The first time I noticed her my heart started racing.  I was going over the plans for the production design for a show with the director when suddenly my heart started running a million miles a minute.  I looked around and could not figure out what was happening, I asked him if my color was OK, that I felt funny and my heart was racing and he replied, that it was probably just the pretty young stage manager who had walked up while we were working.  My heart rate slowed to normal and I laughed it off.  A few minutes later this young lady who I had never noticed before approached us again and my heart skipped a beat and started racing again, at that point I decided that maybe I ought to take a closer look…

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Last week, I learned how to do something I had always wanted to do, I learned to shuck oysters, but let’s not get too far ahead of the story…

Each year after Christmas we try to slip away for a caching road trip with friends, it is a nice way to end the year and it helps to start off the new year rested and ready for big things.  We try to not plan things too much and often we are not even sure where we are headed when we pull out of the driveway.  The only rule is that we head generally south and find warmer weather.  This year our wanderings ended up in Southeast Louisiana and son of a gun we had big fun.

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Totally random shot out my sunroof at a stoplight

So here is how this works, sometimes I am inspired to write about things and share them with you, sometimes I am just not feeling it, so I don’t write anything and other times I am terribly inspired about all kinds of things, but there are just not enough hours in the day to do my real work, my play work, my play play and take the time to write about all the things I have been doing or thinking about.  This is one of those times.  So, being extra clever I try to write some extra stuff to have “in the bank” for when life gets too hectic and I can assure you that the bank is full of half-fleshed out ideas, but there is nothing that feels right this week.  I really want to tell you about the things I learned down on the bayou last week, the politics of auto repair and what I learned when I went to the mountaintop, but that will have to wait for a little while.  So what do you get, besides random iPhone pictures and rambling?

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It is time for a Monkey Christmas memory, so try to read this one in your best Truman Capote voice, and get your hat and get the buggy, cause it’s fruitcake weather.

Well, no actually, it is not fruitcake weather and my name is not Buddy, but it is time for a treat far better, when the snow begins to fall in early December it is time to bake Snickerdoodles.

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November 14 was United Nations World Diabetes Day and as part of their campaign to increases Diabetes awareness they issued the second WDD Monument challenge.  The challenge is to increase diabetes awareness by lighting monuments around the world in blue for the evening.  According to their website, “A total of 279 iconic monuments were lit in 2007 as beacons of hope for the millions of people worldwide living with diabetes. Over 1.2 billion people were reached with campaign messages.”  The 2008 goal was to encourage a total of 500 buildings to light up to mark World Diabetes Day.  After a little thought, I decided I could help them out.

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Last month, Laura and I had the great fortune to attend a lecture by Ken Burns at Belmont University, in Nashville. Many thanks to Asheley R. for arranging awesome seats right up front and for letting us know about it in the first place. The lecture was fascinating to say the least, in fact it was so amazing that I will not even attempt to report on it, as I am sure that I cannot begin to do it justice. One thing I will say, Mr. Burns packs an incredible amount of information into a lecture. First off he speaks very rapidly, which requires you to pay attention just to catch all of the words, never mind processing those words. Secondly, there is no filler, he spoke for an hour and it was all substantial, simply amazing.   Just listening to his prepared lecture was treat enough, but he was just getting started.

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At the behest of several friends, I threw my hat into the political ring this year by announcing my candidacy for the office of President of the united States of America.  There are several reasons that I agreed to participate:

1. I love this great country of ours and I feel that public service is a patriotic duty.
2. This is the first election in which I am constitutionally eligible to participate as a candidate, having only recently passed the age of 35.
3. I feel strongly that I am at least as well qualified as my esteemed opponents to bungle the handling of the current and any forthcoming crises.
4. Uncertain times call for uncertain leadership, and while my leadership style is erratic at best, I would guarantee I would certainly be more fun than the other guys..
5. I have always wanted my own secret service detail and motorcade.
6. Like my esteemed opponents, I too am an attention whore.

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