theology&geometry

When Kristin came to visit last week and we needed a way to kill a Wednesday afternoon, we ended up at Lichterman Nature Center, where I’m fairly sure I went as a kid on a field trip once. Faaaairly sure. Anyway, being there as an adult is weird. Supposedly it’s how this area of the country would look if not for urban development. I think about those giant lily pad things being everywhere and it seriously freaks my shit out. Of course, those things are legions less scary than kudzu, and that stuff seems to be trying to take over the eastern part of Lichterman, so…

Wednesday night, Kristin hooked us up with some sweet Grizzlies tickets, where we got to see them lose the season opener in style. I’ve never had access to the club level before. There is a swanky bar there where random middle-aged dudes from major American cities will buy you free drinks if they think you’re alone! Apparently! God bless America.

We were sitting directly behind the media area, where I could see that Geoff Calkins both has what looks like painfully bad posture posture and he tweets from Twitter.com and not a Twitter client. I have no idea what either of those things mean. I report, you decide.

Vicious Thighs is starting out strong this year with a week one squeaker and then this week two blowout. As in years past, I am employing a strategy of radical cluelessness, which propelled me to second place in the league last year. Second place by single digits, no less!

This post is in no way my attempt to gloat like a hubris-faced chump without all-out jinxing myself. Nope. No sir.

It was freaking hot hot hot Sunday but once we surrendered ourselves to back sweat and frizzy hair and $7 Ghost River beers*, I dare say we had ourselves a grand old time.

*Okay, okay, okay. I was the only one surrendering myself to beer.

So Mizzou knocked the Tigers out of the tournament. I was rooting for blue thanks to an opportunistic combination of civic pride and knowledge that a successful U of M organization is good for my workplace’s vitality. One of these days, if I’m in Memphis long enough, I’m betting I’ll start rooting for Memphis with sincere gusto. Maybe next year?

[Project 365]

Went to the Griz game tonight. Bought the $5 tickets and sat way up high and tried to fend off the fantasies of what would happen if one unlucky beer drinker tripped and pitched himself down those vertical stairs. Oy.

We lost.

[Project 365]

Have you guys ever read the Urban Dictionary entries for “Hotty Toddy”?

This one’s funny:

Contrary to popular misconception, hotty toddy is neither a fight song nor an attempt to trigger (pun intended) LSU fans’ suicide by shooting themselves (since they have reason enough to do so just by virtue of being LSU fans). Rather, it is a heartening cheer exchanged between Ole Miss Rebel fans to ensure that they are still sober enough to pronounce polysyllabic phrases and thus, sober enough to order more whiskey when they leave the game to celebrate their victory over whomever they just kicked hell out of. The cheer is ineffective with other SEC school foes’ fans, since they can not pronounce anything more than monosyllabic utterances whether sober or (as usual) drunk off their proverbial butts. For example “Woof! Woof!” (UGA); “Roll Tide!” (Bama); “Oh, S**t! We lost!” (MSU); “Duh?” (LSU). Just for the record, if Ole Miss were to ever lose a football game, their fans are doubtlessly dressed better anyway.

(Like everyone else, all we can talk about in the newsroom lately is Michael Phelps.)

Intern, just after Phelps’ win last night: I bet he’s on steroids.
Metro editor: Did you see what he eats every day*?
Intern: Steroids?

*According to Wikipedia, it’s either 6,000 or 12,000 calories a day. YOW.

The sunset tonight was pink for twenty seconds, and then it dissolved into orange and blue. I know because I was outside — paying attention for once — my old softball glove on one hand and one of those pitted practice softballs in the other, readying to hurl it toward my brother, who was intent on hitting it over the bales of hay far behind me and into the pasture.

He never did hit it that far, but he did manage to get it stuck underneath the rusty old white car sitting beside the shed on my grandmother’s property. It took four of us — me, Evan, and the nephews — hunting for that damn ball for ten minutes before it turned up. I can’t believe no one got bitten by a snake.

I have successfully consumed three different types of meat today — four if you count hot dogs as a type of meat all their own — and I’m pretty sure the combination of meat and running around like a moron, trying to relive my glory days as a softball player, has rendered me very nearly immobile. I can hardly move. I’m doing the old-lady groan every time I get up. Everyone kept warning me: “You better scoot up; you’re not as young as you used to be!” But I threw caution to the wind and hurled that ball from amazing distances of twenty — no, twenty-two! — feet.

All the aches in the world are worth it.

• I woke up yesterday with a brand new grey hair. Funny thing is, I can probably pinpoint the exact moment it sprouted Thursday night.

• Our office calendars use the Futurama credit-sequence font for the names of the months. This pleases me to an exceptional degree.

• Speaking of calendars, I still don’t have one in the apartment for 2008. I’ve also decided that I need a datebook so I can write down appointments and meetings and stuff, which seem to be occurring with alarming frequency these days. Actually, I’ve decided I need a smartphone. I realize there’s a substantial price difference there, but I can get a pretty killer corporate discount on several different models of refurbished Blackberries. I’m just not sure that I should get a refurb. Anyone have any strong opinions on that?

• It’s not raining right now. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? Just kidding. Maybe we’ll see some sunshine this weekend. I suppose I could check the Weather Channel, but that would require more effort than a throwaway guess, and this is a blog, therefore that’s a big no-no.

• I hate the phrase “big no-no.”

• Yesterday I waited in line at Circle K with part of the WMC-TV crew, including a regular reporter whose name I should probably know but don’t (because I rarely watch the local news; sorry, but I’m usually working during it). I had hoped he was buying scandalous things so I could come gossip about TV reporters hopped up on No Doz and Red Bull and pork rinds, but I didn’t see what he bought so that idea was a bust.

• My managing editor told me they held up my Martin Luther King special coverage front page on CNN yesterday morning. I didn’t see that either.

• I dreamed in Pixar-like cartoon last night. It even involved a kitchen at a restaurant, but there were no rodents or French people. It was quite beautiful the way my brain rendered things (for example, a wax-paper bag of beans … wtf?) and it was almost as if I was kind of floating through the atmosphere, observing the goings-on of the kitchen without actually being a part of the story. Weird. I’ll try to collect the memory scraps and post about it over at NA.

• The Tigers play tonight in hopes of making it to the championship. It’s weird living in a town where there is such vehement and loyal support for a college sports team that actually wins a lot. Murfreesboro, it ain’t. Slowly but surely I’m beginning to understand Tigermania, and I don’t altogether disapprove.

My dad just called and sang Rocky Top to me.

[In case you're living under a rock, there's a big game today.]