Chris was tired to begin with. Really, really tired. The kind of tired where you’re aware you’ve overextended yourself and you can accept that, really you can, if you just manage to get a few extra hours of sleep. But where? What project will be cut? What if I zzzzzzzzzzzzzz….
That was pretty much my mindset throughout the week. Also, I couldn’t really decide on what to write. There are a couple of interesting bits I’d like write up eventually, but this time around I kind of wanted it to be topical. And how much more topical could I be than to tell you about what I did on Memorial Day?
There’s only one flaw in that strategy—I really didn’t do anything interesting Memorial Day. I had a decent weekend planned out, where Saturday would be spent leisurely taking care of some writing projects, Sunday would be the day I drive up to Rochester and practice Kendo after a week off, and Monday was…well, we’d see when we got there.
Instead, Saturday was spent trying to make sense of WordPress, then getting frustrated and doing some writing on an adventure. Sunday was unexpectedly reserved for my annual migraine, and then there was Monday. By the time Monday rolled around, I was sick of not feeling good and I wanted to do something. I could have gone up to Rochester, but I didn’t really think there was much point. I’ve been up there enough times that the thrill of being in a city has long since worn off, and while I could have gone on a spending spree, I couldn’t actually think of anything I really wanted. But I wanted to do something, something that would actually get me out and doing something. That’s the only reason I can think of why I decided to go for a run.
Running and I have a love/hate relationship. On my end, going for a run can be immensely rewarding if you take full advantage of your mind’s ability to make you forget how much pain you were in at the end of your last run. If you’re asthmatic, like me, there can also be points in your run where you realize, “hey, my lungs aren’t working! Also, I’m losing consciousness!” Of course, soreness is a part of working out and almost any asthmatic always carries an inhaler, even if they are nudists and have to be creative with where they store it (such as in the hollow of the collarbone area, the superclavicular fossa). And so I ran.
I’m not sure how far I ran, except that when I finished my lungs felt like I had inhaled lava and I had a case of shin splints that ran from my legs to my shoulders. Still, in the grand tradition of fitness buffs and unstable mental patients everywhere I had fun.
Part of the fun is in seeing the diversity of houses, things which you don’t often see in suburbs. Sure, you may get a bit of interesting architecture, but from the 1950s on it all seems to have been crafted to fit together seamlessly with the neighboring buildings. So you can have a nice house, and houses in the suburbs often are, but a lot of them lack character. Your New York brownstone is the same as the ones on either side of you. Your home in the new suburb bears a striking resemblance to every other house in the development. Much as I love being in cities and taking advantage of all the things you can do in them, I rarely get to see interesting houses until I pass the really expensive areas. Then you see houses with personal cul-de-sacs, massive skylights, actual towers and God only knows what else.
Cresco, though, has a mishmash of interesting architecture throughout its residential sections. I ran from roughly the center of town out to a park in the northeast area of the town, and on the way I started to notice that there was the occasional house that was not like the others in some way. One of the best examples I saw was a house that looked as though it had been constructed piecemeal, with a central room and all the other rooms added as the owner got the notion. The result is a house that is brown and white, and the colors match just enough to persuade the casual passer-by not to take a closer look. It has two perpendicular stubby wings that jut out from the central portion of the house, with a front door that opens up in the middle of a quarter-circle enclosed patio between the two wings. It is an extremely interesting house and I wonder who lives there. I wonder if they’re the original owner, if there was nothing better they could afford or if they also saw the unique character this house has? If nothing else, you could easily increase your reputation as an eccentric genius by living there. Someone who lives in that house and likes it? I suspect they think slightly differently than the rest of the Cresco inhabitants.
Another great house looks vaguely like an old Victorian mansion, only newer and painted light blue which somehow spoils the whole effect. It’s built on an angle to its lot, so that the corners of the house touch the boundaries. The front door also opens up onto the curb. It’s more common than the previous house, but I like the fact that someone decided not to build a house the usual way. Even little things like altering how the house faces can make a bold statement where a lot of buildings seem to blur together.
When I got to the northeastern Park, the houses started to become more suburbian, which was sad. However, they were also newer. See, Cresco is still far enough out in the middle of nowhere that buying some vacant property and putting up **YOUR HOME** on it is pretty tempting. Not to mention that if you cross over the town line, you don’t have to pay an extra tax for living in the town. The result is that the further away from home you get, the nicer the houses. I suspect that in a few years the trend will be for people to get their new house closer to the center of the town, creating a miniature doughnut effect that can be found in many of your more established cities.
After running along the northern road, and getting tired enough that I had to half-run half-walk the mile or so back to my apartment, I passed along more houses, including one that seemed to have aspirations of being a southern plantation, with an immense veranda. I almost wanted to walk up and order a mint julep, but instead I ran back to my apartment for some much-needed water.
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