Thank You, Carrieoke!

Shout out to Carrieoke, for fixing my links and, while she was at it, creating a new banner for my blog. Hooray! My blog doesn’t look so idiotic now. Until you get to the words, of course.
Friday night I went to a wine and cheese soiree at Emily’s. I brought the bingo-won wine, and it wasn’t so bad for a bottle with a screw top and a picture of Davy Crockett. Spied lots of great folks there: Pat and Marshall, two Alisons, Stacey, Andrew, Jeff, Lucius, and some more guys whose names I should know but I forgot. I met some interesting new folks too, including a photography professor at Columbus State who was originally from Hattiesburg, Mississippi; Emily’s PR classmate Melanie, who has great taste in music (there was dancing, which is tricky in espadrilles); and a fellow who worked at the Carter Center whose grandfather’s house in Pakistan has a tiger skin stretched across the entry to the 35,000 sq. ft. abode. (Yeah, the comma is in the right place.)
Then Jenny and I headed downtown to Room 13. We ran into a few of her fellow teachers there. Two spent all night telling elaborate lies to us–one in particular–for no reason except for the apparent joy of lying–except when they talked about telling elaborate lies to a friend earlier in the evening–I’m pretty sure that part was true. Some of the lies I recognized from a movie or something, so they weren’t even entirely original or creative. I felt pretty uncomfortable the whole time, yet fascinated at the twistedness.
Today Shawn came by to consult on the chicken coop. We decided to put the coop under the ginormous fig tree, next to the shed, and I pruned a few branches to make room. I have a list of materials to buy. Not sure yet what to make the roof of, but I think it would be cool to use corrugated tin. I doubt the chickens would like the sound of rain on a tin roof though.
Tomorrow I’m off to St. George Island to eat shrimp, swim in the waves, eat more shrimp, play in the waves, read, write, eat more giant, buttery, delicious shrimp. I probably won’t have internet connection, though there’s rumored to be a wireless cloud somewhere around there.
Until then, I will leave you with one more passion flower, this time unfurled and stretching up towards the sun.

I love that it is just growing at random in a big pile of construction debris and packed red clay. I love how life takes hold here in the South, in surprising places, against all good logic, defiant, thriving. It seems somehow, well, passionate, more intensely alive.