Oh, my stars and garters!

A healthy marriage is based on give and take.

I would really like a gas grill, but Eric's point--and it's a valid one--is that you could never do this with it.

Go, Tornados! Go! Shoo!

Yesterday some friends and I took pictures of the Concordia University campus before they tear it down this summer to make way for some massive development. It was a little strange that the place was already abandoned and sort of wrecked even though classes had just ended a few days ago. I guess everyone just gave up on the place as soon as they decided to move the school up to a much nicer facility up north.

To be honest, the place looks like it was always kind of a dump, underfunded, unloved, and architecturally unexceptional. The only thing I really hope they save there are the trees. There are some massive live oaks there that it would be a crime not to incorporate into whatever urban-infill condo hell they're planning over there.

Anyway, I took some pictures of it, but not as many as I'd planned. Mostly it was just nice to be out playing with everyone. Dan was probably able to squeeze out more interest out of the place that I was because he has that kind of eye.

Other weekend highlights: Hail! That's the third hailstorm we've had this year. No damage except the pointies got a little bruised. Also breakfast tacos, beer, and a tentative but enthusiastic plan to take a zip line canopy tour.  You can even opt to get dropped into a nice, refreshing lake at the end.  I feel it is my moral obligation to try this out.

The stupidest game

I went to my sister's house tonight to hang out. We opened a couple of beers and settled in on the back porch. As nothing very exciting is going on in either of our lives right now, the talk turned to our childhood together. It's interesting to see who remembers what; I am older so I remember more, but my sister was more sensitive, so she remembers better.

Anyway, after recounting the tornado of '83 and maligning every single other child who used to live on our cul-de-sac, we got to talking about this game we would play when our parents weren't around to stop it.

One of us would lay flat on the floor and the other would take a running leap over the prone sister's legs. The one on the floor would try to lift up her legs in time to kick the jumper down in midair. Usually you could clear it, but sometimes you'd hesitate, get tripped, and end up tumbling into a tangle on the floor. We did this over and over and over again, for hours, well until middle school.

In retrospect, it seemed insanely dangerous. Someone could have broken her neck, for Christ's sake! But we'd been drinking a little and, well, we hadn't died from it yet, so we decided to try it again tonight to see if it was really as bad as we'd thought.

My sister rearranged her living room to maximize the space we had to get a running start, and I should say at this point I am very lucky to have a sister who will drag heavy sofas across a room just to test a very insignificant point. After the floor was finally cleared, we started.

You're probably hoping for blood, or at least some bruises, but it turned out we couldn't do it. I faked her out a couple of times, and I thought that was really funny, but I couldn't bring myself to actually try to knock her down. She felt the same way. After about 10 jumps, we gave up, went back outside, and breathlessly opened more beers.

"That was fucking stupid," I complained. "Why did we spend all that time doing that?"

"I don't know," my sister said. "Why did we eat so much glue?"

We sat in the dark for a while, contemplating.

I need...something.

Flatline

There is not much to say about a gray weekday, but I will go ahead and say it anyway. I went to work but did not work particularly hard. I had pizza for lunch and pizza for dinner. Eric and I took a walk after we ate and saw a pair of cranes while exploring the ugly eroded creek behind the neighborhood park. There were a lot of fireflies later.

I scanned in and posted some pictures for a while. I am writing this in my office, where I hardly ever go. I think I'll use it more. It's nice writing in here while Eric paints and listens to reggae in the next room. I think I need another table in here for more workspace and junk overflow, though.

Now I'm going to fold laundry and watch an episode of The Wire--I'm slowly working my way through the whole series again. I hope your day was more interesting. Maybe tomorrow will involve a car chase or something.

Owl Shack

The squirrel-a-whirl was a disaster. A raccoon stole all the corn, bending the feeder nearly in two and pulling the stakes out in the process. The hummingbirds are casual at best about visiting the feeders we put up for them, and who can blame them when they have a gigantic mat of honeysuckle just feet away? It would be like getting up from a free prime rib dinner to hit the Whataburger drive thru.

Despite our failures, or at least our lack of roaring successes, I remain hopeful that we can attract some sort of wildlife other than scavengers and vermin over here. Which is why buying an Owl Shack is the best idea ever in the entire world. Actually, making one is an even better idea, because those suckers are expensive, but sometimes you just have to accept that there are some things you should but will never actually do and therefore it's best just to drop the fifty bucks.

So. An owl house. After Eric and I were done researching, we started trying to make screech owl noises. His are whistlier, mine are from the throat. A-woowoowoowoowoo.

We actually got a response from a screech owl far down the creek, which proves that we are meant to host owls in our back yard. If one takes up residence here, we're going to name it Owlwo, which has the benefit of being a palindrome and the drawback of being really stupid. A-woowoowoowoowoo!

Sweet

Our neighbor has a giant honeysuckle bush in her backyard. It smells thick and amazing, just barely holding the line between delicious and sickly sweet. I can even smell it in my bedroom with the window closed when the sun first hits it in the morning. The best part is that we get to enjoy the way it looks and smells from afar, while our neighbor gets to contend with all the bees it attracts.

I give up

On my way to work today I saw a man with no expression on his face pull the Ron Paul sign up out of his yard and walk back to his house with it. I thought about honking and giving him a thumbs up, but it seemed too early to be a jackass. So I just laughed a little and drove on instead.

The haircut may only be $7, but you will pay and pay.

I appreciate what Benny's is trying to do with this mural, but I don't know why they made the kid look so completely miserable.

Although I guess I would be pretty sad too if a man with a bland, evil smirk was so hell-bent on hacking my hair off to the very scalp that he was in imminent danger of cutting his fingers off in the process.

I'm sure their haircuts are perfectly fine, but if I'd had to go to Benny's as a child, I would have nightmares about it to this day. Nightmares, and hair down to my ankles.

Slide show

The rest of the West Texas photos are here. If I were a better blogger I'd do a trip report, but let's face it, I'm not a better blogger and I think those are kind of tedious anyway unless they're in real time, and what kind of jerk goes camping with a laptop anyway? I saw a few people checking their e-mail at the park's visitor centers, and while I understand the impulse and possibly even the necessity, I kind of wanted to smack them.

I do recommend driving out to West Texas sometime if you live anywhere near there. It's awfully pretty and easy to have fun there.

Also: This site performs a valuable service. As does this one. This site is not especially helpful, though.