jamescuarterodotcom

- where i’ve been: monica & i moved at the beginning of june. we started out looking for something older and with character but guess what, character takes a lot of freaking work! we ended up opting for a 9 year old house in the heart of suburbia. honestly, i would be just as happy living like a college student but in my cousin ryan’s words, this place is ballin’ yo. it’s crazy; a few years ago we wouldn’t have been able to reasonably afford a place like this but the price on it dropped like 80K in the three months prior to our purchase. thank you, collapse of the US housing market!

on the flip side, we moved without selling our old house first! listing here: http://southjersey.craigslist.org/reo/864700336.html. i almost don’t want to sell it now as we’d end up taking a bath on it but it’s still for sale for a few more weeks. ideally, we’ll end up renting it and putting it back on the market when (hopefully not if) it rebounds.

- i started a comic in august called the worst kind of people. aaron had been encouraging me to make a comic for a while but i could never come up with a concept. as it is, TWKOP consists of hastily-drawn gags and slice of life strips inspired by but nowhere near the awesomeness of red meat, PBF, the far side, etc. for some reason the most popular comic thus far has been one starring so taguchi. go figure. i’m towards the end of a week-long break following this year’s SPX but i’ve really enjoyed getting back into comics and there are more yuks and bad line art to come.

- apple of discord kept working on our fifth release, titled nothing is possible and due by the end of the year. i’m really happy with the tracks, they’re a good mix of guitar rock and sleepy acoustic numbers. we’re having an old-school AOD show next week that i’m very excited about, details in an upcoming post.

- did a lot more running this summer, averaging 11.5 miles a week and logging over 200 miles from june through september. it’s more than double what i was doing last summer and right now, i’m almost tripling it. however, i can’t even come close to my fastest mile of last year, 6:37. the closest i’ve gotten this summer has been 7:02. the only explanation i can come up with for losing that much speed is that i’m running through my neighborhood vs. running on a track with the extra 25 seconds coming from turns and inclines. but on one of my rare visits to the track this summer, it took me even longer than that! who knows. for the next few weeks i’m cutting my distance day down from 12 miles to 8 and adding an extra day of intervals. i’ll be happy if i can even get down to 6:45.

- barely watched any TV or watched any movies this summer. read a smattering of books, including david sedaris’ dress yourself in corduroy & denim and holidays on ice, venus envy by l. jon wertheim and tooth & claw by t.c. boyle. haven’t gotten past chapter two of his a friend of the earth, still in the middle of nowhere to run by gerri hirshey and just started michael chabon’s the yiddish policemen’s union, which judy o. had given me out of the trunk of her car.

- here’s a bonus for anyone who actually made it to the bottom of this post: an end of summer mix featuring an hour of dark country, new tracks, songs from the turn of the century, covers, the odd 80s inclusion and an unhealthy dose of canadians. download here:

https://rcpt.yousendit.com/613167111/742c0774a51b51df532d4ae76a31ee95