July 4, 2026

I phone it in & miss my self-imposed deadline so I can watch the USMNT get juiced by Belgium

I wonder if there’s a little patch of snowcrete tucked away in a shady corner somewhere in this city. That’s probably the first stupid thought that came to my head while I waited for the coffee to brew and the brain engine to turn over a couple times.

It was already hot as hell when I went outside at 8:30 Saturday morning, so I immediately retreated back to the apartment–the heat index reached something like 113 by midday. Instead of getting a hit of Vitamin D or sun poisoning I decided instead to stay inside and catalog a cute little Franco-German manuscript cookbook when a procession of masked members of a well-known white nationalist group came marching down the street outside my window chanting and carrying flags, shields, and some weapon-y type things. They were accompanied by a beleaguered retinue of DC cops on commuter bikes. For some reason I went to the kitchen and sort of thoughtfully lingered over the bucket of compost on the counter for a minute. Mango skins and moldering leeks.

I have three primary cataloging locations: my desk next to the big window in the living room of my apartment; one of the communal tables at the warehouse; and the front desk at the shop. Rarely do I catalog in the sensory deprivation tank upstairs at the shop anymore–that’s Aaron’s jealously guarded territory. But I also have a wild aspiration: what George Costanza is to napping I would like to be to cataloging. Doesn’t matter what’s going on outside, or who just died, I want to catalog everyday, even if I have to make a hidey hole under my desk to do it. I wish I remembered what I was cataloging while January 6 was happening four blocks from my apartment but the database with that information is long defunct.

An 18th century French and German cookbook I was cataloging at home when the Patriot Front came trundling down my street before making its way by metro to Foggy Bottom. Sorry to do this but N [yet] FS

The West & Lee Game and Printing Co. Illustrated Catalogue of Chivalrie. Worcester, MA: 1874 - A trade catalog with rules for this confusing oversized lawn game available in different tiers of materials (the solid brass set weighed in at 800lbs). Catalogued while bored in a hotel on the outskirts of Charlottesville one evening during the RBS course on photographic processes.

Sonia Sanchez. The Adventures of Fathead, Smallhead, and Squarehead. New York: 1973. Funny and uncommon picture book by the Black Arts poet collecting the bedtime stories she made up for her young sons. Catalogued in a hotel room in Franklin, Tennessee one morning after deciding that the book fair there was going to be a bust and that I was better off out of the booth and hidden away somewhere creating value.

Martha C. Ballard. Shakespeare on Poker. Denver: 1906. Ballard took quotes from the plays of Shakespeare and accompanied them with different poker hands that she drew herself. Catalogued in the hospital cafeteria while Dad was dying upstairs

W. Russell Flint. Plates to accompany Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Self-explanatory. Cataloged in Dad’s apartment the morning after he died