Nothing Mundane

July 11, 2015 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 1 (ish) Travelogue

Hey everyone! We’re officially at the 1 week, 4 day mark of our journey (we left officially on Tuesday, June 30), and wanted to catch everyone up on “the haps.”

So far, it’s been busy, but exciting. Most of our first week was spent staying only 1-2 nights in each location, which was too quick. Turns out we brought way too much stuff with us, and it all needs to be stowed (semi) safely before we drive the RV around. Plus, driving a thirty-one foot motorhome through small towns in upstate New York filled with crazy drivers and sharp turns has not been, umm, relaxing.

So, we’ve modified our approach. We spent this whole week in one place: Ithaca, New York, where we lived for three years (an increasingly-embarrassingly time ago) and also got married (same). Of course, for variety’s sake and because we failed to plan ahead, we have had to change our campsite three times this week. Here’s how we got here:

Day 1: Frantically move everything into RV with help from Jake’s mother. Sleep in a Wal-Mart parking lot and buy some sketchy Wal-Mart groceries – including an avocado which, 11 days later, has not apparently ripened in any way. Horrifying, yet intriguing.

Day 2-3: Stay at a resort-y type RV park which is painfully expensive but does have availability on extremely short notice. Experience culture shock when RV park residents engage us in a way that would be completely inappropriate in Manhattan, for example by saying “Hi.” Crazy!

Side note: there were SO MANY people just sitting in chairs outside here. Not talking. Just sitting, and staring. (And judging.)

Day 4: Stay overnight at our friend Joanna’s parents’ house in Red Hook, New York. They were wonderfully hospitable and Joanna and her brother, Andy, took us on a tour of the area that included some gardens at Bard College, a diner, and Cards Against Humanity – a five star evening. Thanks Longcores!

Day 5 (July 4th): Hang out with the Longcores a bit little longer, see Jurassic World (verdict: “enh+”), stay overnight at another Wal-Mart, and get excited because we totally nailed the parking. (Our RV juuuust fits in a pull-through parking spot with about a 1 inch margin on every side – see image above.)

Then, realize around 1 a.m. that the nearby fireworks stand in said parking lot is not actually planning to close that night. Further realize that teenagers are apparently tailgating the fireworks stand, and that their version of tailgating involves only yelling and revving their engines as loudly / often as possible.

Day 6: Drive to Ithaca, stay at a commercial RV park. Along the way, stop to see an old friend in Binghamton, and his new friend.

Since then, we’ve been staying in Ithaca, mostly at Taughannock Falls, a state park near Ithaca with a beautiful waterfall and two nice hiking trails. This post is too long already, but we’ll update again soon with some pictures from Week 2.

Previous Post: It’s Happening

Next Post: Week 2: Ithaca is Gorges

July 1, 2015 In Road Trip

It’s Happening

We made it!

Despite inertia, scammy movers, and our strong tendency not to plan ahead, we’re currently sitting in a 2002 Itasca Spirit RV, parked in the back corner of a Wal-Mart parking lot in upstate New York, listening to rain drum on the roof. It’s pretty blissful, as long as you ignore the numerous boxes, crates and garbage bags on the floor filled with everything we own that need to be unpacked.

Which we are doing quite successfully.

Thanks to Jake’s mom and family for help with the move. We’ll post pictures soon, but for now, it is time to finally relax.

Previous Post: Jake and Heather Go Mobile

Next Post: Week 1 (ish) Travelogue

June 12, 2015 In Road Trip

Jake and Heather Go Mobile

In just a few weeks, we are leaving our jobs, our apartment, and New York City altogether to travel around the country in an RV. It’s a little bit crazy.

It’s also a little bittersweet: life in New York City has been pretty amazing. We’ll miss our friends, family, and stable, paying jobs as lawyers and architects. Plus, of course, Seamless.com, the truest friend of all.

On the other hand, we’re excited about seeing friends and family in other places; national parks; new cities; awkward conversations with locals; never having to check our email; and our personal fever dream, suburban grocery stores. And as a bonus, if we ever wanted to, say, fake our own deaths for student loan purposes, the wilderness just seems like it would be a way easier place to pull it off.

Not saying we would, mind you. Just, if we wanted to.

If you would like to follow along, since we will soon have basically nothing else to do, we’ll be posting updates on our website here, with the tag “roadtrip“, and we’ll also be posting to our Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts, at least theoretically. Ever wonder what we’re having for breakfast from some terrible diner in the middle of nowhere? Thankfully, now you won’t even have to ask.

Goodbye, New York! It’s been fun, although we could have done without all the trash piles. We’re leaving at the end of June.

Next Post: It’s Happening

January 1, 2015 In Cards, Creative Miscellany

Our New Year’s Resolution

Happy New Year from Nothing Mundane! Hope you celebrated in the finest style. As New York City residents, we of course headed to Times Square to stand next to the tourists in the freezing cold for eleven hours.

Or, more accurately, we stayed at home and got drunk while interacting with as few other humans as possible. Things got interesting.

July 28, 2014 In Amusing Things, Cards, Creative Miscellany

A Universal Card For An Uncertain Universe

We have a new product, and at the risk of seeming hubristic, it is the greatest thing to ever exist in the world.

Behold: the Nothing Mundane Universal Card!

The Nothing Mundane Universal Card frees you from the shackles of dischoosing, putting you in the driver’s seat to self-realization. It’s also perfect for figuratively all occasions, whether a birthday, wedding, valentine’s day, or Tuesday. You can express every emotion that matters, betray humanity to the robots, and use pronouns – truly, the universe of human experience.

If you are like us, you are unable to plan for important dates more than zero days in advance. Well, just buy a bunch of these babies (babies are traditionally sold in bunches), and rather than cop to forgetting your 25th anniversary, you can just claim you left the card in your desk – then return a conquering hero. (Note: do not forget your 25th anniversary.)

But wait, there’s more! To promote the universal card, we made an online Choose Your Own Adventure game. It is short, absurd, and we guarantee (no we don’t) it will be worth the few minutes of your time it will take to complete.

Plus, we scattered baby animal pictures throughout because puppies.

Begin your adventure here!

July 24, 2014 In Site News

A Note Regarding The Lack Of Notes

Thanks to the relentless power of “computers remembering things,” we can see that it has now been approximately three months since our last post. As this website is only four months old, we consider that a fairly impressive accomplishment. As explanation and apology for our sloth, please accept this gif.

The baby represents our enthusiasm for making posts. The dog represents sleepiness. The other dog can be, I don’t know, Obamacare? Or maybe sleepiness also.

In any event, consider this your warning: Posts are coming.

April 27, 2014 In Amusing Things, Pop Culture, Prints

Food Fight

In our modern, workaday, jet-setting, go-go-90s lives, it’s customary to think of food as something that just appears in supermarkets and restaurants on command. It’s just there when you want it, as normal and blasé as perfect interior temperature control or a pocket computer which can contact anyone in the world in seconds. I click a few buttons on the Internet and a half-hour later someone hands me a bag of food and leaves: YAWN.

Food is safe, boring, normcore.

Yeah, he’s vegetable man

We’re sick of it, and so we came up with some new prints to help bring back a little bit of that old-school, hunter-gatherer edge to the kitchen. You know what pairs well with a pork tenderloin? Menace.*

kitchen_mock-up

Links (open in new window):

Pair them with one of our robot grocery tote bags for twice the terror. Good thing you’re cooking with a knife in your hand; I hope nothing else goes wrong.

* Menace, and Simpsons jokes.