Spent all day yesterday in bed. Allergies bad!

5 Million Easy Pieces.

I bought a breakfast table thingie the other day so that I could get rid of this ugly table I've been dragging around for over 4 years. The box that the breakfast cart came in was about the size of the finished product, which could lead one to wonder why it wasn't assembled in the first place. Encouraged by stamps on the box which declared, in grammatic atrocity, "Minimum Assembly Required," I plunged in thinking that it would take about 20 minutes or so.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. This thing had about a million wood screws alone, in subtly varying lengths -- which was important as all the screws had a specific task. The dreaded Allen Wrench was also involved.

After an hour and a half, I had the skeleton of the cart assembled, with only the drawers and the stools to go. Assembly of the stools was, I'm certain, some sort of test, something to do with parallel lines in space eventually meeting, or something like that. In the end -- which came after a total of three hours -- the beautiful piece of furniture was assembled and the old stuff could be donated. Woo-hoo!

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a five "and a half" year-old who has this whole heaven thing figured out. Here's what she knows:

1. Heaven will be made entirely of mashed potatoes.

2. There will be a river of gravy running through heaven.

3. Heaven will also have two lakes -- one will be strawberry milk, the other chocolate milk.

Bon appetit!

Wow, it's been a while since I wrote here. I went back to Dothan for a few days this past month to see my parents. Alabama is still there; it even rained for me, which was a treat. I mostly just saw my parents, GanMama, and Ashes, and I ate lots of raw oysters. That pretty much sums up the six days.

Well, that and I was seated in the screaming baby section of the red-eye from LAX to Atlanta, so I went in with very little sleep but having had plenty of pre-flight nerve-calming beer. The poor baby had some sort of ear infection and she really didn't have a better way of communicating that fact than by just screaming a lot. This was a far cry from my return trip, a relaxing journey across the country while sharing a plane with Florida State's Women's Soccer team. That was a treat.

Once I got back, it was time to buckle down for Holy Week at work. In the meantime, I threw my name in the hat for a job at UCLA and did a good deal of songwriting -- should have a new band together soon. The government was good enough to give me some of my money back (as was Toyota, from the old car lease deposit), so I've been able to pay off some debt and buy some stuff for the apartment. Mostly lamps.

Now I need to get in touch with James to see about going surfing in the next day or so. I hope he's been able to learn while I was gone -- he had a goal of being conversationally fluent in surfing by the time I got back. We'll find out tomorrow, maybe.

Speaking of surfing, I actually did some in the Gulf of Mexico while I was down there with my parents. I couldn't believe that there were actual surfable waves, but there they were. It was even better than the previous Thursday morning in Santa Monica. Odd world, when Panama City has better surfing than Los Angeles.