By the power of Grey Skull, I have the equanimity! Battle Cat! No, wait. How does it go?

Days four and five...

I'm still not outside yet.  I spent a couple of nights in the back of my Jeep; one night on a couch in the barn; one night on the couch in commons; and one night on the walkway around the main performance space in the Carriage Barn.

In case you're wondering what the hell is taking so long, I quit smoking eighteen days ago, and I've been suffering from bronchitis ever since.  It started in Detroit, and I kept thinking it would go away.  Well, it didn't get better, but it also didn't get worse.  It just stayed the same -- for what was starting to feel like forever.  Second day at Bennington, I went to the doctor for antibiotics, and now it's getting better fast.  But I don't want to sleep outside until my lungs are healthy.

The doc said that the nicotine I've taken in over the last 9 years has slowly caused a paralysis of the cilia, which clean the lungs by continually moving harmful material out of the lungs and into the throat.  Because I stopped smoking, the cilia are waking up and slowly coming back to life, and everything left in my lungs from the aforementioned 9 years is coming out.  Now that the lungs are working to clear out large amounts of doo-doo, the virus in my system is running a racket, since the cilia -- which are already inflamed from overwork -- can't keep up with the virus' reproduction.

Complicated!

Doc referred to the trash buildup in my lungs as a kind of repression; now that I've quit smoking, I've started internal therapy. Like when you go to a psychologist and start talking about things -- it fucks you up.  Only instead of crying, watching Star Trek, and eating flaming-hot Cheetos, you cough a lot and have trouble breathing.

In case you're wondering which brand of Star Trek I'm referring to, it's Generations. But Deep Space Nine and Voyager can work, too.  Even the original series will suffice when times are really bad.  You might even find yourself watching a Sci-Fi network special on the life of Gene Roddenberry.

So you see kids, the brain and the lungs are not as different as we think.  You can learn a lot from blogs!

So Hurricane Hannah has finally arrived in Vermont, and she's causing such minimal damage that it's hard to imagine that something like this could have been so utterly devastating had conditions allowed for it in the South.  It's like an average day in Ireland out there.  Not to be a smart-ass, but it really is crazy to think that what we're experiencing here in VT could have potentially killed hundreds or even thousands of people a few days ago.

Weather is weird!

It did prevent my friend Brian, who came up here to camp a few nights, from camping.  He only got one night in the Bennington woods -- that mug beat me to the punch.  But he's getting me tickets to a Mets game at Shea to make it up to me!!!  (He lives in NYC.)  I'm stoked!

He also sold me an iMac G4 laptop that I'm using in my studio right now -- Internet and everything up here.  I watched Ratatouille today because he'd left it on the computer.  Those PIXAR flicks get me every time!