Notes

Celebrated my wife's birthday today. She was present.

The woman often tries to tease me by reminding me that I am roughly three weeks older than she is, and I'll always be. At our age, it's like two rocks from the cambric era arguing which one got shot out of the volcano first. I'm not wrinkling my brow over this one.

For her day, I made my first ever baked-from-scratch cake. No cake mixes or microwaves involved. It turned out OK, and the process wasn't really that bad, except for the frilly pink apron I had to wear.

(I didn't actually put the apron on. I was considering what kind of icing pattern I should use, looked down, and there it was. "Get it off me!" I screamed, beating at it with suddenly ineffectual arms. "GET IT OFF ME!")

Mer said she liked the flavor, so it turned out OK.

Otherwise...
Sheesh. Life has been a complete blur since Christmas. Christmas day was nice, but it was sandwiched around 15 hours of driving and not much time off. I've got reams of paperwork I'm shifting through, and before I complain too much, I'll just say my mind has not been showing a whole lot of focus lately.

Case in point: The other day, I was wondering around the grocery store like Elmo and discovered we have a dry-cured bacon. It's bacon, but it doesn't need refrigeration. You can therefore take it anywhere. This will make the next backpacking trip I take completely freaking awesome.

And the whole reason for telling that story was to say that it took me six minutes to try to explain the same thing to my wife.

I've been desperately thinking about possible destinations and times for a hike or a backpacking trip. Otherwise, I'm just tired. The lyrics of John Mayer's "No Such Thing" play in my head a lot.

"Welcome to the real world,"
She said to me, condescendingly.
"Take a seat, take your life,
Plot it out in black and white."

(And go silent when you realize you don't know any more words except for part of the ...)

Chorus
I want to run through the halls of my high school.
I want to scream at the top of my lungs.

... And something else.

Ah, the fall of 2002. Mostly indistinguishable from the other time I spent in Abilene.