This is a long drive for someone with nothing to think about.

Chicago.

Another valuable lesson gleaned from this past weekend: working seven days a week is a great way to kill productivity. The office was essentially dead yesterday, with everyone tired and feeling burned out. It just reinforced a comment I recall reading in Eliot Coleman's The New Organic Grower, where he strongly recommends setting aside at least a day a week for doing something other than farming.¹ No matter what still needs to be done.

I very much agree. It applies to work in general. I'm of the opinion that it applies to long-distance hiking, too. When you're on the AT, or wherever, driving ever onward just gives you a sort of tunnel vision. You begin to lose sight of your surroundings, to miss out on the process in the search for the end. For some folks, that seems to be enough to slog through the difficulties, but the rest of us would rather give up and move onto something more interesting.

After the weekend was over, I drove a colleague of mine back to the city after he'd been visiting an old friend. It was great fun to have someone to talk with for the trip, with all sorts of new topics. New to me, at any rate. We talked about opera houses (Josh being a theater designer who, he admits, can talk at great length about theater and architecture), used book stores and some interesting finds, and some random food thoughts.

I find Josh to be a particularly enjoyable conversationalist, in part because he's open and self-critical, the sort of qualities I'd like to have.² He'll readily point out that his designs have mistakes, that he's only a passable cook, that he tends to gravitate to discussing theater stuff beyond the limits of everyone else's patience, etc. But he is open to learning and new ideas, to being as bored as he makes someone else.³ Among the high points of the drifting conversation:

• Comparing the rotunda of the Overture Center to Mojo Jojo's hat is inevitably amusing. Now Josh can't get the image out of his mind. But he thinks it's as misplaced an architectural element as I do.
  
  
• Scottish highland cattle - the sort raised by John and Dorothy of Fountain Prairie Farm - look like giant, rust-colored sheepdogs. Whenever I mention this to people, they always want to see a picture.
  
  
• The concept of a "free verse limerick" is hilarious. See this past week's episode of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!
  
  
• Josh's brilliant book-shopping method: wander through Borders to find what he wants, then walk a block down the street to the neighborhood independent bookstore. If they don't have what he's looking for, he'll just special-order it.
  
  
• We are both aficionados of singing along with music in the car. Preferably at full volume, though only by ourselves.⁴ I lean to caP'n Jazz as a fallback; he's into early Beatles. Lately, I've had The Smiths on regular play, but it's never something I can even pretend to sing along well with. Oftentimes, I'm just making up the words, whether I know it or not. (See caP'n Jazz.) Josh tells me his word for this is "spagoline⁵", though it applies specifically to those times when you don't realize you're singing the wrong words.
  
  
• His brother's the executive chef at fine-dining restaurant called Quince, somewhere near Boston. Yesterday, he forwarded me a brief article in the Boston Globe's magazine that mentioned his brother (and some other Boston chefs) doing some unique things with lavender. Everything from roast salmon with lavender and honey to lavender lemonade.

Complete side note: Pulp's Different Class - in particular "Common People"? Complete, logical extension of "Hand In Glove" by The Smiths. I don't know why this never occurred to me before. Or why it does now.

Personally, I've an alarming addiction to Johnny Marr's guitar work on "This Charming Man".

* * * * *

¹The book's at home, or else I'd quote directly. That said, it's a worthwhile read for anyone interested in raising organic vegetables. It's geared primarily to small-scale vegetable farming, but is well-written and offers plenty of useful information for hobby gardeners like myself.

²Maybe I do, maybe I don't. I'm fairly confident I'm in the worst possible position to make that judgement.

³Note: He wasn't boring me. But he tells me he has a tendency to do that.

⁴Okay, so we'll both subject our wives to our less-than-stunning singing talents. But nobody else.

⁵This comes from a song his wife used to sing along with, incorrectly. She misheard the word "finally" as "spagoline", assuming it was somebody's name. It sounds crazy, but I'm guilty of equally embarrassing faux lyrics. Doesn't stop me from trying.