Random Thursday

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to the first day of summer…unless, of course, you live in a place where the toilets flush in the opposite direction in which case it’s your winter solstice. Today is also National Anne & Samantha Day, in recognition of Anne Frank and Samantha Smith, two young girls who tried their hardest to make the world a better place. You’ve probably heard of the former, but the latter might be new to you; it’s worth getting to know more about Samantha.

We’ve got a lot to cover today, none of which will change your life, so choose wisely how you’re going to spend your time, but remember that I’m a very sensitive person who thrives on imaginary readership.

I was recently awakened around 4:00 a.m. by the oddest sound, a sort of sonorous, monotone-ish, New Agey droning that was completely out of place in the normal dead silence of our neighborhood. I couldn’t imagine who might be driving slowly past our house blasting Enya from their car speakers (if, indeed, it’s possible to blast Enya, acoustically speaking). I got out of bed to investigate, and quickly realized the “music” was coming from my own office. As it turned out, I hadn’t put my computer to sleep before turning in, and it inexplicably decided to fire up this YouTube video.

The irony of the situation is that the video is entitled Quiet Night: Deep Sleep Music. From my perspective, as a light sleeper, it might as well have been entitled Cacophonous Rioting By Overcaffeinated Howler Monkeys on Speed with Access to Muon Speakers.

I handed our six-year-old great-niece a point-and-shoot camera and told her to go around the house, inside and out, and take as many photos as she wanted. She returned the camera 31 photos later. For some reason that she never articulated, she was struck by a tiny frayed section of an outdoor rug, because there were multiple variations of this image:

OTOH, she did take quite a few photos that were reminders that perfection is overrated when it comes to artistry.

Newsflash: Our other great-niece (14 years old) and great-nephew (age 12) are still asleep. It’s 10:44 a.m. [Oops…now 11:17 a.m.]

OK, perhaps that’s not newsworthy after all. Never mind. We’ll just eat lunch while they’re eating breakfast.

When Cooking Is A Spiritual Endeavor

When Life Gives You Pecans, Make Pitbulls

Last weekend, Debbie called my attention to this tiny tree frog perched on the edge of the wall around our grill.

Speaking of teenaged girls, we took The Niece and Nephew to see Inside Out 2 a couple of days ago. Debbie and I had not seen the original so I read a bit about the movie to get a feel for it before committing to taking them. This is an excerpt from a review published in the Wall Street Journal:

I confess that we all enjoyed the movie; the Niece admitted that she might have shed a couple of tears during parts of it. We had a very brief discussion with the kids at lunch after the movie about some of the scenes and how the emotions were portrayed, but I’m pretty sure our desire to take advantage of a potentially teachable moment will bear no real fruit. We don’t have a lot of experience in that area.

In closing, in addition to various and sundry overnight guests of the human persuasion (we’re at nine and counting) this month, we also hosted Sophie (a German shepherd) and Clifford (a Welsh corgi) for almost two weeks. They’ve returned to their real parents, but we’ll have poignant memories like this one: