I haven’t been to the National Zoo since second grade (that would be, ahem, 25 years ago), and I am as stoked to see the giant pandas now as I was then.  Only tomorrow I get to show them to my daughter and also spoil her a little with fries, ice-cream and a stuffed toy or two to boot.

In the course of my internet meanderings, I came a cross a cool site called LunchDoodle (one word?) that you should totally go and check out.  It makes me wish I doodled more.  I especially like this one, after my eleven days (and counting) without coffee.

And my Field Notes calendar came yesterday.  Excellent.

I’m thinking of a larger article about my thoughts about/relationship to Walden Pond, and I don’t want to write about it too much yet.

But still. Come on. Are you fucking kidding me? What, did they have a run on megalomaniacal stones at L.L. Bean or something? I thought of blanking out names when I posed pictures. But, well, the people who left the stones obviously wanted everyone to know they were there. So.

Certainly they might even be memorial stones for dead people.  But that’s not a grave and not the place for such selfishness.  Seriously.

Me?  Shit, I have left orders that my ashes be scattered at Walden, secretly (it’s probably not legal).

We’ve all three been conked out this week, both from our trip and from significant schedule adjustments because of Mama’s new job (i.e., no more sleeping until 7:00am!).  Mama and I are both also newly re-committed to actually doing some WRITING.  Add to this my new spot as a “writer” at Blogcritics, and you’ve got some fun blogging coming your way.

To include, of course, some of the interesting places in/at which Charlotte pooped in New England!

Either way, I hope to return to Baltimore a better blogger.  Geez, it’s like I forgot about having a blog this month.

Also, it’s 100 freakin degrees.  Outside.

And thank God/Jesus/Allah/The Donale for peppermint soap. Oh, peppermint soap. Dude, get some. Get some, and tell them I sent you. Tell them I said HI.

But we haven’t packed a thing. Boxes are on their way. I’m a pretty stellar packer, though. Maybe I’m wired to be nomadic? I have a feeling our distaste for home ownership might be masking a growing desire to move around some more, maybe just travel a bit. Maybe just, I don’t know, change things up?

And we need to measure rooms and furniture and the massive volume of books that we own, go to Ikea (though that part’s fun, and Charlotte likes the colors and the toys she gets when we go there), actually think about what’s going where.

And we need to not melt before then.

This is all cause for stress, but I don’t feel particularly stressed about it. Rather, I’m looking forward to receiving the wood-handled umbrellas we ordered yesterday, in time for a rainy weekend. I spent like two hours researching umbrellas. (I shit you not.) I couldn’t get the color I wanted, and I’m hoping that “khaki” is not code for “off-white.”

Also, all this sitting around sans shirt has me wishing I could lose weight. That I would, rather. That I would.

Would if I could, and all that.

I’m thinking back to before we were parents, especially before we even planned to become parents (as little as two years ago). What the hell did we ever do with that free time?

I wish I’d spent it more wisely.

But I don’t really miss having it. Charlotte’s a blast.

This could be my relatively boring life.  I never go camping as much as I used to, or travel.  So I sit and obsess over backpacks and messenger bags and what sort of gear I’ll need for my imaginary solo trip around Europe and the near East (which I’ll not only never get to take, but also don’t really want to take; my wife is a great travel companion as well as life companion).  When I was in my teens and camped more, I never really thought much of gear.  I had (still have) a framepack from 1990, and that was that.  My sleeping bag still has a cigarette burn from October 1995, in the mountains of Western Maryland and probably hasn’t even been washed since.

So I sit and read about bags to do things I don’t do.  Look on Flickr at pictures of Moleskines and other tools of writers, while I never write anymore.  I read adventure and manly books to imagine myself doing it.

And I don’t do anything.

I used to convince myself (even until this morning when I noticed a few meaningless broken threads on my precious custom Timbuk2 bag — one of FOUR I own!) that I really just needed to be able to enjoy my stuff, to love it so much that I didn’t care about the universal flaws that things which are made of material always exhibit (namely, never ever being or remaining perfect!).  That’s crazy.  The only entities worthy of being loved beyond their flaws are people and maybe your country.  Not your damned messenger bag that was made in San Francisco just for you or notebooks that have freakin PVC in their covers and paper that’s really, let’s face it, not great.  More properly, I need to regain my love of things like hiking and camping and traveling so much that I don’t care what beat-up piece of crap I carry all my stuff in.  I’ve been actually planning on buying a backpack to take to the mountains this fall.  Why?  I’ll just sit there worrying about and thinking about it.  There’s no point in spending a lot of time on it.  When I was a teenager, my journal was just a big spiral notebook I never needed for classes, and then the books people would give me as gifts.

I’ve gotten to the point where I would be ashamed if the people whom I admire were to learn about my sick ways.  When my dissertation director was here last month, I hoped I wouldn’t slip and admit how much I’d read about the little backpack I had with me at the time.  I’m not quite sure that Thoreau, Hemingway or Chatwin would own four Timbuk2 bags or even that any of them would get anywhere near a Moleskine, especially now that there are better and cheaper alternatives that do the same thing.

There was a time when the only things I was obsessed with were Space Pens, and I just wrote and traveled and camped and enjoyed activities and experiences.  This wasn’t that long ago, merely months before I started blogging, maybe a year.  I need to get back to that.  I don’t think I need to somehow learn to deal with accepting the imperfections of the stuff I am already obsessed with.  I think I need to get rid of and no longer buy the things I’m obsessed with.  Things that don’t obsess me don’t bother me regarding their imperfections.  Hell, I love shit that’s broken in!

My consumerism even extends to how I spend my time online and why the hell I even own a digital camera anymore, but that’s another post for another dark lunch-hour.

Armand, the founder of Moleskinerie, is back with a re-vamped Notebookism! I, for one, have missed a site devoted to all things stationery and the writing life, as Moleskinerie used to be. Stay tuned for what I’m sure will be one of your favorite blogs.

Joachim is travelling around the world between his 25th and 26th Birthdays and blogging about it all on 360 in 365.  I’m reminded  that all I did then was to worry about a car I didn’t like owning, jump through academic hoops and start a pencil blog.  Instead of regret, however, I’m just enjoying the stories.

And, of course, you should check out North Baltimore Bike Brigade, which I co-run with my good pal Dan.  There’s a blogroll of bike blogs on there of which we’re proud, and a nice community of cyclists, largely from Charm City.

The Orient Express — the very name carries an aura of glamour and mystery. Van Helsing rode it to his battle with Dracula. James Bond romanced a beautiful Russian aboard it. And Agatha Christie set one of the best-known murders in literary history aboard that train.

Now the original Orient Express is itself about to become part of history. On Monday, the route will disappear from European railway timetables, a victim of high-speed trains and cut-rate airlines.

(Read more.)

This is one of my favorite times of the year for train travel, riding through the mountains and snow, with icy rivers and silent wind turbines churning on peaks.  If everything works out, we should take a train journey to Southern Illinois before winter is over.

I got nothing but outside time this weekend, and it was fantastic.  From the spiders and deer to my wet feet and chattering teeth, I got a big dose of Mother Nature/Earth on our little camping trip.  But the end of Saturday, I was not bothered with being dirty.  By Sunday morning, shedding layers, sweating and packing/cleaninp up our campsite, I was elated over how stinky and dirty I had gotten.  I smelled like sweat, baby wipes, campfire and coffee.  I arrived home  in flannel PJ pants, a flannel shirt, dirty and wet socked/sandaled feet and visibly dirty.  Awesome.

I love living in the city.  The best way to really enjoy the outdoors is to enjoy it, not cut it down to live in a small piece of it, poison the air getting there and also waterways and the land itself with roads, etc.  I do want to retire and die in a little cabin one day, but that will have a small footprint.  But I haven’t been getting out enough even in the city lately.  Few walks, few cycling trips, little of anything.  Monday, I got three hours to show a nice guy around Baltimore for three hours.  It was his first time in Charm City.  So we walked from Midtown all the way to the Inner Harbor and East to Fell’s Point — and back.  It was tired, and we scored big sandwiches when we got back.  I gave a walking tour of Central Baltimore the next day and earned my pasta dinner.  These are improvements.

But now it’s raining and nasty today, and I haven’t even gone to get my afternoon coffee yet.

Autumn is here, though, and that is damned fine.

And my waistpack smells like campfire, after my friend Zack and I sat around one last night for 4-5 hours, including melting two glass rootbeer (yes, ROOTbeer) bottles in the center/coals of said fire.  For the record, it was Zack’s idea.  I thought they’d explode, even empty.

I also kinda lost my cool and yelled [shortly] at a few kids who, in my defense, totally deserved it and needed to wake up a little to unexpected pains in the ass that come with being an adult and sometimes come when you’re fifteen.  I think it worked for the time, and there were/are no hard feelings.  Unless there’s a heartless revenge headed my way.  In which case, it did not, in fact work.

I am deliriously tired.