One post a month my ass

 

Not a lot of photos to pick from being as how I decided to never replace my external hard drive that I apparently expected to live forever and has suddenly died with 18 years of photos (my god has it been that long?). I vacillated between horror and relief at losing so many years of files - pictures, documents, writing - and ultimately settled on an easy peace. We are creating new memories every day, and my own ambition has given way to a kind of surrendered contentment. 

Anyway, dear diary, I guess I'll just take it from the top.

Oof. Where to start.

Category: Weird/Odd - So, after I had to give up running, I bought a bike to at least imitate Executive Order 12345 -- Physical Fitness and Sports (I'm sure the only such hyperlink on the world wide web) and give my finger to entropy and unsurprisingly became compulsively obsessed with this thing. And I rode so much that I started to find things on the roads, mostly trinkets, but then one day I saw what I thought was a $1 bill. But it wasn't a $1 bill, it was in fact a $100 bill! And it wasn't just one $100 bill, it was two! And then three!

This story obviously has a Monkey Paw ending.

Anyhooo, I pedaled home convinced that lawless drug lords were following me, and showed my riches to my wife who wisely counseled GO BACK AND LOOK FOR MORE.

The next day, I rode around that same area and I'll be damned if I didn't find four more $100 bills laying around near the same spot. We made an honest effort to reach out to our neighbors, but ultimately I just gave the cash to the wife and kids. 

Not long after, I planned my annual fishing trip with my son, and bought our licenses and got ready to go, and then, last minute, my son could not join me. No big deal. But then my brother-in-law offered to join me, which was great, because he's amazing. But, he didn't buy a fishing license. And of course when we were out on the water that day was the first time in the history of my life that we were boarded by fish and wildlife agents demanding our licenses and because we didn't have two licenses we were afoul of the law. If you are not familiar with our state's fish and wildlife system, we have the most complicated and complex set of game laws in the known world and I am not kidding when I say that I was basically at risk of a serious criminal record. 

Like every hardened criminal, I went home and panicked and then dropped $2k (which, of course, is a lot more than $600) on retaining an attorney, who basically said that, 'Um, ok, we'll take your money, good sir, but they don't have to file for up to a year, and a year from now, they will either lose the paperwork or hire a newly graduated DA who will want to make a name for himself and spend $1 million in taxpayer funds to prove that no one is above the law, so sit tight.' 

And then, like every other time in my life, I just sort of slowly moved on. 

I went to Memphis! It was where I was born, and I stayed in a hotel that has a family of ducks that wakes up every morning to swim around the lobby. My plane had hit some birds and needed to be delayed 4 hours, so that was a neat coincidence!

And then my next plane was delayed because of a hurricane, and I completely missed that connecting flight, so that was also neat too!

And then we went back to Texas where I grew up (editor's note: I actually never grew up) to see some family, and my god that place has simultaneously changed completely and not changed nary a bit. We petted my sister's longhorns and had a blast at a hockey game and Alex became obsessed with Buc-ees and forced me to go there, where she spent several hundred dollars (it's a goddam gas station) and took photos and it was basically Wal-Mart on Black Friday and everyone in the store could tell I was anxious so they gathered real close and bumped me talked very loudly to ease my nerves. 

It wasn't a total waste, though, because I had never had an In N Out Burger, and there's this big competition in Texas now with What-A-Burger, but growing up, What-A-Burger was nothing special. We'd always pick Dairy Queen if we had a choice. In N Out was something else though. Wow. 

It's funny the memories that come back when you are driving around a place from your childhood. I remember riding in the back seat of the car wondering why so many streets were named Frontage Road as a kid. I miss the way the sun lays down gently on the hill country and glows slowly into night. I miss the sounds as the evening insects and animals assume their shift and there's finally some cool wind to lift your face to. I hardly ever slept in one place in Texas, but I always seemed to sleep easy. I miss that, most of all.