fertile grounds

you have good days and you have bad days. plain and simple.

driving along an idaho country road in the middle of a blizzard with a kid at the wheel who is used to driving in florida typically creates a bad one.

brad and i had just gotten off of spending three days in ketchum, idaho. ketchum, as some of you may know, is the city where ernest hemingway decided to call it quits and blew his head off with a shotgun. brad was keen to check out his old home (which is preserved by the ketchum historical society) and see his gravesite. i was game for checking this stuff out only because of the confusion that resulted after reading a miniscule amount of hemingway material in high school.

turns out there was more to ketchum than hemingway.

i took a liking to the "wake up and live" coffee house as the muffins were second to none. however, and a big however at that, amidst sitting there for four hours every morning i counted more face-lifts than i have ever seen in my entire life. i kid you not. maybe there was a two-for-one special last season. who knows? i eavesdropped on conversations those three days that involved nothing other than dinner parties, clothing brands, ugg boots and trips to the spa.

awesome?

hemingway blasting his face off and plastic barbie doll women-- this ketchum place was a dangerous locale.

we decided to stick around for one more night because it was the 30th anniversary party at the local bar and they were serving alcohol at the prices they did 30 years ago (translation - 1 beer = $1). the night was full of-- you guessed it-- the affluent and elite of ketchum's best getting wasted in the bar that gave them their kicks ages ago.

i was lucky enough to meet a woman who introduced herself as a "trust fund kid that traveled the world and ended up in ketchum." the only thing i heard in that introduction was "traveled the world" and hence inquired about the locales she traversed. what resulted was both peculiar and astonishing. when she was my age she actually went through australia and lived in coogee-- this was the place i lived whilst studying in australia.

very weird.

the evening came to a close and the bartenders made an attempt at drastically overcharging me on my bar tab. this yielded me tipping $2 and causing something of a mild uproar in the place. this was the sort of exit i expected from this town. we left the next morning and this was probably the worst decision given the snow conditions.

i was running through a virtual checklist for driving in the snow to brad as we plodded along idaho 95 at 22 miles per hour. we had been rocking it in 2nd gear for the past 2 hours. every 10 minutes or so brad would lose partial control of the vehicle and we would get caught in a snow track. there was an 18 wheeler semi behind us and a pontiac sunfire. i was absolutely baffled at how the sunfire was blistering through the roughly 5 inches of unplowed snow and ice combo that was being dumped on the country road.

"brad, this vehicle is equipped with ABS braking technology. this means that in the event we will need to slam on the brakes, you must apply steady pressure brad. DO NOT pump the brake, brad"

i was trying to sound as professional as possible so as to convey the fact that this was nothing to joke around with. we were on a two lane country road and the state of idaho had no intention of sending out the snow plows for this baby.

it became clear that i had inherited a trait from my father. it was his habit when speaking to someone professionally to repeat their name throughout the conversation at least 44 times.

for example:

"philly, when you rake the leaves i need you to bag them when you are done, philly. this is part of the job, philly. now please philly, if you could just do that philly it would be great."

as i spoke to brad rattling off the virtual checklist it was clear that i was handling this no differently than daddy dearest-- and i couldnt be happier about it. my dad happens to be one of the best people in the universe.

"should you find us skidding in a snow track brad, it is absolutely essential that you turn in to the direction of the skid. otherwise brad, we will find ourselves in the grill of the oncoming 18 wheeler or down a mountain face roughly 2200 feet below this country road."

again, very professional.

things loosened up a bit as the conditions got better. i eventually started filming brad driving and this was arguably 100 times more dangerous than when we were driving through the polar ice caps 50 miles prior.

we got to lower elevation and the snow turned to rain. lovely. having made it through that mess, we opted to stop at the seven devil's tavern and have ourselves a cold keystone light. the bartender was an interesting gal which made for the kind of conversation that got us out of the bar after one beer.

safely arriving in spokane made this a good day.

good days and bad days. plain and simple.

going to costco (similar to sam's club except approximately 18 times better) typically results in the day being characterized as "good." friday, november 16 would be something of the exception in this rule.

i woke up feeling an inexplicable desire to visit the warehouse that presents to you all things amazing-- oversized EVERYTHING. when you buy a bag of peanuts you dont just get a bag of the nutty delights-- you get TEN POUNDS OF PEANUTS. now, thats A LOT OF PEANUTS.

this is the type of stuff that makes me extremely happy.

(on one particular camping weekend when i was living in chicago, it was necessity that this monstrosity of a peanut purchase be brought along as one of the snack items. i wasnt going to complain. well, two nights and three days later this bag of peanuts would not be consumed under any circumstances. there were about a dozen and a half people present for this weekend trip. still, the peanuts could not be consumed. as it is, we lugged the gorilla sized bag of peanuts back to the apartment where it tended to be people's hunger in the TV room for the next three weeks. THIS is costco style. you buy things there that just keep giving.)

i needed to re-fill my camping stock of food. as mentioned before, this typically consists of peanut butter and jelly, wheat thins, ramen noodles, canned chicken and apples. this is what i have been living off of with brad.

well, brad is now gone. he decided to take off early from the trip to go home and share thanksgiving with his girlfriend. a kink in the plan? absolutely. and sure this presents hardships if you approach the situation from certain angles, but goddamnit on friday november 16 it meant that i was buying all that "unhealthy shit" that brad wasnt much a fan of.

i headed to the checkout line donning my newly acquired arsenal of foodstuffs. carmen, the woman arming the cash register, asked me if i would like my goods boxed up.

"no, thanks," i casually replied.

about 1 second later i realized i had forgotten my debit card.

awesome.

i told carmen i would be back in about 30 minutes to retrieve my groceries. she told me she would set them aside for me. in the back of my mind i was really hoping that this would work out because i got the last mega pack of polar ice gum and if someone took this from my cart i was going to be pissed.

this little debit card fiasco is clearly the result of staying with my friends matt and jill. i have become quite disorganized and lazy over the past few days with them. normally, i would have had my debit card in the truck tucked in the console where it always is. but now that i am living like a king in their basement my debit card lay resting near the futon where i have been sleeping.

this is as good a place as any to outline the fact that i really do have slobbish tendancies. my buddy nate has taken pride over the past 3 years to call me "the sloppiest person he has ever known." while i think this is a gross exaggeration-- and i obviously have no tolerance for exaggeration, i only deal with facts-- i could perhaps slightly agree with his claim.

great.

i am not the world's best with driving directions. this is a pretty well known fact. spokane has to be one of the worst locales in the country when it comes to road signage. the result is some dangerous wandering that takes place when it is time to go from point A to B. driving back to get my debit card was something of a small nightmare. getting frustrated with the road system of one way streets and turnoffs that were very poorly marked, i inadvertently turned on to a one-way road and had a semi heading directly for my face about 32 feet ahead. i quickly averted the situation and pulled to the shoulder and meandered my way back to good road.

i arrived home in one piece.

getting out of the car to head back in to the house i stepped in to a giant water puddle. shoes completely soaked. this was about par for the course. i swore at myself and kicked the tire as i got out of the car.

debit card now in hand, a different pair of shoes on my feet and a pretty good idea of how to get back to costco i set off.

i was driving along, magnolia electric co pumping through the stereo, and an odd smell began wavering through the air. normally, i immediately chalk this up to things like foot odor, temporary outdoor smells--

but no, this one was not going away.

i rolled the window down and problem solved. the odor could no longer be sensed by my nostrils. when i was freezing my ass off 6 minutes later i decided to pull in to a starbucks to have myself a medium sized black coffee and do a thorough interior inspection to help get my hands around this odor that was getting exponentially worse with time.

coffee in hand-- check.

well, preliminary odor inspection uncovered the fact that i had a massive piece of dog shit lodged between the grooves of the entire bottom of my shoes.

i thought about this real long and hard. how in the sam hell did i get dog shit on the bottom of my shoes? there is no dog at the hulswit household, the neighbors have one dog but he stays fenced in. and then it hit me. the one day i got up off my ass because i needed to get some exercise, i decided to rake the leaves for matt and jill. i determined it highly likely that while doing this activity i stepped in said pile of canine excrement and this was now fucking up my universe.

see, this bodes horribly for my relationship between humans and dogs. i already have an extremely difficult time enjoying the company of those smelly, hair exploding creatures. people call them 'man's best friend' but honestly i couldnt think of a worse friend. dog's have no ability to consume beer, they certainly can't tell a good joke and i have never seen a dog attend a concert or other social activity. in my experience, dogs typically chew your favorite sneakers, piss on your carpet, vomet on your t shirt and chew the bindings of your favorite book. and really, i dont think anyone can disagree with the points i have laid out here. if we are going to enjoy dogs these days, we need to at least adjust our expectations of these animals. perhaps we create seperate living quarters and make it the norm to hire people to take care of them. this lies nowhere in my budget so it is reasonable for me to say that i will never own this type of mammal.

awesome.

in an effort to clean the small army of poop molecules that were now covering my sneaker, i went to the closest water puddle and began stomping and scraping my shoes through the watery mess. after 12 seconds of doing this i realized my actions were seriously alarming to passers by. to them it must have looked like i was doing some violent rendition of stomp or a vicious tap-dancing routine.

"are you ok?" asked the woman, her husband clutching her arm as if they were in the presence of a terrorist.

"yeah, just cleaning my shoes thanks."

there was no way i was revealing that it was dog shit that was causing the whole problem.

i spent about 6 minutes in this puddle and dealt with the whole "are you ok?" comment 91 times. by the time the last group rolled through to ask about my actions, i just ignored them and kept hammering away at my soles trying to rid them of the fecal matter.

eventually i got back in the car, feverishly sweating from the labor it took to remedy the shoe-shit problem and clearly frustrated at this point. the smell still lingered in the car. i took a couple sips of my coffee and spilled at least 2 tablespoons of hot coffee on my crotch in the process. i threw the truck in the drive and was trying to remain calm.

onwards to costco.

my cart was waiting for me in the exact same spot i left it with a giant sign across it that read "RESERVED FOR PHILIP - forgot debit card."

SUPER. normally i would call this superior customer service but today i was pissed about it. the entire universe now knew that i forgot my debit card. maybe it would have been appropriate for her to also write on the name card that i had now driven nearly 40 miles to pay for this cart of food, endured hot coffee crotch and had an entire sneakers worth of dog shit laced to my feet.

there would be only one way to fix this day-- THE COSTCO CAFE.

for those that aren't in the know, this is the spot where you can get a massive bratwurst and a fountain pop for $1.50. yep. not in the mood for a brat? how about a behemoth slice of pizza for $1.95. these are the proper combinations of price and portion size that will eventually fix days like this. most people would call this an "issue" of mine.

i opted for a slice of supreme pizza and a smoothie.

i sat down at the table just wanting to demolish the food before me when a voice piped in from above my shoulder, "anyone sitting here with you at this table?"

this happened to be the busiest costco in the universe. i mean costco is a popular place, this is fact. but there was a waiting line at the sample stations even. i waited behind a line of 4 just to get a 1 inch portion of a chicken taquito. the coffee line? i didnt even attempt to weave through that mess. the people of spokane were like ravaged hyenas at this particular costco-- exactly how i like it.

the checkout lines were roughly 50 feet long. the costco cafe was no different. all tables were taken. as it was, the one that i managed to sit down at was full when i first showed up. instead of moving on to the next table i awkwardly stood there waiting for the couple to finish as it looked like they were nearing completion.

i eventually sat down giving a smile to the mildly perturbed couple. 20 seconds later i addressed the voice that was beaming from the rear of my left shoulder.

"no, you're welcome to sit down" i replied back.

i was eating my pizza slice at speeds that i was hoping would deter my guest from speaking with me. i didnt feel like talking.

turns out the guys name was larry.

well, 68 minutes later i left costco nearly giving my new friend a hug. eric, the doctor friend of larry that happened to join us at about minute 19 of the conversation, offered to put me up in his home if i wanted to stay in spokane any longer. we talked about everything from the quality of the bratwurst that larry was enjoying (i kid you not, this man managed to get mustard ALL OVER his face. and it appeared as though there was a worldwide napkin shortage because he refused to clean it up.) to the experience of booking vacations through costco. larry was hands-down the biggest fan of costco i have ever met in my life. now, this is something of a feat seeing as how my mother spends roughly 1/3 of the household income at costco every year.

larry has done all the following with costco:

-purchased his wife a ring
-booked multiple vacations
-had windows installed all throughout his house
-two cars with tires installed at the tire center
-health insurance
-an annual grocery total that was alarming (which he happily shared with me)

i determined that if costco were to blow up and be eliminated, this guy would be in some serious trouble.

perhaps this testimonial will make my dad happy knowing that there are folks out there that are purchasing costco items in volumes much more extreme than mother dearest.

when it was time to go i had one more remaining task to take care of at costco: a car battery. yep. its astonishing that i decided to push forward with the tasks laid out for the day given my luck in the previous 3 hours.

buying the battery was potentially the easiest task of the day. carrying it the car, however, was something of a feat. i didnt realize that car batteries weighed 100 pounds. i thought my biceps were going to explode by the time i threw that thing in the car.

i drove over to the tire center and asked to burrow their socket set. no problem. i started laboring away pulling the old battery out and realized that-- this was no surprise mind you-- i had a bit of a problem on my hands. the old screw and nut that was securing the battery harness in place was completely rusted and would be impossible for me to extract given my current set of tools.

"hey, you guys have a bolt cutter here?" i belted over to one of the tire center guys.

nothing.

awesome.

now with my battery half pulled out i needed to put it back in and go to a mechanic's shop to try and fix this issue. i knew i also needed an oil change so i figured i would go to a shop and then just casually ask them to extract my battery and put the new one in.

remarkably, this worked.

my battery is now being held in place with a bungee cord mechanism that was custom-fit by yours truly but the mechanic agreed that it would be just fine. a miniature victory, indeed.

(don't worry mom).

so, this was something of a bad day with an extraordinary finish-- the car was well again, my shoes didnt smell NEARLY as bad as before and i had all my food (with some added junk items) packed in the back. i was road ready.

but not so fast. i still had a few days yet to spend in spokane.

amidst my penchant for the couch and watching movies, i discovered the ultimate combination of laziness and technology that produced perhaps one of my new favorite pasttimes: VIDEO CHAT.

that's right.

having purchased a new macbook that is equipped with a built in camera, i have the luxury of seamlessly partaking in video chat sessions. two individuals connect over AOL instant messenger and beam each other a video feed of themselves. what results is an extremely personal and FREE way to communicate with friends and family despite being on the road.

this paid dividends two-fold whilst in spokane at the matt and jill homestead.

on friday night, matt and i opted to have a few beers at the house and just have a good chat. once chatting was over and we became inebriated, we first had a bit of a wrestling match (this is pretty standard for matt and i). after getting past that masculine bit of fury we then opted to have a video chat with matt's brother who lives in los angeles. the three of us continued drinking together. never have i experienced taking shots of whisky over techno-waves, but let me tell it was pretty awesome.

the madness continued saturday afternoon when matt and i were still enjoying a few beers and watching college football. at halftime, i decided to give my sister emily a jingle. what resulted was an hour long video chat that had me doing things like giving emily a tour of matt and jill's house through the webcam and again having a bit of a "cyber toast" over a delicious cold beverage.

these two video conversations were arguably the highlight of my weekend (aside from UofM losing to ohio state and MSU beating penn state).

a few days later, i now sit in seattle at a nice little cafe called ZOKA. the coffee is uncharacteristically good. apparently they roast their own beans. the inhabitants of this particular cafe range from professional to uber-hippie. i have no qualms with this as i have counted zero face lifts up to this point. this is terrific news.

thoughts are racing through my head at a mile a minute. i have quite a few decisions to make in the months ahead. where will i be working? where will i be living? what do i want? what do i care about? what are my priorities? how do i place myself in a position to inspire my actions going forward?

inspiration is key.

at this point, i have no conclusive answers but a laundry list of possibilities. a good shot of freedom kicks me in face about every half hour as i think of the infinite routes that i could take on my road from here forward.

patience is of the essence.

my dad placed a line his last email that hit me particularly hard just a few days ago:

"i believe that if you place yourself in fertile grounds you will have the ability to see an opportunity when it meets you."

and thats just it! i couldnt agree more! i have to place myself in a position where i am pleased-- where i am breathing deep breaths and living life with a vigor that this gift so rightly deserves! those are fertile grounds!

ANYTHING LESS THAN THAT IS FAILURE.

i will tuck dad's message in my back pocket as i continue forward.

this is life. this is invigorating. this is happiness.

(choose wisely).

outside, there is a casual passer-by through the relatively desolate streets. the curbsides are littered with an ocasional honda sedan. some hybrids. i am in a cozy little neighborhood north of the city-- one where it appears that people may be friends with their neighbors. its a typical cold and cloudy pacific northwestern day, but i couldn't be happier sitting here thinking about soaking in the beauty that is within a cup of caffeine and a blueberry scone.

a good day. plain and simple.