three unrelated and utterly useless throughts.

it's friday. some thoughts:

1. talked to kevin on the phone yesterday for a half hour. i know this doesn't sound like much, but i don't rattle off half-hour phone conversations too much (i later talked to my friend nate downey for another half hour that night - i ran out of words after these two conversations and heidi was left with a useless conversation partner. i just stared blankly at her admired how pretty she is, but couldn't bring myself to say those words. my mom used to say that men have 10,000 words per day, and when they used up those words, they were done. 10,000 sounds a little high to me. i think i got about 7k in me - after that you're lucky to get a grunt or a nod.) the greatest part of this half hour conversation with kevin was that from start to finish we discussed nothing but sports. you don't know how much this pleases me. this is why guys can get along so much easier than girls. we have sports. always. never fail. girls talk about celebrity gossip and trade recipes and share hair and skin secrets. girls comment on eachother's belts and boots. (you can tell that i really don't have a clue when it comes to women. it's amazing that i am married). but one half hour of reds, bengals, draft, fantasy talk... that's pretty damn good.

2. heidi and i went on a picnic date the other night. we drank some wine and talked about our respective childhoods and the things that make us who we are. (one of the reasons i absolutely adore heidi, and fell in love with her in the first place, is because, when it comes to conversation, the rules from point number one don't apply. heidi is an exquisite conversationalist. i could talk to her for hours. which is good, because i'm pretty sure we got hours to burn). childhood is a funny thing. all these memories. all these proverbial forks in the road. life is a bunch of forks in the road, and to retrace your steps, and think about the times that you went left when you could have, or seemingly should have went right is mind-blowing to me. the fact that i am here, living in kentucky - a state that i wasn't even sure existed a couple of years ago, is due to the fact that several years ago, i chose one grad school over another (because i got dumped) and ended up meeting my friend duane, moving to san diego, and meeting heidi, who also went one way on the road of life, and happened to pass through san diego on a road trip just as i was moving there. you can't make this stuff up. you can't plan it. this is the kind of stuff that i attribute to God. it's inexplicable. it's retarded how stuff works out. and i feel rather confident that the God of this universe has something to do with where we go and what we do in our everyday life. this gives me a comfort and a hope that i lean upon each day of my life.

3. i just spent the last hour in my front yard washing the car, playing with the dogs, and talking/throwing the football with this 12-year old kid named benji who lives down the street. he just wandered up the driveway and asked if we had any chores for him to do because he is trying to save money so he can join karate again. he is a blue belt with a green stripe. i don't know what that means, but he says that it is almost half way to a black belt. i challenged him to spar, but he declined, so i guess a green belt isn't too impressive (that or the fact that i am at least twice his size was the deterrent). but this kid just wandered over to my house and would not leave. at first i was annoyed. i don't like to be bothered for the most part. but then i got to thinking. this kid is just looking for a friend. maybe this kid just wants somebody to look up to. maybe that could be me. maybe i could put my own selfish motives out of my mind for a bit, and spend some time with this kid. we talked music (he likes guns n' roses and metallica, which is most definitely the influence of an older brother), his favorite sport is basketball (mine too) and he plays the saxophone (a terrible instrument in my mind, but what are you going to do?) he asked me questions about heidi (where is she? when is she coming home? where does she work? does she go running every day?), to the point where i started to worry that he was just hanging out with me to get to my wife. after awhile, his mom called him home and he took off. that kid is alright.