A Jeep In Summer

Peaches and Trees

"I'm at the point in my life where if you don't want my peaches, don't shake my tree. I'm into Happy Town, and if you don't want to live in Happy Town, move, hit the friggin' bricks, baby." - Sharon Stone

Lawn Care

Super Tan Lawn Care is now open for business. Leave me a comment if you're interested.

"a lawnmower, a weedeater, and a dream"

Dear Steph, Emily, Jen, and Tricia

I am thinking of you fondly tonight. You got me hooked on Alias. And it's the last night of it. Goodbye Sidney.

When you don't know how to respond

Leave it like it is, never mind the turpentine [as David Wilcox says]
Leave it like it is, it's fine

When the paint jar tipped off of the table you watched as it started to fall
Glass popped shattered and splattered and paint spray hit the wall
Bright blue glossy enamel across the kitchen floor

or, as my friends' dad says, "It is what it is, Mike, it is what it is."

Sometimes you just get blue paint all over everything.

Something Bad Is Happening, or, It's Not Easy Being Green

Wicked. Atlanta. Saturday. YEEEHAW

Short update

After recovering from food poisoning last week, I went right ahead and did something bad to my back. Today it's ALMOST better.

Had a second interview today. We'll see.

You can find a new picture of New York everyday at this site.

I just got an email from Matt Damon

I just returned from a 7 day trip to South Africa and Zambia. What I saw changed my life. I want to tell you about my trip and let you know about billions of dollars in development assistance that is at risk this week.

Each day, I saw the devastating impact of AIDS and extreme poverty, but I also saw the incredible work being done to save lives and give people the tools to provide for themselves. I visited a facility that reduced, by half, the chances of a mother transmitting HIV to their child. I met a 24 year old woman who told me that there was a good chance the anti-retrovirals she was taking would save the her baby's life. The next day, I met a widow who had become self-sufficient thanks to a micro-finance loan. With her new financial freedom, she was not only able to take care of her children, but also began caring for local orphans.

The biggest lesson I took home from the trip was that folks in these countries can turn things around if given the basic resources that we take for granted here every day. That's why I was shocked to learn from the ONE campaign that within the next 2 weeks the U.S. Senate is poised to slash billions of dollars from President Bush's plan to fight AIDS and poverty.

This is an outrage - and it can be stopped. Please join me in speaking out right now!

The second day of the trip, I met children at an orphan care center in Zambia who had HIV\AIDS. Most of them couldn't remember their parents because they died of AIDS when they were only babies. Frederick, an HIV positive father showed me something called a "Memory Book." A scrapbook with pictures and stories about him he was putting together for his son so he would have something to remember him with after they he was gone. About 650,000 children in Zambia are AIDS orphans. They play "Duck, Duck, Goose" and "London Bridge" just like kids around the world, but without help; the problems they face are only going to get much worse. We can't let Congress cut funding that provides critical assistance to kids like these all across Africa.

Senators Mike DeWine (R) and Dianne Feinstein (D) have written a letter to their colleagues in the Senate asking them to stop these devastating cuts in funding for the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty. With just 30 seconds of your time, you can send a quick note to your Senators asking them to support this funding and add their signature to this important letter.

The work we are doing on the ONE Campaign will change the world. It already has. Let's keep up the pressure and make sure they know we won't let billions of dollars in cuts to the President's request for the world's poor go unnoticed.

Ask your Senator to support critical development assistance

Matt Damon

P.S. Click here to join communities around the world for the AIDS Candlelight Memorial on May 21.

Email Excerpts: Dear J, J, B, and A

Is electronic fellowship better than no fellowship at all? Is face to face in person eye contact necessary for fellowship? I'm not sure. But I think we (I mean the followers of God) are gonna have to answer that question soon. Because people, at least those people with www access, are building electronic social networks. Maybe I could talk MTW into letting me be an internet missionary!!! (BTW I'm listening to Prince's new cd and he just sang 'turn off your cell phone....' LOL And you know what John Mayer says, 'Why does everything I need come with batteries?')

Email Excerpts: Dear M

Well, it's no surprise to me that I haven't yet heard from S. I've been pondering the fact that it's been about a year since I learned about the upheaval in his life--I've also been thinking about appearances and reality and truth and possible lies and perceptions and misperceptions and how things can (seemingly) go down the toilet so quickly.

Dear New York

readings

Not everything has a name.

--Aleksandr Solzenitsyn

We all have internal philosophers

and it may be that they also need a talking to. Our internal philosophers chatter incessantly, spinning out all manner of hypotheses and pronouncements, and lying, like guard dogs, in wait to spring on any would-be solicitor of our passions and commitments. These learned guardians of the heart communicate largely by invective, by counterexample, and by implied insult. Our friends do not like them; nor do we much of the time. It is because of them that we refuse a second glass of wine and sometimes need to count to ten before we speak. So why put up with them? We too have a horror of being duped. We are doubly afraid of being duped about things that have to do with the way we live our lives, with whom we fall in love, and to what we commit ourselves. Our internal philosophers do our security checks for us, counsel patience, and advise us to look before we leap--or not to leap at all. Above all, they tell us that if something seems too good to be true, it is in fact too good to be true.

But there is something our internal philosophers cannot afford to know, given their job description. You can miss out on things by waiting too long, by thinking too hard, by floating one too many hypotheses, by confusing grumpy thoughts with intellectual integrity. In trying to protect us, our internal philosophers sometimes talk us out of the deep longings of our heart.

from Forgetting Ourselves on Purpose

Going To Work

Two weeks of data entry for a lawyer friend. I'm excited to go back to work, but already missing my vacation. Missing painting too, but that'll wait.