General

Roger Miller's King of the Road played on the tape deck. My sister, Meghann, was asleep in the passenger seat. We were shooting across Montana, heading for Oregon and the left-coast. It was August 2000. I was just 19; Meghann was 22 and she had recently finished her undergraduate degree. She wanted to take a trip before starting graduate school in the fall. The trip was one of a few I took as a teenager, and it cemented my love of road trips.

It has been a hectic month; and an event crazier week. On the 27th of July, the area was hit with heavy rain. As the evening rolled in, I was cooking dinner (sweet potatoes with quinoa and various vegetables; I have embraced being a mostly-vegetarian). Melissa was standing in the back entryway with the door open; she was watching the heavy rain come down in sheets. The back sidewalk was submerged as the water rolled down from the driveway. I continued to cut and clean vegetables. At about 5:30 PM, something hit the window above the sink; then again, and again - then a lot all at once. It was hail. Melissa watched the yard become littered with nickel-sized hail balls (15 millimetres for you metric people). Lightning flashed and without delay a tremendous crack of thunder sounded. Melissa shut the door. The storm was directly over our little town. Without warning, the wind picked up. The hail slammed against the house; more thunder and lightning.

Ryan, my cousin, would not stop. "Look, a bear! Over there, deer!" Michael Bolton's "How Can We Be Lovers" played on the tape deck. My sister, Meghann, and our cousin, Michael, talked about whatever it was middle-schoolers talked about; Meg made a quick departure from the topic at hand to call Ryan a liar. My mother and her sister, Jane, were in the front; Jane was driving. My cousin, Jonathan, and I watched a VHS of "The Gospel Bill Show". Ryan continued to announce all the amazing northern Minnesota creatures he was certainly seeing in the thick woods.

We headed to the lake today; took some photos when I was not fishing.

We were planning on heading to the in-laws' cabin this weekend, but my mother-in-law was not feeling well. The in-laws stayed in St. Paul, and we stayed in town. We headed to Duluth Farmer's Market and then to the Whole Foods Co-op. At DFM, we were gunning for fresh whitefish, but Lake Superior Fish Co only had smoked fish. We settled on the trout. As tempting as it was to buy beta grapes from Deb Shubat or the petunias and herbs from others, I am sticking to my "30 days without buying books, seeds or plants". We could have bought chocolate from Peace, Love & Chocolate, but decided it to head to pick up groceries at WFC.

Earlier in the week, I trimmed up one of our large pine trees - it had had some branches that were hanging low and getting in the way when mowing the grass. Given that I have had a penchant for fires since I was a mere toddler, the obvious solution to the problem of getting rid of the cut branches was to burn them.

I decided to give videoing myself while I checked the hives a try. I dug around until I found a video-capable camera. Panasonic DMC-FX07. The video shoot (I think that is what it is called in the biz) went well. The audio is kind of bad and when I stood up completely, my head was cropped out of the shot. In the end, it is roughly ten minutes long; I edited out the part where I got stung on the hand and let loose with a string of expletives.

All around, the last couple of weeks have been stressful. In the non-hound, non-bee and non-garden realm (read: work), it is the kind of stress that comes from dealing with things and people that down-right piss you off. In the realm of hounds and bees (and gardens), we had the unfortunate need to have one of the hounds make his final trip to the veterinarians' office. In the circle of folks my wife frequents, this is referred to as "heading to the bridge"; like during their lives, the animal's journey to the bridge is embellished, dramatized, and/or anthropomorphized. Homer caught a ride, to the bridge, in the back of our old red truck. (which most likely has, since selling it, died, too) Homer would not have taken a bus; some people will say their pup took a bus. Homer hate all vehicles with air-brakes or most likely fueled by diesel - something with the low-rumble set him off.