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Picture of the Day
 Saturday
  March 13, 2021
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After a relentless marathon of home bathroom remodeling and preparing for departure for a 5-month sojourn to Philadelphia--to help Sarah, already there, with her big art project, which entails about 16 separate installations, the first of which she completed today in Reading--it was a relief to get behind the wheel and have nothing more to do than drive a few thousand miles. Easy! I packed but two CDs for the trip: Nirvana and Black Sabbath. I rolled the window down and cranked Nevermind up as I said goodbye to Seattle, treating pedestrians to a timeless throwback, the hairs on my arms standing up cuz that music hits the spot. For the longest time, I was a Nirvana skeptic, arrogantly thinking that anything so popular couldn't be good. How dumb was that? They really had something. Then I listened to Sabbath as overloaded truck labored up mountain pass. I could hear what a big influence they were on Nirvana's sound, but though I like their evocative lyrics, Sabbath doesn't deliver the emotion and upliftment I get from Nirvana. In addition to the tunes, I packed 9 apples, two and half chocolate bars, and a jar of peanuts. Think that's enough? Only got lost once so far, in Kennewick Costco parking lot, where I drove like the local eponymous caveman, making one wrong turn after another due to poor reception GPS lag. I'm ambivalent about motor vehicles--I know they're bad and spent years strenuously advocating for alternatives, but as a child three of my favorite toys were parking garages; I was thoroughly conditioned. When I keyed my destination into map app, it told me it would take 922 hours because it had defaulted to walking. The algorithm wants me to be my best self.