back in Burlington for college, new memories get overlaid on old ones, fresh grease building up on the chain.

My new school was entirely uphill from my house, and a long ride at that. It was called Hilltop, and the name fit. The only people dedicated enough to bike up there on a regular basis had electric bikes and were really, really into them. Maybe you know the type. Maybe you don’t if you’re not from a hippie-filled small town, where, as your grandmother says, there are “a lot of windchimes.” We didn’t make the mounted pilgrimage up to school very often, and when we did it was an event, not a method of transit. As I slowly rebuilt my confidence, the hill was still too large. Even so, Multiple switchbacks, steep straightaways, and an overlook of my town nestled among the mountains made for an excellent ride, as liberal as I was with applying my brakes.

In fifth grade, I joined the mountain biking afterschool activity. It was mostly middle school boys, and I was there with my rigid frame, no disc brakes, and padded gloves my grandmother had gifted me. I’ve never considered myself a biker, and this activity certainly cemented that. I couldn’t keep up with them socially or on the trails. It always felt like I was the butt of the joke or last in the pack, like there was something they all knew that I didn’t. Maybe it was just about masculinity, or experience, or age.

We moved outside town to a small dirt road, I got a new bike with some half-decent suspension, and I started high school. In the early-pandemic lockdowns of my freshman year I spent a lot of time speeding down our road, riding without my hands. Those rides gave me an outlet in a lot of ways; blitzing to the end of the road and back got me away from my desk and away from the house. It didn’t require the endurance and commitment of some longer ride, but it got me moving. I would’ve had a much harder time that year if it weren’t for those small escapes with the wind in my hair. I don’t remember any of these rides, but I know they happened. I can see the tapestry, but not the threads. Most of my memories of the early pandemic are like that.

I didn’t ride my bike at high school. Some friends were in a mountain biking club, but it wasn’t appealing to me, mostly because of last time. My freshman year I was pushed away from sports after dealing with malicious teenage boys as teammates, so I continued to do an odd panoply of activities, riding my bike sparingly. My first two years of college, I brought my bike to school and didn’t use it once. The barrier to getting off campus felt insurmountable, and I wasn’t as confident in the city as I had been as a small child.

This summer, I fell off my bike. My partner, who was staying with me, hadn’t rode a bike in years. They’re from a city and went to our boarding high school, so they hadn’t really had a chance. We dug my old bike out of the shed, pumped up the tires, and set out down the less-steep portion of my dirt road. They told me after we finished our first ride that it was the most comfortable they’d ever seen me in my body. Something about the way I knew the road, its texture familiar, riding past the trees I’ve seen hundreds of times. Something about my hands being out and the wind in my hair that was longer than it had ever been. On another ride, I think I was lost in the beauty of the moment, a moment that was, in a way, a culmination of thousands like it. I was myself then, a version of me built on everyone I was before. My foot slipped off the pedal and I fell hard, hip scraping. I got back up though, wiped off the dust, and rode home. There’s still a mark, a reddish circle blending with the stretch marks on my hip, telling the ways I’ve used and changed my body.

It’s hard to write in a new and exciting way about a story you’ve told a hundred times. Sometimes it’s easier to write one you haven’t, one that you don’t already have language for. I’ve told a lot of the stories in this piece before, and I’ll probably keep telling them. I’ll keep riding my bike — I ride it to class whenever I can. I might forget the details of the stories, I might rewrite them in my mind, and they might blur and merge together, but you know what they say about riding a bike…

 

power washing

one weekend i went up the mountain

to powerwash the porch. i biked

past the stream, small bugs swirling and

gravel spitting from my tires while i swiped

sweat aside and spat on the road.

we painted the bathrooms first, me and some girl

whose name i don't remember. she was old,

or at least older than me; my curls

 

weren't yet long enough to tie back, connect.

later, layers of dirt came at my feet, 

all the dust that shouldn’t have been swept

out the door and whatever else had steeped.

 

"too long in one spot and you’ll damage the wood,"

you said. it's gone now, though it used to be good.

loose sonnet i wrote for creative writing. feedback very welcome!

summer movie challenge 2025

this summer, i undertook the @bobkeposting summer movie challenge. inspired by a post by @caseyjune, i have decided to blog about the endeavor. i was already attempting to watch a solid amount of movies this summer due to my goal of watching a movie every week for a total of 52 on the year. if you wanna you can follow my letterboxd or just look at it. some of this post is kinda short because i didn't wanna cover-what i said in my letterboxd reviews again although a lot of them i did that anyway. take a shot every time i said movie in that paragraph.

 

composed by hans zimmer or ludwig goranson: sinners

this one was easy. i already wanted to watch Sinners, and it certainly lived up to the hype. i don't think i have much to say on this that hasn't been said, i'm very sad i didn't see it in theaters and it's amplified my interest in fingerstyle guitar.

 

letterboxd top 250: singin' in the rain

watched this one twice actually. i'm a fan. originally watched it because my friends had watched it in the spring without me. i was gonna watch it a third time this summer because someone wanted to but somehow july and august disappeared. it's a very good movie, but the new york section really drags.

title with five or more words: furiosa: a mad max saga

i liked fury road, and this is quite good too but in a different way. does a great job with colors and themes and all of that. 

 

best picture winner: anora

really visually gorgeous and well acted movie but i just still don't know how i feel about it. i think it's probably staying that way unless someone really wants to present me with their opinion.

 

director whose name starts with the same letter as yours: gravity

directed by alfonso cuarón. not a great movie, but one that tries some things. it's an experience i appreciate, but it doesn't have character depth or really any depth to back it up. what it does well, it does very well. it's got a feeling to it, but the feeling is a generic one.

 

language you haven’t seen a movie in: the worst person in the world

this movie's in norwegian. it's a bit of a cop-out, as i wanted to watch something in a language i would be less likely to watch on my own, but this is what i ended up with. i'm still so struck with how beautiful the main character is. i think it's just a me thing. i hate men. it's a solid movie though.

doc or concert film: stop making sense

i'm really not that into the talking heads. i appreciate and like them, but i haven't really listened to them on my own. i enjoyed this a lot though, and it was the last movie of the challenge. i was fighting to stay awake but it was not because of the movie. great movie to watch people playing instruments and think about how you could play like that. big fan of how rhythmic david byrne's guitar is.

 

released in 2025: the phoenician scheme

there are a fair few movies on this list that could fit into this slot but this is the one that took it. saw it at my local theater in the big room and it was a good time. not my favorite wes anderson movie, but i like the direction he's going at the end of it. worth watching if you like that sort of thing, which i do.

 

based on a non-marvel or dc comic: ghost in the shell (1995)

wow what an awesome movie. beautiful, beautiful animation. raises ethical questions or something but it's also really hot. if you're a girl and you haven't watched this you should fix that.

 

hand-drawn animation: barber westchester

this movie found a spot in my letterboxd top 4, and i'm not certain that it should be there but it's a very very good movie. the premise is ridiculous and partially important. it's just really nice to watch, and i think pushes the limits of hand-drawn animation. totally indie film, so few people working on it, strongly recommend. art with transfem characters also just means a lot to me.

 

bipoc director: nickel boys

experiments in an awesome way and succeeds. i would be happy to watch more first-person films if they were approached with this level of consideration. emotionally brutal.

nominated for a razzie: mamma mia

i really struggled with this category because it felt so much more constraining than any other. however, in doing some consideration of my list i realized i had already watched mama mia. it was previously in a later category, so i swapped it. had a fun time watching this.

 

musical: mama mia 2

worse than the first one. still not awful.

 

rom com: she's the man

fun movie. you gotta have a few.

 

a fish appears on screen: election (2005)

this was the category mama mia was originally in. the scene with the fish may be the most impactful of the whole movie, and is a masterful ending. the first half is kinda lackluster but the end is just so good.

and that's it! i watched those movies. allegedly there'll be a party as a result. maybe i'll make a complete movie recap at the end of the year. you should tell me about movies you've watched, and maybe even blog about them.

come with me

it’s one 

of those summer mornings 

you forget about in winter where the 

haze isn’t quite bright 

golden or 

warm and the birds are quietly 

determined.

one of those mornings 

where you 

push yourself to the edge of the bed and 

tie your hair back to get it off your neck,

pull on shorts and

socks and walk around 

half naked because 

no shirt seems quite right 

yet, letting the sweat evaporate.

the day lilies are open and if 

i had a dog she’d

be surprisingly wet from the dew and 

i’d dry her paws with a towel before starting the kettle 

for a pot of coffee but

i have to get in my car and go to work

and as i drive 

a deer 

stands in the middle of the road

jumps over the whole second half

and vanishes

internet road trip

today, scrolling tumblr i happened across a post directing me to internet roadtrip. if you haven't heard about it, it's a website where people are collectively "driving" via google street view and trying to get to canada. you drive the car by voting on what direction to go.

the website has a couple cute little oddities which i'll let you explore yourself. i booted it up, fiddled around with a few things, and was about ready to leave. then i turned on the radio.

when i opened the site, the car was in maine and the radio was playing WBOR, the bowdoin student radio station. people can collectively choose to change the radio station, and the available stations are based on the car's location. the DJ, named Talia, knew that road trippers were tuned in. she was talking to us, and suggested we take a detour to the town of blue hill, where her grandmother is from and she spent summers. blue hill, interestingly, blue hill is where one of my friends is from, and i've driven there to visit them a few times.

the chat immediately decided to make the detour, although some elements (branding themselves route purists) wanted to continue to canada. however, due to some internal miscommunication about what turn to take we ended up taking a wrong turn and having to do a whole loop of an area we'd already driven.

 

(i think there are more factions in the chat, but i didn't join the discord server to find out. that is left as an exercise for the reader)

i requested some courtney barnett, and the dj played sunday roast which was very lovely. the dj was generally playing good music i enjoyed, and that was fun. i left when her set finished. i trust they made it to blue hill, though i didn't stick around to see it.

i think it's neat that this exists, and that i shared a small thing with all these strangers. typical sentiment. you can find a deeper philosophy yourself, i'm just here to tell you about a nice thing that happened to me.

how i make an instagram post

maybe this is a really self-centered post for me to make but i have a very particular process to it. maybe it's not even particular, maybe everyone does it this way. i think too much about these things. how do you make instagram posts? tell me in the comments. regardless, here we go.

i try to make an instagram post every month. if i have something particularly eventful or that has a lot of photos (e.g. my montreal trip over thanksgiving break) i’ll make extra posts. months segment things nicely, and also tend to be a good timeframe where i can cover all the things that happened.

i started making posts this summer, when, after some prodding, i realized that i actually liked the way i looked in photos and could post them. i made 8 posts catching up my life since the start of college, although i'm fairly sure i didn't post any photos of me from the fall semester.

to start, i go through all the photos from the month and put everything i think might be good in an album. often this involves a couple duplicates, as well as versions of shots that i think will crop differently and want to check which one i want.

once i have all the raw photos (this month i had 24), i start narrowing. some photos just aren’t that good comparatively on a second pass, sometimes i don’t need quite that many photos of one person, it very much depends on the month. i try to get down to 10 photos, even though instagram raised the limit. i could be pretentious and claim it’s an exercise in craft, but it’s also just habit and feels like the right number. narrowing can be tricky, and often i'll sit on it for a day or two and come back.

this month was interesting because i had a lot of photos from shows and low-light dorm rooms which were all kind of terrible quality, and a bunch of pictures from frisbee that i was considering making into their own post. i think the final post suffers from too much frisbee syndrome (tm) but i didn't feel like changing it.

once i've narrowed, i crop everything down to square. instagram changed the profile grid ratio recently and i'm going to be angry about it for a while. i put a lot of care into cropping. my time doing digital and film photography in an academic setting taught me the importance of careful cropping. sometimes, i can't get a photo to crop well and i'll swap it out for another. a few times, i've made a post in a different aspect ratio to allow for different crops. sometimes i'll touch up the editing on a photo, but usually that's not needed.

the photos are gradually placed in an order. this is never at a consistent time in the process. i'll consider order as part of narrowing, or do it before cropping, or partially crop and then order, or just do it last. i try to vary types of photos and give a sense of flow to the post. this could be narrative or aesthetic.

lastly, i pick a caption. common caption sources include in-jokes from the month, a phrase that wormed its way into my head, or an event.

then i post it! that's all.
 

frisbee + photos

this weekend i was at an ultimate frisbee tournament. specifically, my team was at d1 regionals. i'm on a b team so it's awesome that we can even make it this far, and especially that we can actually compete once we're there. it was a really great weekend, and i'm going to talk about it a bit before i share some photos.

we drove down friday and i didn't do my homework and we had a campfire and s'mores and i went to bed very early. saturday we had breakfast and went to the fields and it was wet and raining on and off all day so my cleats got so thoroughly soaked and my feet still don't feel quite normal after 2 days of playing with wet socks + cleats.

the tournament was weird format with this thing called "clipped pools" where its not round robin in a pool your second match in your pool is determined by your first one. anyway, we won our first game pretty easily (14-3) and thus had a harder matchup for our second game. this one we lost 13-5, which feels like a more extreme difference than i remember the game being, but i'm not sure. one thing that's odd about frisbee it that i'm often not exactly sure what the score is while playing. or maybe that's just a me thing. anyway, i met a cute girl that game and told her she looked like adrianne lenker so it really wasn't that bad of a loss.

our third game saturday was the first game in the bracket section of the tournament. we won 14-7 and i don't really remember that much about it. before the game, we got a beautiful lunch at the dining hall of the host school and it was so so good and i'm not just saying that because i was hungry from playing. i had some indian curry and dumplings and a red bean paste bun and a little coffee drink thing and some grapes with really good surface tension.

saturday night we had a big team pasta dinner and i drank a single angry orchard and yet again went to bed very early.

sunday was properly the bracket play, and while we were guaranteed 3 games saturday the amount of games we played sunday depended on if we won. essentially, if we lost a game we would be kicked into a losers bracket, play one more game, and then be done. sadly, that's exactly what happened.

our first game was really intense and competitive. the opposing team had a player who was a lot better than all the others and we ended up running what's called a box against her. this is a type of zone defense and we affectionately call it a "fuck meribel" zone after a former teammate we ran it against. in this zone, it was my job to just cover the player 1-1 while everyone else played a normal zone defense. i fairly successfully took her out of the game, although she did end up scoring the winning point and we lost 8-6. i'm not too mad about it though, i played really well, just disappointed that we couldn't make it work.

our second game sunday a lot of the team was kind of demoralized from the first game and we definitely weren't playing our best. also, it was the last game of the season and the last game of college for the seniors on the team. we lost 9-8 on what's called "universe point" which was difficult. i think if we played them in most other circumstances we'd win, but i was just happy to be with my team. also, my mother and partner drove down to watch and while i didn't get played a lot the second game, it meant i got to spend more time with them on the sidelines.

we finished sunday watching our a team lose their game. it's ok though, they were kind of expected to lose because the other team is undefeated. they placed 2nd and secured a bid to nationals, and we placed 8th out of 14 teams. then we went and got lunch at the dining hall again and drove home.

one of these days i'll write about playing sports as a trans woman but i'm not there yet. enjoy the photos!

 

 

 

 

 

it’s about the process

it’s about the process

running down my face

working out the knots in my hair

the careful force of depressing the plunger

and i’ve always been

careful with force.

 

sold my love and bought a thunderstorm

open the window unzip the sleeping bag

watch the field without the horses

5 or seven of them

cap the needle.

 

ball jar and the door’s ajar

whipping in the wind

revisiting his dark materials

lately, i've been re-reading the book northern lights by phillip pullman. that's the name on the title because i have the uk release, but it's called the golden compass in the us. i have the uk release because when i was a kid living in burlington while my mom did grad school at uvm we made friends with our upstairs neighbor. she later went to oxford and i spent the night in her apartment and she gave me the book. i was in oxford because my grandfather's ex girlfriend (who we do still talk to) took me on a trip to london, which was the first time i had ever been to another country (unless you count being conceived in the virgin islands. or maybe i went to canada at some point first).

anyway i've been re-reading the golden compass bc it's the first book in a series. for a while, i said that the third book in the series (the amber spyglass) was my favorite book. too much time has passed since i read it for me to continue making this claim, so i'm rereading. also, i'm a woman now and have a lot more thoughts about politics and media so it's worth another read.

so far, i've been enjoying it a lot. lyra is a wonderful character. some of the world building has interesting implications about transition and power structures. maybe i'll write about it more if i feel like it. i am firmly opposed to watching the show or the movie, i don't care if they're good, don't send me anything about them or any pictures of them.

leaving my guitar behind

yesterday, i took my acoustic guitar to the shop. i got my guitar in december 2021 as an early gift for my birthday and i've played it a lot since then. if you want to see a photo of it you can look at the guitar tag on my blog. it came to summer camp with me for several years, and more or less goes wherever i go. in the intervening time, i didn't do any maintenance on it, which is not exactly good. when i took it in, the guy at the shop (his name is steve) said that the bridge was lifting. thankfully, it's not as damaged as it could be, so he's going to do some minor repairs and it'll be good again. i've also discovered that my action (that's the string height) is very low, about as low as it reasonably can be, so i might get that raised. he's also going to clean and oil the fretboard, which will really make the purple heartwood pop. it's been starting to look a little grimy lately, and i'm excited to see it clean again. it's good that i'm taking care of it, but i also want to be playing it right now, which is why i wrote this post.

 my guitar, sitting in steve's shop

 

 

 

 

signs of spring

i went home this weekend.

until i got there i hadn't seen the right signs of spring. 

on campus there are no spring peepers in the small pond by my shed. i can't listen to them while i fall asleep. 

on campus i don't get woken up by birds. i can't hear them over the vents outside my window. 

i hadn't seen how full the stream near my house was with snowmelt. i saw the buds on trees, but they weren't all around me. 

i didn't know the frost heaves in my road; the mud didn't cover my boots. i need to sink into it all.

markers

today at work they made me test all the markers and pens in the art supplies cabinet. my supervisor told me she likes the reading i picked for book club about being a trans girl on ket. there was a bead stuck in the cap of one of the sharpie pens. uncapping a marker is a lot like uncapping a needle, but i would never fish a marker cap off the table. my fingers are covered in marker and pen, not blood

 

 

 

you can just do that

on tuesday, i did my first injection. i've been on estrogen for a while, but only finally got around to switching off pills. i don't think i've too drastically noticed a difference, but there's something nice about it being inside me for a week and not having to worry about it. 

i've never been scared of needles, or even worried by them. i'm maybe even a little too chill about them. the first time i got my blood drawn i'd say i was around 10 and the woman drawing it missed the vein. she dug around in my arm a bit, and it hurt. didn't put me off needles though.

it's amazing that i can just put a needle in myself. it feels like something i shouldn't be allowed to do. the world is beautiful and full of possibilities.

vein

i.

there's a vein in my nose, or so 

my mother says, that's only 

visible when i'm 

going through a growth spurt. i

look in the mirror and i

never see it. i wake up 

one day, every day, and everything 

is irreversibly different. 

 

ii.

my bras don't fit and my duvet 

is tattered and the backs 

of my knees don't hurt. 

they used to. 

i used to not sleep for 

the growing pain. inches in a year. inches 

on the miles i ran, 

drove, hiked. 

 

iii.

tonight it's raining. i used to sleep 

with only 3 walls around me and 

the rain would come right in. 

alessia

would read me a story every night. she bought bamboo 

curtains to keep the rain

out of her bed. mine was deep enough 

in the cabin it didn't matter.

both our books 

got damp all the same. jesse told me i was a 

carbon copy of her. 

none of us knew yet. 

my name's from her. 

 

iv.

when i was 6 we had a cat

named minerva and a cat named spike. 

i played dozens 

of games of euchre with our med student roommate. the

garden had a small gazebo and

our upstairs neighbor was eve. 

when i was 6 i had a 

cd player and i'd listen to bill frisell every night to fall 

asleep, through the pain 

of my knees, through the pain

of only getting half an ibuprofen, 

through the pain of not yet knowing.

the air

written saturday evening in blue pen waiting for a play to start.

there's something in the air in montreal that makes me want a cigarette.

i miss a lot of people. i'm happy to be in the city. i'm happy to be seeing the play my friend is directing. the main character is really afraid of getting cucked. the city is beautiful with its careful stonework, mixed colors, twiling metalwork, and tangled vines. i'm not comfortable in the city without a close companion, and while i have a companion i'm in the position of support. i'm unclear if i can or should venture out alone (my phone is broken) but it feels wasteful to stay in. i could get a drink here but it feels out of place. i'm going to get some water.

it's called cigarette smoke. it's called ghosts.

 

murphy's law

murphy's law: "anything that can go wrong will go wrong"

on saturday, i went on march break. i packed up my bags and closed down my room and loaded my car and picked up my friend. we drove three hours to my house. we mostly stayed there until this morning.

on sunday night, my phone broke. i was mid-phone call when it restarted. i made the call again, and again it restarted. i put it aside and continued the call on my laptop. later, i tried to figure out what was wrong. it was restarting in random increments. i did research, attempted a force restart, and had no success. i noticed it was getting hot, so i turned it off.

i had a very nice and restful break, and didn't really need a phone. i lost track of the time a lot, and it was good for me. i wasn't able to get in to brightspace, and that was also good for me, although maybe bad for my grades. probably fine. i almost burnt a couple things my mother texted me to take out of the oven, but all of them ended up perfectly cooked. ultimately, not having a phone allowed me to focus on what mattered over break.

i went to get my phone repaired, and the guy was being solidly misogynistic in the sort of way where he didn't believe i could know anything about what might be wrong with my phone. i walked in and told him it was probably a battery issue because it was rebooting and getting hot and he provided several other options before i repeated what i said and he agreed. he said he'd replace the battery and disconnect some other sensor but that didn't work, the phone wasn't worth fixing, so i paid $70 and left.

while waiting for my phone to get fixed, my friend and i were going to go to probably my favorite burger place for lunch. they were closed. this is the second time i've tried to go there and they've been inexplicably closed. we went to a different burger place and it was mediocre.

on thursday, i got a haircut and went to a local pottery studio that was having a sale on seconds. after acquiring beautiful pottery, my friend and i returned to the car and found a parking ticket. if you know me or my twitter, you know i don't stand for such things. no resolution to this one, i still need to pay it.

on friday, i was going to go to montreal to see a play a friend was directing and be in the city. on thursday night, i had finished cooking a very late (for nice reasons) dinner and sat down and realized i didn't have my passport. in the morning, i texted someone i know on my floor who was staying over break. she very kindly said she'd let me in to my room to get my passport.

after driving back to burlington, we were dropping stuff off at my friend's apartment and she left her keys inside and we got locked out. thankfully, the building staff were able to let us back in.

i picked up a different friend, made it to montreal, and tried to park. the formerly unattended lot i previously parked in now for a whole weekend had an attendant, and it seemed like i couldn't park there for more than an hour. his english wasn't the best, so we tried to find a different lot. this lot very clearly had an option to park for 24 hours, but the attendant didn't speak any english. we managed to make it work, but my bank decided i wasn't actually allowed to be in montreal so my card declined. thankfully, my friend's card worked and we parked and made it to the place we were staying.

walking into the apartment, i reached to close the door and gouged my hand on a nail poking out the back. it created two short cuts just below my pinky. i considered this my blood sacrifice, and nothing further went terribly wrong. i'm now safely back at school. much of this was my fault, and many wonderful things happened over break, but this was a string of ill events too significant to ignore. watch out.

 

catholics, snow, ropes

last month, my friends threw a catholic themed party as well as a rope bunnies themed party. we also made a snow bong. below are photos courtesy of @roseoddments and my roommate.

 

i don't think i did the best job of posing but i'm quite proud of my wounds

 

 

 

god bless

 

snong night begins

 

 i did in fact eat some of it

 

 

 

that was a really lovely night