nearby trees [kith]
abrupt lee
lil’ flower tracer
b’land
sheerpanicbarbie
kn29
sister of a friend’s spouse
wush [tafka bish]
olive
spenglar
shwan
susanity
chinicity
while out driving we heard the kids in the back talking. trevs threw down another great trevorism:
"yeah? well boys are made ouf of dust and girls are made out of RIBS!"
for a while we would take our kids out to eat to places that had a play-place. we'd let them run and run and have a good time and we could eat out. i know of some friends that lived about 10 minutes away from disneyland and they bought a year pass. they would have 2 hours or so during the day so they would take the kids over there. i can see them getting messed up as the get older and all their friends want to go to disneyland for a trip and they'll just want to hit carl's jr.
when people start quoting me the bible i'm going to ask them if they read the whole thing and if not [which is often the case] i'll say they are taking it out of context - that should be fun, right?
good stuff from a friend. more, too.
good golly am i tired. constant movement on saturday and didn't get to be after midnight - then up at 5. but we laughed and laughed with our friends saturday night [and a few tears] until we hurt and couldn't laugh anymore. i would write more, but i'm too tired to think. this should bode well for work
someonism: i forget who would say it, but they would call it:
«upside down» and then «upside right»
i'm waiting for the day when someone complains and declares a «white christmas» to be racist.
there are plenty of well meaning christians out there that are out to protect the flock [so to speak] but they rally against things and fail to see that they are also in a flawed system. the battle still rages against post-modernity, but the problem is that they can't see how involved with modernity they are. i swear that many xians have a narcissitic personality disorder - you can't tell them that they are unhealthy.
a friend sent me something about colson, but he covered a book that many have expressed to be beautiful, talking about postmodernity and how it is screwed up. colson's polar opposite would probably talk about how christians are about self mutilation, cutting off their hands and gouging out their own eyes. i like some of colson's stuff, but could he be black/white, or is he just trying to rally the xian conservatives? he ends with:
I've long argued that postmodernism can't survive because deep inside, we know it can't be true. We know there is meaning and purpose to life. And as these and others are discovering, it's found ultimately only in one place: as Anne Rice puts it, in Christ the Lord.
how sad. i suppose colson exists outside time and space, not affected by human [and most predominately modern] culture. i'm sure he was sad when the cold war was over - i suppose he needed something else to be the bad guy to rally against. in the end, postmodernity is just the start of a change - who knows where it will lead, we are already affected by it, and in the end, what does it really matter, other than being able to have a conversation with someone?
but with colson, i suppose it would be like talking to someone with a narcissitc personality disorder - you'll get nowhere.
this is just a hodgepodge of pieces, none all that great on their own but a glimpse of what went on.
everyone must have a relative that works at a gas station. there are gas stations everywhere, and everyone has a foodmart thing attached. dozens of them, all in a 10,000 person town. one intersection had 4 video rental places, too. nobody walks much, either. we walk over a half mile to our grocery store and blockbuster, plus longer walks all the time. to walk to their park was all of seven tenths of a mile, and everyone seemed shocked. in a town that small i'd outlaw cars, and not just because there were some large people there, either [though some were massive]. it was a beautiful town, too, much nicer the visit than during a huge ice storm three years ago.
we crossed the continental divide as well as the rio grande. next time i'd like to take a quick drive from socorro, new mexico, and go to the very large array. alamagordo and white sands, too. carlsbad caverns as well. southern new mexico is pretty packed. i remember visiting los alamos and it wasn't as much fun. white sands was fun as the white reflected the sun and it seemed cool.
at a wild safari animal park where they take in all kinds of animals. most of the animals enjoy acres of space, but all the big cats are in teeny shed-like cages. there was one section of tigers in large cages and they looked as if they were in snow. turns out was a huge bed of chicken feathers. the kids in our van squealed as the large animals would come up to the van, and the ostriches were constantly pecking at our windows. at one point, i'd guess 100 to 150 deer came running over a hill ahead of us which was very impressive [fortunate range animals]. at the end we hopped out and went to the petting zoos. the kids loved the goats and the employees had given us bread to feed them [even though we fed the lamas and such while driving - shhhhh] - they had a whole truck bed full of wrapped bread. do they get the old bread? the kangaroos [yes, kangaroos!] were a little more skittish but so very soft.
trevor fed some deer through a fence and all the other animals were in a warm barn. poor monkeys - they were like little prisons. the chimp would dance and crash the ceiling of his cage while on his tire swinging. he stopped later and motioned to us and put his hand out as if he was saying, «c'mon buddy, break out with the bread - i know you've got it.»
what i found quite beautiful was the colors of the area - the deer blended into the grass and the trees, all muted browns and grays, with bleached gold grass everywhere.
a trevorism from the safari, where there were signs posted that said «horses and donkeys are mowers, not meat» - [they also had a sign for a «coldamundy» - good try on «coatimundi»]
in a moment of quiet he boldly reads the sign: horses and monkeys are morons, not food
spencer squished the crap out of their cat, baby. he would sit with her and then get up and stumble, squishing the cat. i watched him walk 15 feet towards me, falling 5 times. he was holding the cat so tight i don't think it could struggle free. either that or the cat was gurgly on low oxygen.
we passed one of four bar-s foods factory [i grew up on their bolagna] as well as the second little debbie plant. i don't think anything i'd ever use is made in tucson other than tortillas. i think the lanes on the interstates are smaller in oklahoma and arkansas - it was spooky passing trucks at times, especially the sleepy ones. there was one that would go off the right side until the left wheels hit the rumble strip and then he'd swerve back into the left lane. i think he woke up for a bit so i gunned it passed him [yes, very dangerous] and then my father in law behind me waited and did the same, and the truck swerved across all the lanes behind him. we probably should have called 911. somewhere in oklahoma or texas was a large wind farm which spencer loved.
the kids would ride their sleeping bags down the stairs for quite some time until a few would get hurt and they'd stop until the next day.
i tossed the football around a lot, and also raked up the leaves for the kids to play in. good holiday stuff. i can chuck the ball pretty hard, but on the second day the other guys came out and i was already sore. after giving each other grief about who could throw the ball the farthest we walked over to the high school [they are practically next to it] and i won the contest getting 51 yards in. if i was fresh, who knows. we played a 20 40 yard game and i inadvertantly tackled my brother in law. oops.
their new house was like an extreme home makeover home. all the previous places [the other 3 since i've known them] have all been rather needy fixer-uppers. this house needed nothing - great double-paned windows, a fireplace with blower that heated the whole house, etc. what a great place.
we saw some cool roadkill: armadillo, opossum, cat and a chicken. yes, roadkill chicken. we also saw the most amazing sunrise coming out of amarillo, texas. we never see the sun come «up» as it is already up a bit when it peeks over the mountains to our east [and into the mountains in the west]. get a blank sheet of copy paper and you've got a topo map of the area. the dried grass all around turned purple with hints of orange here and there, and then the sun rose out of the horizon. reminded me of sunsets in the ocean. it was a whole set of colors i'm not used to seeing in a sunrise.
i was santa and handed out the presents, though our two boys were sad as they didn't get many presents - we had opened them at home before we left. it must have taken 2 1/2 hours to open them all and the kids would come and go as they would go off and play. they would wander back as if they were checking out a horse for sale, then leave again.
soduku soduku soduku - my mother in law got a book of sodukus and i pulled out #100, the hardest there was. sheesh, after half a day working on it on and off i passed it off to my wife and mother in law and they spent 2+ hours figuring it out together. i'll guess that pushed my onset of alzheimers back a few years.
spencer was a little out of sorts during the trip, not being in his own place. once he found a small electric fan, he was going around the house using it to test all the outlets. he later found an extension cord so that he could put the fan further from the outlet. he soon added a digital alarm clock to the collection. he would play with them for hours. some kids have blankets, our kid has electric appliances. he only shocked himself twice [he's our fourth kid].