May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
J.K. Rowling is clearly not the most disciplined writer in the world, from a grammar and syntax perspective. But that doesn't matter.
Her supporting characters sometimes have uneven characterization, or at least are not fleshed out as much as some readers would prefer. But that doesn't matter.
She is absolutely gifted at plot. Her lead characters are three dimensional. And -- usually without beating you over the head with it -- she has a message.
The message is about love, in all its forms. Love of life. Love of family. Love of friends. Romantic love. And the message is about the responsibility goes with that love -- how love extracts a cost even as it enriches the soul, and how ultimately love and grief are intertwined.
Chapter 24 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the story of Harry Potter, and of Harry Potter, in its purest form.
And, at the end, Harry must make the greatest choice of them all -- as Dumbledore put it, between what is right and easy -- in a moment when fear and duty collide in his heart.
It's almost embarrassing to say (especially since my better half had a completely opposite reaction to the sixth book), but I think this book changed me in its reading. And, when Will is old enough, I'll be proud to share it with him.
I've been quite busy and stressed, hence the radio silence.
This isn't helping, all right?
(Hat tip: Scott Jennings.)
You know, I think I could get into this hockey thing.
This post is a year and a half old, but it's still genius: webcomics blogger Eric Burns snarks about Entitlement and the Modern Fandom. Substitute any band, TV show or perfume fan group -- yes, perfume fan groups exist, Shannon's a member of one -- for webcomics fan groups, and Burns's insights hold true about excessive identification, the dark side of online communities, and the relationship between creators and the most devoted fans. Warning: crude language.
If you're not going over your credit card statements line-by-line, you should be. Last October, we found a couple of Amazon purchases we didn't make. So we changed our credit card number -- but not before someone used my contact info and the old number to pick up a web hosting agreement with Yahoo. It was only live for about five days before being cancelled. Hate to think what was done with that domain. And, of course, we missed it on the following month's statement.
We only found out about it when I received a "renewal notice" from perennial scam artists and FTC targets Domain Registry of America. "Hey!" I say to myself, "I never registered that!" So for possibly the first time in the "company's" existence, DRoA has done something beneficial. Totally by accident, of course.
I'm in a retail space -- a budget discount chain like Rose's, somewhere in the toy section. Several sections of shelving have been taken away, replaced by wooden pews. I'm in a middle one. Behind and in front of me are mid-level corporate and professional functionaries -- think of a Chamber of Commerce type of meeting. An international delegation is visiting among the pews of the discount department store, among the toys.
I'm supposed to give a report. In part, I'm drawing from a local business news weekly's article. I'm supposed to describe some consumer polling data. But I'm having real trouble pulling data out, being clear. I'm stumbling over words. There are agonizingly long pauses. People are getting more and more frustrated. It's all I can do to press on, but this is a self-made disaster.
I start reading favorable/unfavorables about the idea of trade with certain foreign countries. I'm still having trouble. The numbers are hideous -- something between eight and 20 percent favorable for one -- though they're different every time I look at the paragraph. The head of state of one of these countries is in the pews. He has an outburst. He's gravely insulted. He storms out. A break is called.
I'm seriously embarrassed. I ask the older woman next to me -- slightly dour and distant, 50s, overweightish, with some sort of accent -- whether she should give the report for me when we come back. She agrees tartly.
I hear the head of state ranting as he comes back through a double hinged metal door with a rounded-corner rectangular window about what an insult it is to be hearing information about his country this way. "It's like they're trying to brand us, to turn us into a brand!" His country is more than poll numbers! He's shaken, maybe a little humiliated.
I've got to apologize to this guy. I was only doing my job, albeit badly, but I was doing the talking when he got upset. I get out of my pew, and slowly, awkwardly move through the scattered crowd.
He's sitting in the floor next to a plastic wading pool which has been turned into a sandbox. There are a couple of children there, younger than my son. He's trying to have a conversation with them. He wants to make himself feel better. He wants to connect with these kids playing in a sandbox in the middle of the toy aisles alongside the pews in a cheap retail store where an international trade report is being given.
He's wearing some kind of turban or crown. He's bearded, with slightly pale skin. His sari-clad wife is hovering around him like an attaché, concerned for him but businesslike. He's wearing shirt sleeves and shorts and sneakers. He's in some kind of half-carapace thing that reminds me of an old toy suit of armor you'd place around an action figure. The legs of this -- thing -- he's wearing extend beyond his own sneakers. He has crutches.
I try to get around the cluttered people and children near him. "Your Excellency?" I bow. He struggles to his feet. "I don't know the procedure, the protocol, the title. I understand that I insulted you. I'm very sorry..."
"No, no, it's all right," he says. It's not. He tries to pretend that his honor is not besmirched, that he's not wounded or scared about how his country is being labeled by the world. If he admitted that I hurt him it would be further humiliation.
And I wake up.
Had to have been the Kung Pao Chicken Egg Roll.
I'm pretty comfortable with the fact that I'm getting older. The only real annoyance I have is that my facial hair is completely grayed out, meaning that my youthful experimentation with a Van Dyke (that is, a goatee-with-the-mustache) will not be replicated until the rest of my hair catches up. (Shannon is of course relieved.)
What I can't figure out is why the hell my left eyebrow is so much grayer than my right!
First lawn-mowing of the year. Not because the grass was getting high, but becuase the wild onions in my yard (and my elderly neighbor's) were getting out of hand.
By the time I was done mowing, the stench of onion was nigh-overpowering.
Well, it's a good thing I didn't make a New Year's resolution to write more blog entries this year.
I actually mulled over setting one for about a week into January, but I just couldn't make up my mind. Every draft resolution was to accomplish something that I thought I ought to, but it didn't exactly follow my heart, if you follow the cliche.
So this is a resolution-free year. Instead, I'm just going to try harder -- to make my days a little more productive, my year a little more creative, and my free hours at home a little less beholden to mindless websurfing and gameplaying.
December ended better than expected, with a couple of concert experiences that recharged my emotional and mental batteries. Carbon Leaf played the Lincoln and owned the joint, playing a new song called "The War was in Color" which connected me with a grandfather I never knew. Strong stuff. A week later, Seven Nations finally returned to North Carolina with a rousing pub show at Tir na nOg -- a long-needed chance to throw my head back and sing at the top of my lungs.
After a number of months of being disconnected from live music, finding that communal experience again was beyond refreshing. But it's not something I need to resolve to continue. I just need to do it. That's how I'm going to try to handle 2006. It's not about making promises at the start of the year; it's about making a practice of the healthy, the productive, and the positive.
Really.
Um, hi.
The last few weeks have been an experience in concentrated sensory overload. I've been alternately tired, stressed, lonely, distracted and nostalgic. I've also had some moments of indescribable bliss. The only constant has been busy-ness (not business, although that's been a part of it). What's gone with that has been isolation. I haven't had sufficient focus to call old friends, write in this blog (or in any other format, for that matter), read, or keep up with any number of hobbies or interests that are very important to me.
I'm not a fan of blog-as-confessional, and I'm not trying to turn this one into a mere online diary. But if any of y'all are still out there, that's why I haven't been writing. And, since I'm trying to reassert control over my days and reconnect with the people, relationships and things that have defined me over the years, that's why I need to start it up again.
As is frequently the case, Lex gets it:
From the headline -- "The Angry Left" -- to the punning kicker, Loconte manages to emulate all the sins of which conservative evangelicals so often accuse the mainstream news media. Most egregiously, he either displays ignorance of or deliberately ignores a clearly documented social message, drawn from both the teachings of Jesus and the Old Testament prophets, whose consequences in this country have as much of a history as the country itself.
"They're the furious faithful -- the growing number of religious liberals incensed by the political influence of Christian conservatives," he begins, as if this movement hadn't long predated right-wing Christianity's efforts to seize secular political power beginning in the late 1970s. Yo, Joe, Isaiah has been around a helluva lot longer than Jerry Falwell.
This was the first time in years Shannon and I made it to the Festival for the Eno. We used to be regulars when our dojo put on annual demonstrations. It absolutely hadn't changed: very laid back, very hippie. Sadly, also very white, considering the diversity of Durham.
A band I heard opening for Carbon Leaf and liked, Jump (nee Jump, Little Children), is putting on a quasi-farewell tour this year, so I made an effort to catch them at the Festival. I only got to hear three of their songs before Will ran out of gas. Hopefully I'll get to hear them again at the Lincoln this September -- there's something intriguing about their music that I haven't had the opportunity to explore yet. Their stuff is on the Apple Music Store -- for a taste of what I'm talking about, listen to the snippet of "Rains in Asia" on their last album, Between the Dim and the Dark.
"I have a weakness for belly dancers." -- U2's Bono
Apparently my three year-old son shares that weakness. Should I be concerned?
One of the best things I've ever read. (Be warned, some heavy stuff here. Via RLP.)
Angels dancing on the head of a pin dissolve into nothingness at the bedside of a dying child.
When looking death in the face things get very real very quickly......
I'm twenty one and doing a stint as a chaplain's aide in a large gritty urban hospital.
A quick note from the free terminal (An old school iMac! R0xx0rs!) at an independent coffeeshop on King Street in Boone. I'm decompressing from having taken Will on his first visit to Tweetsie Railroad. I lived near Boone (Newland) until I was ten years old. Thanks especially to my grandmother Myra, Tweetsie was an at-least annual rite of my childhood. I admit to having had more than a few sweet moments of nostalgia as I walked in front of the General Store and along the rail lines with my family in tow. It's been a very, very good day.
It didn't start off quite so well for Will. We came today because "Thomas the Tank Engine" was here as well, and Will is a fiend for his Thomas trains. We arrived at the themepark in the middle of pudding-thick fog, and as we swung into our parking space I saw "Thomas" up the hill. "Will! Hurry, look! It's Thomas!" Now, I'll update this entry with a photo when I have the time, but imagine a life size railroad train, bright blue, with a giant smiling moon-face plastered on the front. Barely emerging from the fog. Now imagine a three-year-old having only vaguely appreciated the fact that he would be seeing one of his toys blown up to life size.
The boy was a basket case for about 15 minutes. Especially when we got much closer to the train, and he became acquainted with the true volume level of steam engine whistles.
He recovered, and we had one of those happy nuclear family experiences that would likely nauseate many of my readers. Both of you. Fortunately, you are spared any further attempts at a coherent blog entry. In addition to our morning activities, I'm operating on about three hours sleep. For whatever reason, I could not sleep in the old mountain house in Newland -- it felt like I was being roasted from below in the bed while simultaneously shivering from the cold air above. Highly untenable. Absolutely not restful.
Hence, my latte. Have a good rest-of-the-weekend.
It's been a very stressful few weeks.
Via Ed Cone, here's Mickey McLean:
Say what you want about Matt Doherty, but he did recruit a talented group of kids to play at Carolina. And the fact that Roy Williams was able to mold them into National Champions in two short years is nothing short of amazing. But that really shouldn't surprise us since it was that formula—Doherty recruiting, Williams coaching—that led to much success for Kansas in the 1990s.
Roy Williams was thinking of Doherty during his post-game press conference:
You know, I did feel so badly for what happened a couple years ago. I felt badly for Matt Doherty. Let's not forget he's the guy who recruited most of these guys, with the exception for Marvin and Quentin. Jackie and Jawad and Melvin for sticking with it, after starting 8-20. To me it means more for those kids than it does anything that can be said about our program.
... But I also am going to sit back and understand that these guys, my assistants, this staff and the kids really bought into everything we tried to do. We're 33-4. Again, I feel for Matt Doherty, I really do. If Matt was right there, I would want him to know that this was special and I would give Matt Doherty a big hug. Matt Doherty needs to be back in coaching, too.
Raymond Felton even mentioned finally accepting some old advice from Doherty:
Felton shot only 31 percent from the floor last year, but he raised his shooting percentage to 46 percent this season after changing his shooting form by tucking his elbow closer to his body.
Felton said former North Carolina Matt Doherty suggested that he change his shot as a freshman with the Tar Heels, but Felton resisted the change. Tired of hearing about how he couldn't shoot, he decided to correct the mechanical flaw after the 2003-04 season.
Old habits are hard to break, so Felton began a regiment of 600 jump shots a day.
"I basically brought my elbow in to help make my shot more accurate," Felton said. "And, then it was a lot of repetition, getting a lot of shots up each and every day. I just continued to work hard at it."
Given the events and personalities involved, a Matt Doherty-coached 2004-05 Tar Heel team, successful or no, probably would not have won a national championship.
But it takes nothing away from Roy Williams's breathtaking success this year to point out that a Doherty-recruited team did.
There'll be a Carolina Victory,
When cross the field our foe has fled.
Cheer our team to victory,
For we are Tar Heels born and bred (Rah! Rah! Rah!)
Glory, Glory UNC,
Our hearts will live with thee.
Fight! Fight! Fight! for the blue and white
Are rolling to victory!
It's been a dramatic week for people concerned with issues of quality of life, freedom of choice, death with dignity, and reverence for life. The week's events -- the national spectacle of Terri Schiavo's death and the end of one of the most consequential papacies in history -- were brought home to me yesterday as I helped one of my oldest friends move some of his grandmother's things into the memory unit of an assisted living facility. Not long after Will was born, I bid final farewell to my own grandmother who also suffered from Alzheimer's. Last night was very familliar territory.
As I try to make sense of my own feelings upon once more seeing elderly people sitting blankly in visiting rooms and helping my friend figure out what few items would fit in his grandmother's new room (and appreciating the difficulty he faces the today, as she leaves the hospital but does not go home), I've found a couple of things that feel simultaneously true and contradictory.
On John Paul II:
The final legacy of this man will be the way he has died. The way he has fallen apart, disintegrated—physically, emotionally, mentally, embarrassingly—before the world, making a spectacle of himself.
Now [the documentary was filmed in 1999] he can barely say a word. He's drooling, the body is out of control, headed directly to the [final] moment, and still…he wants the world to see…[his] final encounter with the ultimate question.
For him I am sure this was the moment to embody everything he has said. [That] human life is worthwhile, no matter what—no matter how weak, no matter how insignificant it may look….To challenge the world, which is obsessed with image, with youth, with success, with power, with words. Forcing us to look at the aged, either in ourselves or in others. And in the end summing up his very first words to the world: "Be not afraid.” Be not afraid of even being afraid. The value of your life is worth infinity. It can not be destroyed by death.”
On the politics of Terri Schiavo:
The real lesson of the Schiavo case is not that we all need living wills; it is that our dignity does not reside in our will alone, and that it is foolish to believe that the competent person I am now can establish, in advance, how I should be cared for if I become incapacitated and incompetent. The real lesson is that we are not mere creatures of the will: We still possess dignity and rights even when our capacity to make free choices is gone; and we do not possess the right to demand that others treat us as less worthy of care than we really are.
There's some hemming and hawing later on — it's a tough decison, best not to have the state involved, etc. etc. — but Cohen's bottom line is clear: in order to avoid slippery slopes, we should insist on keeping anyone alive who's this side of irreversible brain death. It doesn't matter if you've made your wishes clear. You should not be allowed to control your own destiny. Period. ... If they won't even let me control my own destiny, why should I let them control anyone else's?
There's a lot more here to chew on than I've got time for on a lunch break. I'll likely come back to this soon. But I find myself simultaneously concerned over the choices that might or might not be available to me and my family at the end of my life, and genuinely, honestly inspired by the way John Paul II lived, and died, in the twilight of his calling -- not giving up, and blessing the people throughout his pain.
My favorite restaurants at Southpoint keep disappearing!
Southpoint General Manager Rick Polley said the Q-Shack spot will be combined with the space vacated by Big Bowl Asian restaurant to accommodate the new restaurant. The two are adjacent to each other in the outdoor portion of the mall, near a large fountain and the movie theater. [...] That the mall asked Q-Shack to give up its space suggests a big deal and probably a big-name tenant, because the early closure of Q-Shack probably required a lease buyout.
Now I know Big Bowl's departure wasn't Southpoint's fault, but this is driving me crazygonuts! (To be fair, it's probably not making Southpoint management happy either. Those restaurant spaces are in a terrific location next to the fountain and cinema, and are the only spots where Southpoint's had trouble hanging onto restaurants -- in addition to Big Bowl and The Q-Shack, Bear Rock Cafe also came and went.)
(Lunchblogging from Schlotsky's)
As my last entry suggested, I've not been my usual bubbly, effervescent, carbonated self in the last few days. Despite feeling a little more productive at work, and having gotten some writing-for-pleasure done yesterday, I'm stuck in a bit of a personal holding pattern. A couple of social outlets closed themselves off, and I've been remiss -- it's guilt, probably -- in reestablishing contacts with some people who have been, and are, very important to me, but with whom I've fallen down on the job post-parenthood.
But enough about me. Aside from the general funk, another thing that's been limiting my blogging has been a lack of direction for the blog. I've written some good things here, but essentially it's been a self-hosted LiveJournal. LiveJournals are cool, but they're -- of course -- personal. LiveJournal writing doesn't lend itself to outward, community-independent writing, the sort of writing that friends and strangers want to tune into or benefit from.
My friend Lex gets it, with a personal blog that regularly has something to say. 'Course, he's been "getting it" for a number of years, as he's helping to shake up the News and Record with its coming foray into "open source journalism". He's an example of, "it's not the tech you know, it's how you use the tech."
My friend Woody has a blog on the MT installation I administer, and he's taken me by surprise with the thoughtfulness of his posts, including a community attention-grabber and a harrowing discovery. He gets it too.
And I write unfocused rambles about kids, music and video games. I ought to be doing more.
I have a chance to think about this on Saturday with a decent-sized group of fellow travelers, most far more professional about it than I am. Although I'll primarily be there for work-related reasons, I'll be keeping my ear perked for other ideas that may affect this blog. Maybe I'll come up with a direction.
I've been pretty burned out, and a little down. I'll be resuming writing again soon. (Posted at lunch.)
CNN reports that the sixth Harry Potter book will be released this summer. Given my wife is somewhat rabid in her affections for the books, I feel I need to be preparing for a number of eventualities:
A great resource for North Carolina barbecue aficionados, including both Eastern and Lexington styles...
First, after taking a day off from work last Friday to take the family up the mountain to visit my grandmother and great aunt, I have to leave work early Monday because I'm feeling icky. A few hours later I've got a 102.5 degree fever, then later I'm worshipping porcelain. I only really started feeling close to normal this morning.
Then this afternoon I get a call from my wife, who's had a minor moment of contact between her bumper and a minivan.
Then we decide -- well, I decide -- to drown our sorrows at the Best Restaurant Ever.
It was gone.
The Southpoint Big Bowl was gone, an apparent victim of the chain's sale back to its founders.
I get really sick. Then our car insurance premiums are likely to go up. Then my favoritest restaurant ever disappears, without even saying goodbye. It's been a rough week.
But I'll be okay.
I'm sure of it.
I knew Monday that on Wednesday morning I would be waking into a different world. Didn't know how different, just that it would be different. The continuation of polarization and deadlock, a revolution, or the public legitimization of a contested direction.
What I was hoping for did not happen. And now I wonder how I fit in to the strange new place in which I will awaken.
Good night.
I'll be back.
I now have another atrociously failed soda to add to my Windowsill of Shame in my office. Memo to the Mountain Dew guys: "pitch black" is a movie title, not an product name that entices me to purchase black-grape-flavored citrus soda that tastes as though it contains actual pitch.
Well, more than once, anyway.
...where a row of newly old-school iMacs sits before me. That keeps me coming back here, even though Schlotzsky's seems determined to turn itself into a Panera clone, right down to the "artisan breads."
Meanwhile, I lust over the new iMac, hitting two major sins by being covetous as well...
I've had nightmares, and I've had nightmares. Last night, I got very little sleep because I repeatedly dreamed that I was back in college, taking a physics class, not remembering to turn in homework assignments, hopelessly behind and lost, doomed to fail.
Oh, and the class was taught by Bob Saget.
I didn't think there was anything weird on last night's pizza...
The gay marriage issue, as encapsulated by The Daily Show. Liberal POV and RealPlayer required, as is sense of humor.
The serology results came back negative for all tick-borne diseases. Which leaves a meningitis-like disease as the most likely culprit after all. Charming, if not completely definitive.
Well, I think my fever broke last night, as demonstrated by two sets of bedsheets soaked with sweat. Nasty way to wake up in the middle of the night, and to do it twice...
Thanks for the good thoughts, everyone.
Well, the doc says, thanks to the symptoms and my low white blood count, that it's either a viral meningitis thing or, more likely, ehrlichiosis. Tick borne. Lovely.
OK, this fever truly sucks. Time to go to the doctor.
It's not easy being what I'll appallingly simplify as a "liberal Christian." Mainline denominations are struggling because, when confronted by the contradictions and mysteries of the faith, many church member either tune out entirely (choosing another faith or permanently sleeping in on Sundays) or decide that there are no contradictions or mysteries, going fundamentalistic.
I was reading Bible stories from a picture book to Will last night: one of those that condensed Adam and Eve into one paragraph (stopping before they bit the apple, which was the whole point of the myth). Noah's Ark got one paragraph too, but this one included a line about God creating the rainbow to "promise he wouldn't destroy the world again." At that point I quit; time to find another set of Bible stories that are more appropriate for a two-year old!
Appropriateness is in the eye of the beholder, of course. And, honetly, I'm still trying to figure out what appropriateness is in my spiritual life. I have some decidedly unorthodox beliefs, and yet I believe each word of the Apostles' Creed. It's a struggle.
All this is a roundabout way of getting to how much I appreciate Real Live Preacher, a blog that my friend Lex referred me to months ago. Whenever I go there, I'm always impressed by this "liberal" Texas preacher who writes dramatized Bible stories where Jesus says the s-word, talks about real (and difficult) acts of ministering to people, and expounds on the joys of vacuuming a house with a shop-vac -- "The vacuum cleaner is okay for a speck of lint, a little dust, and the crumbs from your Hors D'Oeuvres. If you have ever found an entire sandwich under your couch, you might want to consider a shop-vac."
He's a quite gifted, affecting writer who doesn't let the things he's unsure of interfere with the things he's sure of -- at least most of the time.
Why we love to sail toward something that can never be found is one of life's great mysteries. It's the way we are made, I believe, and I take comfort in that.
Word.
About an hour ago, I finished what I thought was a decaf, sugar-free latte. I just looked at the receipt: LATTE MEDIUM, EXTRA ITEM-ESPRESSO SHT, SOY. No mention of "decaf" there anywhere.
If she didn't simply miskey the item at the register, but also made the drink wrong, I'll be staring at my bedroom ceiling at 3:00 AM, twitching.
On our way to visit my family on Saturday, I decided that we would take Will to Waffle House. Here is what I miss about my childhood, a time when something like Waffle House could be the coolest... thing... ever!!! After a succession of blown errands and closed offices, though, Saturday breakfast was rapidly becoming Saturday brunch.
The first Waffle House we went to was a disaster. Possibly understaffed, one waitress was definitely having a bad day. She said as much when she sat us at our table, saying she was "trying to hold it together." This she failed to do -- we were forgotten for ten minutes, other people were waiting to be seated, other people weren't being served, there was confusion at the grill... and then someone dropped a glass and she stepped on the shattered pieces. She stumbled into the back room, after a moment someone came after her, then she came back, and inarticulately tried, repeatedly, to call out an order to the grill. For whatever reason, they weren't hearing her. Another ten minutes passed, and we left.
Will was still in good spirits, and was sufficiently excited about having been in a Waffle House, that we gave another one a try. This one was on the ball. We were served quickly, the staff doted on Will (who was excited about sitting at the counter!), the staff had great camaraderie. It was fun and social, the way an idealized neighborhood pub should be. With waffles instead of beer.
Will slept soundly on the drive to Kernersville. Meanwhile, Shannon and I were actually a little shaken after Waffle House I, despite the success of the sequel. I haven't seen many emotional meltdowns before, but when I have it's always been painful. I felt a little guilty about having left: Were we the last nail in the coffin before she got fired or fell further into despair? Or did we give her space to collect herself?
Obviously you can't bleed for every hurting person you meet. But I still find myself hoping this poor woman has found some relief.
The main roads are apparently clear enough that, once my subdivision's looking better, I'll be able to go into work. That's good -- I need to get back into the routine and stop losing vacation days. On the other hand, cabin fever will continue to reign for Shannon and Will. I feel guilty about leaving her without backup today, but I gotta pay the bills.
Obviously, it could have been a lot worse. But Shannon, Will and I haven't left the house in three days thanks to the latest round of ice and snow. Make that four days for Shannon -- I was at least able to go to an aikido seminar Saturday -- and five days for Will, who stayed home from day care on Friday thanks to his 793rd ear infection.
I didn't think it was possible for a two year-old to go stir crazy, but it happened. I haven't seen so many wild emotional swings since high school drama club. We're going to try to bundle him up and show him this skating rink of a neighborhood -- safely, I hope -- and hopefully entertain him.
And ourselves. We're kind of stir crazy ourselves, and I keep watching my saved vacation days bursting into flames....
I would like to apologize to my loyal readers -- both of you -- for allowing life to get in the way of blogging. I have shirked my responsibilities to you, and feel horrible crashing waves of guilt for it.
With little over an hour to go, I'm ready to close the books on 2003. It ended with a remarkably fussy child hastening our exit from a restaurant, and a welcome gathering of friends.
May 2004 bring you peace and your true heart's desire.
So after my heartfelt post about retiring the catchphrase "drank the Kool-Aid" after hearing a chilling NPR story about the Jonestown Massacre, I forgot myself and mentioned that some friends of mine had "drunk the Kool-Aid" for the TV series Firefly. And another friend of mine instantly called me on it. I didn't even know he read my blog. Just goes to show how time lessens the impact of memory, and how what you write can follow you anywhere...
When your blog's been lying fallow for a while, an easy jumpstart is the traditional link to a personality test -- in this case, a sample "enneagram."
Some spammer is after my comments section. Leaving unfriendly links as well. Caveat lector.
Tonight, after Will was put to bed, I drove to Chapel Hill with flyers in hand for Thursday night's Seven Nations show. (Expect an entry sometime soon about this commonplace but somewhat odd concept of "street teaming" for a band.) Seven Nations is, as regular readers know, a Scottish/Celtic-influenced rock band for which I drank the Kool-Aid a long time ago.
As I stepped out of Pepper's Pizza, I saw an oddly-shaped red blur out of the corner of my eye.
Swoosh! It was a college kid, legs and arms pumping furiously, tearing down the sidewalk as though his landlord was chasing him with a grenade launcher. And he was wearing a red and black belted plaid -- the ancestor of the Scottish kilt, as anachronistically worn by Mel Gibson in Braveheart. This not being the time for the annual Franklin Street Halloween revelry, he seemed a tad out of place. (And he didn't look capable of cleaving Englishmen in two, either -- he was built for running, not Gibson-esque heroism.)
As he vanished in the distance, a small group of his apparent friends followed casually, calling after him to come back. None of them were dressed like ancient Highland warriors. When they walked past, I handed one of them a Seven Nations flyer: "I, uh, think your friend might like this band."
Hi, Alex!
Had my first Blog Surprise the other night -- a friend of mine I see at Seven Nations concerts found my blog. Gasp! Someone outside my close circle of friends reads my deepest, darkest secrets! So much for writing about my hidden scandals -- who would ever have thought that just anyone could find your personal journal on the global Internet!
Belated Review Coming
It's taken me forever to finish the damn book, but I'll be posting a (mixed) review of