Pirate utopias are pretty fascinating, actually. Recruitment was not that uncommon.

"So...you can plunder, and you can swab, but what we really need is a fifth man for our basketball team. Can you guard a forward with a pegleg?"

managed to impale my finger with a splinter of fiberglass. Felt the prick, looked at my hand, saw two splinters sticking out on either side of the middle of my pinky. "Oh!" Still doesn't hurt as bad as all the little stabs from rose thorns. Or the arthritis.

I've got a ways to go before I can't find crucial shit. I'm not to the point of living out of a suitcase yet. Haven't touched the bathroom or clothes yet. And all I need in the kitchen now is a plate, some forks, a knife, spoon, a cup and mug, teapot, coffee cone, big salad bowl and catfood dishes.

My phone is ringing off the hook. Guess the neighbors are seeing all the boxes and think I'm going to sneak out in the middle of the night (in a snowstorm!- who gets the reference? ) without telling them.

I really should not be allowed out of bed. Burned my hand making dinner tonight. This can stop. NOW.

I FOUND THE BRACKET! On the couch, in the cats' throw.

(also, if anyone gets the reference, it is even more appropriate when you consider I am moving to just above the old Memorial Stadium site.)

Oh, now I get it.

God is telling you to move, and reassuring you that it's alright by sending you that repairman....

Hee. God overran the pink house with rodents, cut the power, and nearly set the place on fire to get us to move with impunity. Then he was all, "'Bout time, punk!" and caved in the ceiling after we'd left for good measure, in case we came back.

But we're really really happy here in our new house now. IJS.

And Suzi, what did we say about the bubble wrap?!?

I think your definition of "romance" is insufficient if it doesn't include free, law-flouting, dangerous rogues. That is romantic. Both in the capital "R" Byronic sense, and the small "r" romance.

I guess the question is how much of a cold blooded killer you can be, how indifferent to the lives of innocents, and still be considered Byronic. As far as I know the squickiest thing Byron did was to fuck his half sister. His violence was mostly in good causes against opressors. So, are the Crips and the Bloods Byronic?

Another thing to remember is that there is a reason certain forms of Romanticism have a bad odor. Gabriele d'Annunzio's takeover of Rijeka is sometimes called the "last pirate utopia". It was also the percursor of fascism. Mussolini took a lot of his ideology From d'Annuzio. And d'Annuzio was in many ways genuinely Byronic - a real poet, a daring warrior, theatrical. But there is still the whole "helped Mussolini come to power, and the official poet of Mussolini's regime". thing

I think a difference between Byron, and the Pirates, is there is a lot to be said for Byron even if you look at him unflinchingly. To see the Pirates favorably requires a bit of a soft focus, ignoring certain things.

So this house? Is near a Franciscan convent (I'd drive by it everyday, and all the streets dead end on it.) Not sure why I find this fascinating.