From 5 Stars to One

I am going out of town again…tubing this time. Except the river is apparently very low, so it looks like we will get the tubes, get in the water, tie up to each other and the cooler tube, add a radio tube (this crazy contraption that Jenny’s dad made) and tie everything to the dock of our friend’s river house, and pretend we are moving down the river…should be a good time!

I will try to get some good white trash pictures to share with everyone! This weekend is sort of the antithesis of last weekend!

Africa

We worry in this country that violence on our televisions in the security of our fortified homes and under the watch of our protective government is going to cause our children to become callous and violent. We worry that the overexposure to such things will create criminals. Vicious, evil people.

Perhaps it could, but how, in countries with little, if any, access to television, is it that the violence that attacks them, desimates their spirits, rips apart families and has created an entire generation of deformed citizens has gone so unchecked by the world. This violence is beyond anything we have seen in this country in probably well over 100 years. Years of violence have created a much more evil group of people in Africa than we will ever have here. They rape, deform and pillage as a career. Yet somehow, those on the receiving end, who have seen these horrors befall themselves, their families, and their friends continue on. Yet, we do so little to help them. We simply watch it happen. We worry about our nation’s children and what they are seeing on TV, yet we never worry about Africa’s children and what they are seeing in their own villages. Instead we worry about Iraq, who, before we invaded, was doing far less to harm its people than is occurring in Africa.

It is terribly sad statement on the world. The way we look the other way. The way we are able to help in times of instant tragedy such as with the Tsunami, or the Pakistani earthquake, but we cannot bring ourselves to help an ongoing battle against evil that is desimating entire countries.

This is the story of one man’s experience in Uganda.

I’mmm Baaaack

The Greenbrier was awesome. I have some great pictures to share…(IF I can ever get them off of my iPod. The camera connector seems to have hid them in a crazy secret file that my computer doesn’t like.)

The resort is sort of like a cruise ship. It is completely overdone, overwhelming, huge, and full of old people and newlyweds, but somehow you don’t really care and you have a fabulous time anyway. You know how cruise ships look like 1988 threw up all over them? Well, The Greenbrier was attacked by giant florals, bright colors, and crystal chandeliers in the same volatile sense. My father said it correctly when he said, “I don’t think I will make it if I have to see one more giant rose.” It’s funny though, after a couple of days, the resort starts to look sort of pretty in it’s grandeur.

This is the main building. It continues on to the left and right and behind what you can see here. It’s probably the size of a cruise ship. Stately, no?

Bon Voyage To Me!

I will be MIA until Tuesday of next week. My family is going to a family reunion of sorts for my twin aunts’ 70th birthday. We are going to The Greenbrier Resort. It should be interesting…They have activities like Falconry. And croquet…BUT it looks like photography should be golden…the grounds are supposed to be fabulous. Plus, it is 80 degrees there right now. 60 at night! Yay! So hopefully I will come back with a ton of pictures and I will get back on top of daily pictures for a while. I’ve been very lazy about that…Have a great weekend!

Bastards

I hate Cingular. And Lock/Line.

The End.

Oops.

I seem to have forgotten to shave the lower half of my left leg. That is all.

To The North Pole and Beyond!

Santa Claus is moving. He lives about 10 houses down from me. He is tall and has a long white beard that reaches close to his navel. He wears gold-rimmed glasses and jeans with a white t-shirt and suspenders, and has a beautiful, old yellow-white Golden Retriever. Whenever I drive by his house, if he is outside, he waves and and smiles a broad, toothy grin. Often he is working on an old red Toyota 4-Runner with the tailgate open and his Golden proudly sleeping in the back as he works. Apparently Santa likes to go off-roading. He is one of my favorite neighbors. In fact, I think he is my favorite neighbor. Second place would go to the sweet old woman with red-dyed hair and a little terrier, who walks with her equally sweet old-woman friend that has a a very old toy poodle that she recently began pushing around in a baby stroller (briefly, prior to the stroller, she used a garden spreader).

I will miss Santa. But I hope he gets his asking price…

Crushing Ficticiously

Ever meet someone and think, I’m not supposed to be interested in you. I’m not really allowed to like you. There’s this reason, and this reason, and this reason to explain why you are not a suitable crush. Not the least of which is your family’s three generations of college education at my rival university. Which is a rule I swore I’d never break, but instead am suddenly thinking about a ficticious game room in a fictious future house with a ficticious future rival husband that has been ficticiously painted in rival colors, one half of the room ficticiously full of longhorns and burnt orange, the other full of (bleck!) ficticious little aggie men and maroon. And it sounds sort of fun. And the sweet text messages and phone calls I got all weekend ‘just because’ seemed really nice. And professing that your skills in the cooking and cleaning arena could “rival any woman’s” was really cute. And being a Machosexual doesn’t hurt either…And neither does loving volleyball…

Eeyore’s Cousins…

Too Much Sexy!

As the ball streams over the net, rolling and tumbling across the court, headed for the ground several feet in front of center position, P dives for the ball. He gets under it, arms outstretched, legs pressed out behind him like dolphin fin, and just before he hits the ground, he pushes his clenched fists upwards, making contact with the ball. The ball sails over the net, over, over, over…Out…Out. Of. The. Court…”Too much sexy, P! Too much sexy!!” A chorus of voices dismiss the beautiful mistake.

When a ball is hit gracefully, yet with too much force, my team declares the hitter to have “too much sexy”. We yell it, we shout it across the courts…it has become our inside joke and our mantra. And now, it has become the new name of my former 6×6 volleyball team. I resigned as captain a few weeks ago, and last night was my last regular season game. I am sad to end my 3 and a half year run as captain. It was a something I really enjoyed most of the time, but the frustration that had accumulated from leading a 10 person team, the little respect that I had wanted and not received, the dodgeball that irritated me, and finally the way a 6×6 game affected my play in 4×4 and 2×2 games made me decide to end my run. I have found another team, and will be playing 4×4 on Wednesday nights, so I will still be able to hang out with my friends, and cheer them on when I am not playing, but I will not be on the court with them. I will be on a team named Blind Side. It will be three guys and me. It will certainly be harder, and more thrilling, but for everything that I hate about 6×6 volleyball, I will miss the cheers and taunts. The cat calls and raucous jokes. I will miss the camaraderie that a good game created. And I will miss the rivalry with the team Beach Ya To The Bar. But so it must be.

Perhaps my former team will let me buy a “Too Much Sexy” game shirt…Because I will always be a member of that club…