Coming out of the cold

It's brutal out there. I show up at a church in Indy and a friend chides me for not posting enough recently. And my good friends, people who I see regularly or who spend a weekend at my house? They can be brutal.

Yes. I've been quiet. I just don't have many good, public thoughts lately. Hopefully it will change. It may not. Either way, don't panic.

I left work today at lunchtime to track down a sandwich. I started at the deli upstairs: closed. So I grabbed my coat and ventured out. Innocuous Christmas music was being piped into the skywalk area, the itinerant sax player was wailing on Christmas tunes, and Jersey Mike's was playing a Christmas mix.

I stepped out the door to a panhandler holding a bucket and wishing everybody "Happy Kwanzaa" with as much enthusiasm as you can imagine. As I walked back across Fountain Square Rock Bottom was blaring AC/DCs "You Shook Me All Night Long."

I don't know why, but the whole miniature lunchtime journey had me laughing out loud by the time I returned to my desk. This world, this crazy world is so fun just to watch.

Winter at the beach

Goodness, why did I leave California?

I'm sitting here at the Outer Banks, enjoying the sound of the surf and the cold wind blowing off the sea. Is the ocean more profound for those who grow up near it, or for Midwestern boys like me to whom it will always be a bit of an inconceivable mystery? No fires allowed the beach, which is too bad because huddling around some flames out there at night would be terrific. But we've got surf, and seashells, and fresh seafood dives all up and down the beach. It's perfect.

I'm travelling with my family--all of my immediate plus two other hotel suites of uncles, aunts and cousins. Sometimes I'm sure I'm adopted. But then I get alone w/ a cousin and we compare notes on some of the loonier elements of our family history and I realize I'm not the only one who looks around and says "how did I come out of this?"

I've become buds over the past couple of years with my second cousin...He's 11 now, and asked me the other day if I was his friend.

I said with a smile "No, sorry pal, but I pick my friends." It's all nice, sarcastic, pre-teen humor. But the notion has been echoing in my head.

Family. My family. So-and-so begat so-and-so. And then so-and-so begat so-and-so. Somewhere I fall in there and, hopefully, some will follow down the line. Just like the beginnings of the Christmas story, really. I get grafted into all of the peculiaririties and idiosynchracies and somehow am formed...My mind continues to boggle.

I'm speechless

(which explains my lack of posting, I suppose...)

I think you will enjoy this review of a relatively new restaurant in the Cincinnati area: The Gospel Grille

I think my friend Tim and I are planning on heading up there next weekend and getting saved. Anyone wanna join us?