Oh, Beyonce ...

The "board feed" from her recent Today show appearance.

It's the Circle of Life ...

reflections, originally uploaded by pr9000.

I'm about due for a haircut; I got one a few weeks ago in Hattiesburg -- good haircut; strong haircut -- and I didn't get it cut short enough. Now I'm ready, a full two weeks earlier than normal.

I got my hair from my maternal grandfather, Fid (well, I inherited the gene, not his hair, because that'd be kind of weird). It's super thick, lots of volume, and grows at such a rate that I'm personally keeping the local Super Cuts in business.

My hair goes through four stages after a haircut:

(1) The "my head looks too large" period – in which my desire to save $15 trumps my desire to look normal, and I order the Biff Tannen. I always get the urge to say, as I'm walking out the door, "Let's make like a tree and get out of here."

(2) The "Newscaster" period – in which I get out of the shower, shake my head just so, and boom! I've got Ken Brockman hair. This is the best period of the cycle.

(3) The "Bill Clinton" period – in which my hair goes from looking normal to looking like something from Bubba, circa 1993. I'm not coloring my hair to match my audience, though. It's getting gray naturally.

(4) The "It Hurts to Wear a Baseball Hat" period – by this point, the hair so long and so dense that I can't put a hat on without getting a tiny headache. Maybe it's the fact that my current preferred baseball hat says "Pittsburgh Pirates" on it. Either way, I wake up and I look like Marge Simpson.

When I get to this point, I head down to the local cuttery and start the process anew. I think Sigourney Weaver could get Discovery to do a "Planet Earth" about my follicles ... nothing as dramatic as this, which is easily the coolest shark footage ever.

Monkey-fighting snakes? That'd be cool.

Love how they changed the line for TV broadcast.

murder was the case that they gave me

, originally uploaded by pr9000.

Our church has this thing called "Villages," which is just a fancy name for small groups ... everyone is required to start at a "Discovery Village" to learn how it works and get to know some of your church-going neighbors.

Part of the Discovery Village – I love the concept, but the name ... oy vey – is sharing your "story" with others in the group. It's a great idea, because you not only learn about other people and their walks with God, but you learn about yourself by distilling your life story into 15 minutes.

I told mine last night, and it was about as straightforward and non-dramatic as you would imagine, but in preparation for telling it, I was feeling kind of bad – stories I'd heard up to that point involved much more sturm und drang than mine: I grew up in a strong, Baptist household, my faith has always been there, God has provided above and beyond for me and my family ... it's kind of ho-hum, in a way. There have been challenges, and I've no doubt much harder ones are coming my way – nobody gets away with an easy life – but compared to my Christian brothers and sisters, mine has been a smooth theological road so far.

I was thinking of Abraham and what God put him through ... of course, I always think of it in Bob Dylan language:

God: Kill me a son.
Abe: Man, you must be putting me on!
God: No.
Abe: What?
God: You can do what you want Abe, but next time you see me coming, you'd better run ...

Anyway, all this is a long way of saying that God tested me in my sleep last night, in the form of a very overweight cat deciding to camp out on my shoulder while declaring how happy he was to have found me in this strange bed – I'd slept in the guestroom last night – by purring and meowing and doing that kneading-dough things with his paws.

Does "thou shalt not kill" apply to cats? I need a theology ruling here.

"sure, we all dream of the cleve ..."

abbott and costello "tell me a joke"

confidence

It's a good message, a better commercial, a great song with a perfect lyric: "We can't try to understand the New York Times' effect on man" ...

lavender b/w

lavender b/w, originally uploaded by pr9000.

Diane is my next door neighbor ... is "next door neighbor" the one directly across the street? or to the left or right of my house? .. anyway, Diane lives across the street and her porch is impeccably decorated, terribly inviting and thus is the "party porch" for our little corner of Westhaven. Once the weather turns hospitable – down here, that's late March – you'll find her out there most evenings, with an open invitation to come say hello.

Trotter and I did that today, after we finished our illegal walk today: it's illegal because we were told yesterday that neighbors had been complaining about dogs not being on their (the dogs') leashes while outside their (the dogs') yards. Apparently there are no other burning issues in this small slice of Tennessee paradise, because some pain in the ass neighbor has decided to complain that my extremely well behaved dog might not be leashed at all times.

So we took a walk in the woods. I hope the Tennessee State Patrol isn't reading this.

Anyway, after our rule-breaking walk threatened the very sanctity of the social contract and brought my yuppie subdivision one step closer to a Hobbesian free-for-all ... we stopped by Diane's, where she was holding court with her next door neighbor, Trina.

Trina told me that my Flickr site was on her daily bookmarks list. She's so sweet and has always been a huge supporter of my work. So Trina – if you're reading this, thanks!

"Frankenstein never scared me"

Kevin Pollack

coming in for a landing

coming in for a landing, originally uploaded by pr9000.

I had a dream about Katy Perry last night. I have no idea what the dream was about, but I know it involved me buying her album.

I think it was triggered by me singing to Trotter that "I kissed a dog and I liked it ..."

Flea Market Montgomery - Long Version

Bruins Hockey Rules_Date

happiness is a warm puppy

happiness is a warm puppy, originally uploaded by pr9000.

"But I will defend to my dying day the statement that happiness is a warm puppy. I defy [the critic] to give me a better definition of what happiness is. ... In one sentence let him try to tell me better what is more happy than a little kid putting his arms around a warm puppy. If that isn't happiness, I don't know what is." – Charles M. Schulz

sunset at point clear

sunset at point clear, originally uploaded by pr9000.

Last year around this time, Amina and I were househunting in Nashville. Things looked promising on the job front (and oh what an illusion that turned out to be) and the weather was nothing short of outstanding, especially considering that our front yard in Chanhassen was still frozen that week. We liked Nashville quite a lot, and were ready to take the plunge.

If you could get into your time machine and grab us – say, at the airport on our flight back to Minneapolis – and tell us that, just one year later, we'd (1) be vacationing in Alabama, of all places, and (2) consider it to be the best vacation we've had in four years ... well, you can see where this paragraph is headed.

What a great stay we've had at The Grand Hotel. The grounds are impeccable, the resort has a sense of history and grandeur, and our room was nothing short of perfect. We did the Easter brunch today and I was ever so impressed – amazing appetizers, every kind of dessert imaginable and service that knocked our socks off.

This part of Alabama is very quaint; it's almost like a little slice of New England, with accents that are just as hard to understand. The town of Fairhope is something out of a movie set, with tree-lined boulevards filled with quaint knick-knack, antique and book stores. The city fathers have done an admirable job of hiding the urban sprawl and chain restaurants far from the main streets ... we found a great little wine and cheese shop and bought provisions for a great in-room picnic dinner one evening, and Amina found an interesting hinged produce box from 1933 or 1934 ... it's not dated, but there's a huge NRA logo burned into one side.

The Grand is less than an hour from Orange Beach, which has gorgeous, white sand beaches and water about as blue as we saw in Cancun last year. We settled in for a long day yesterday; it was in the mid-70s with mild wind and mostly sunny skies. I wasted quite a few pixels on the beach, still chasing those elusive beach girls photos that I've been seeking for a few years now ...

I was dedicated to the cause, let me tell you ...

This trip certainly changed my attitude about the Deep South, though I'm sure I'm seeing just a slice of it here in southern Alabama. I held a pretty biased view of what ... well, of what everything south of where I lived happened to be like. This trip has changed a bit of that, and I look forward to opening my mind down the road. It's not quite "Sweet Home Alabama" but who knows? Maybe this governor's true.

Obie II!

Obie II!, originally uploaded by pr9000.

We're puppysitting a 10-week-old goldendoodle named Obie ... after Obi-wan Kenobi, of course, though I think his mom puts that little "e" at the end just to make it seem less, well, Star Wars nerd-ish.

I like Star Wars nerd-ish.

We've had him since Friday afternoon, and it took him about 24 hours to stop being afraid of Trotter and to start biting Trotter wherever he could reach, to get Trotter to play. And play they have ... I'm very proud of my dog, because he's 3 1/2 years old and still can tolerate playing with a little puppy, including rolling over on his back to let Obie on top. That's the sign of a good, good dog, so Trotter – if you're reading this, good puppy!

I've been doing the late-night potty trips with Obie, and this morning he lasted until 4 a.m. ... After our potty party, I wanted to calm him down until I put him in his crate again, so we laid down on the floor in the foyer, and I let him bite me until he had his fill. Eventually he rested his chin and both front paws on my forearm and fell asleep. It was the sweetest part of my day, and it was only four hours old.

We have to take Obie to a kennel this afternoon, which makes me sad. I'll miss him, though he only lives a few blocks away, and I'm sure I'll be visiting again.

Here are a few shots I took last week of Obie, Trotter and our neighbor's basset hound, Winston.

that's cute!

064, originally uploaded by beths96.

tulips

tulips, originally uploaded by pr9000.

I shall brag for 30 seconds, then stop:

This photo make Explore on Flickr.com.

That is all. :)