Random Musings

• What a gorgeous evening in East Tennessee. Pleasant temps, not too humid, partly sunny, with a hint of a rainbow in the clouds. Me and the familial units traipsed to the good ole' IHOP this evening for dinner, looking for some breakfast. I would've liked to have gone out on the back deck to read after the kids went to bed, but the door sticks, curse the luck, and I can't open it or close it without making a big bang that rattles the house....
  
  
• I just finished "The Waste Lands", the third book in Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series. I've already read the current four volumes once, but I'm brushing back up on them in anticipation of #5 being released this fall, with the final two next year.
  
  I find an interesting point, in that the heroes of the story have formed a ka-tet, or in our language something like "blood brothers", or "friends bound by fate". I can't think of a group I've been around in my time that could be thought of as "friends bound by fate," but I do remember groups of people that defined different parts of my life.
  
  I used to be Program Director for the UT Wesley Foundation, the Methodist Student Center on the UT campus. While a student at UT and soon after the Wesley Program Director, my then-girlfriend-now-wife and I became good friends with several other students who were regulars at Wesley. We hung around together, enjoyed each other's company - even played Dungeons & Dragons. I miss that type of easy, college friendships - adult friendships are much more complex and complicated, since they are frequently based on the lives and activities of our children. In the old days, we could gather at Wesley to watch a football game, gather around the piano and sing strange songs, go to dinner, go to the movies - as a group, each member possessing its own dynamic with the others, but so comfortable with each other's company we were like family. I do hope my kids have the fortune to come across groups of friends like these.
  
  My wife and I ran into a couple of these folks the other day - we passed them coming into a restaurant as we were leaving - and it was a bit awkward. There was still the old hand-shaking and back-slapping, but we'd all changed. Children were scrambling around our feet, we were physically different (around the middles, especially, us guys), and the tone of conversation was less flighty and more down-to-earth. Plus there were relationship changes beneath the surface that were not obvious, but apparant after later consideration.
  
  Things change, gunslingers continue their quests, and the world moves on.
  
  It's ka.
  
  
• I'm playing SimCity 3000, and if anyone has any advice for attracting High-Tech Industries, I'd be much obliged ;)
  
  
• My son's playing Zoo Tycoon, and his poor animals keep catching horrible diseases because their zookeepers won't keep their enclosures clean from all the animal poop. The animals don't die - it's a family game - but the sad-looking lions and giraffes mope around and keep flopping on the ground in agony. Good thing there's an off switch - I don't think I can take that kind of suffering.
  
  
• My daughter, GiggleGirl:
  Interjexions - show citement....Halleyula, halleyula, halleyulaaaaaaah, yeaaaaaaaaah..
  
  (pause for effect)
  
  Darn, that's the end!
  
  Gotta love that SchoolHouse Rock DVD - once she learns the Preamble like God intended it to be learned (in song, from a 3-minute ABC cartoon series), I'll be done with her education.