The FedEx tracking system is the pits — not enough updates by far.

***

On a different note. Kids are odd.

Maybe it’s just people that are odd and not simply kids. Anyway.

October complained to me about a button on her pants rubbing her side. It was uncomfortable she said. I told her she could wear an undershirt.

She said, “No I don’t like undershirts..”

This would be the point in the comic where I have a thunder cloud over my head.

***

There’s no doubt about it — I’m a parent. This morning Spotz said he was bored of whatever-cereal. There happens to be a nearly full box of it on the counter.

I said, “So, it’s food. What’s better hunger or food…” Spotz mumbled out an I don’t know.

I have finally done it and after five years or so of dithering around. I bought a Mac Mini this past Saturday. It’s somewhere around Reno, NV right now on the back of a FedEx truck.

I saw that the Mac store had refurbished one and wondered if I could return the PC I’d bought a month or so ago. I called up circuit city and they said to bring it on back. I didn’t waste much time getting it back to them.

I really hadn’t had a problem with Vista. It did what I wanted it to. It didn’t crash. It looked pretty. I just wanted a mac.

So. Hee, hee I can’t wait till it gets here day after tomorrow.

Right now I’m using my little eeePc. I’m thinking after I get the mac I’ll throw some eeebuntu on it. The eeebuntu netbook remix looks pretty slick and more versatile than the what’s running stock on the lappy right now.

Ahh, geekery…

“I shouldn’t have to start each Christmas morning with a needle nose pliers and wire cutters,” say Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon.com

You know how you spend so much time looking forward to something then when it gets here it slips right by. So common. Everybody talks about that, but I wonder why we experience things that way. I think I know. It’s just a wonderment.

Mom is heading back home tomorrow to her stomping grounds in the pointy corner of East Tenn. I think there will be a dust cloud following her up Rutledge Pike as all the Westlook dust blows off.

We got to catch up on a lot of things. Spent last night talking about religion, because that’s just right in the front of our family. Don’t know what may ever become of those conversations and that oddly enough is what the conversation dwelled on. We were talking about how you can’t ever know the all the effects or outcomes of your actions, hopes and fears and dreams and knuckle-headed plans.

Anyhow, it will be oddly quiet around here tomorrow. The kids will be off with their Momma and mine will be driving home.

Mom has been busy. I was busy yesterday, but Mom, she’s cleaned everything. Mom’s are the best.

We painted yesterday. I got my hair cut. I mowed the yard and let lawn mower eat some leaves. It needs the roughage every now and again especially since I haven’t cranked the engine too many times in the last six months. I used the high gas prices to justify my lawn mowing abstinence.

Tonight, though, I paid $1.99 per gallon at the Solway, Raceway!

That’s about as exciting as it gets around here these days.

The family is coming down this morning. My Aunt is taking me and the two big kids to the UT homecoming game. Then my Aunt will spend the night and go home tomorrow. Mom is going to stay with us for a whole week, though. It will be great!

Except I didn’t realize how badly I need to go grocery shopping. Yikes. That’s what we’ll be doing this evening after the game.

with these kids is like eating breakfast with a pack of bobcats.

David Brooks sums up what I feel about our country today.

In an age of transition, the children are left to grapple with the burdens of their elders.

I thought I looked different after I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. I Don’t know what quality it was that caught my attention. There was something about the cheekbones.

I still look like my Mother. I told someone today that Spotz looks like his Grandfather, my Dad. There is something about his face that reminds me of Pop Pop. Spotz has my build, though. He has my bony shoulders. And I have my mom’s face.

Once I walked past a mirror following along behind my Dad. I hadn’t been away at college for too long, but long enough to notice I carried my self just like him.

Wingnut is like his brother, Spotz, in so many ways. The two are blond haired, blue eyed tricky boys. Where does this come from? Is it simply genes? A chemical pattern played out across a field of time?

Maybe so, but that leaves out so much.

Like looking at a house off in the field you pass by driving along an interstate. The frame and the walls and the roof tell you somebody once lived there, but what about the lives? The children born. Their playing in the yard. The dog that barked out loud. The planted flowers that bloomed each spring.

The old house suggests there is more, but that’s the unheard song.

Here is the first of an occasional photographic series I like to call, Fire Hydrants of Westlook Circle.

Enjoy.

This headline beats all I’ve ever seen.  “Deer-car collissions increase in mating season.” The article is even better.

I’d summarize, but it speaks better for itself.

Grindstaff said the doe will run from the buck for a couple of days as part of the ritual and that sometimes leads to collisions with vehicles.

Six were reported Friday, including one in which a doe crashed through a windshield, bolted between the car’s seats and charged out a rear window. A passenger in the car was treated for cuts.

Tennessee Highway Patrol safety education officer Tony Barham said swerving to avoid deer in the road can lead to a more serious wreck.

Heavens forbid a more serious wreck than mentioned above…

The coup de grace, though, was this final line.

Muzzleloading hunting season begins Saturday.

I don’t even know what to say about that.