Before I took the bed down, I wanted to take a picture of: “LOOK MOM! I CAN TURN OFF THE LIGHT FROM MY BED!” Awesome.

“A plate of meatballs?”
“PERRY the plate of meatballs?!?”

And . . . I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the story and the “epic”-ness of it. Death and birth, gods, souls, life and love and all the messiness that comes with being human. The concept of roadside attractions and places of power—I found that particularly compelling. But out of all 588 delicious pages, this (on page 207) might be my favorite:

“Shadow thought. “Hey, Jacquel?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you believe in the soul?” It wasn’t quite the question he had been going to ask, and it took him by surprise to hear it coming from his mouth. He had intended to say something less direct, but there was nothing less direct that he could say.

“Depends. Back in my day, we had it all set up. You lined up when you died, and you’d answer for your evil deeds and for your good deeds, and if your evil deeds outweighed a feather, we’d feed your sould and your heart to Ammet, the Eater of Souls”.

“He must have eaten a lot of people.”

“Not as many as you’d think. It was a really heavy feather. We had it made special. You had to be pretty damn evil to tip the scales on that baby. Stop here, that gas station. We’ll put in a few gallons.”

BUT THEN… I saw it. This Nambé bowl, just sitting there on the ground. Our family has a few Nambé pieces from my grandmother. They’re beautiful, I love the style, and they’re expensive. And so when I saw one, a bowl just like one we have from my grandparents—I got out of the car, and said, “Hey, how much for the bowl?”

“Eh, I don’t know. My wife brought it out. I don’t even know… I’ll take $5. Looks like a $5 bowl.”

And the transaction was done. I gave him the $5, and got in the car and drove away. But he was wrong.

WRONG. That is not a $5 bowl. That bowl retails for $150. But he didn’t want it, so I now have an heirloom piece that will have lasting value for my family, for less than the price of a combo meal at Carl’s Jr.

We had a fundraiser for C’s school at the local McDonald’s, and I swear I have never seen a McDonald’s more crowded, and that includes when we stopped at that one McDonald’s in Barstow on school orchestra trips (you know the one… that EVERYBODY stops at in Barstow). I think the thing about having a McDonald’s full of elementary school students is that they’re so… kinetic. They’re like gas particles, in constant motion, so they seem bigger than they are.

When we grow up, we turn into these amorphous solids, able to stand in one place for long periods of time without randomly running as fast as we can toward no particular destination. Not sure that’s better, really.

You see, I’m trying to learn things. I’m trying to learn things I should have started learning a long time ago. Things I should have started learning, and then KEPT learning (and learning and learning). Teh internets are calling me. CSS and design and layouts and typographic goodness. I want to create.

AND SO… I’ve been working on a workflow. And in the process of working on the workflow that will get me working on things that matter to me, I copied over the index file and this site stopped working. Nice.

In other news: I’ve removed all personal information from my facebook account. There is an identity crisis going on right now. My digital life and my tangible life, my personal life, my inner life, and my work life are at war, fighting for airtime and dominance. They didn’t used to have to get along. They were like distant relations who only ever ran into each other at semi-annual family functions. Now, they’ve moved to the same city and suddenly they find that they’re both trying to date the same girl and they keep seeing each other at parties and they don’t know when to bend and when to hold their ground.

Stay tuned. There’s a storm front coming.

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