We haven’t been able to pull it away from him yet.

He’s not overly tech-savvy, but you had better believe that within five minutes he had iTunes loaded on to his computer, busy importing all of his music files, with the first twenty or so already loaded onto his iPod.

Today he came home and hopped straight onto his computer. “Mel! Come here!”

I went in to his room to see him triumphantly holding up a green card. “What is it?” I asked.

“25 iTunes dollars,” he replied. “Some guy gave it to me when he saw I had an iPod. What can I buy with it?”

“Music,” I responded. “99 cents a song.”

I have never seen my dad so happy. Who says iPods are just for young people and Apple geeks?

Weird, but acceptable, I guess.

But here in Oklahoma, we not only do that during breakfast (in public, by the way), but we use a black sharpie. For those of you abroad, this is a bold, black permanent marker.

All I could do the entire time this woman was there today was stare at these eyebrows of hers. And try not to laugh. Oklahoma culture at its finest, no doubt.

Stupidity is not a crime.
Your free to go.

Please, please, tell me that I’m not the only nerd whose first thought was… TYPO! Yes, I’m calling you stupid with the TYPO on MY shirt.

Classic.

Anyhow. I had a fun weekend! I know, I don’t get out much. James was up and we also went and chilled out in Lawton with Chelsy. I mean, we didn’t do anything particularly thrilling (except to note that the Prestige is a crazy good movie, and that “I will survive” is NOT a good song to listen to when you’re weird, tired, and apparently coffee-deprived), but it was nice to just hang out with friends. I miss that a lot.

I won’t go into details, but I’ve been thinking a lot in the past, oh, twenty-four hours or so about a lot of stuff in my life I’ve got to fix. Fears, issues, lack of trust, and all that jazz. Anyhow, about halfway through work today, I remembered a song on my Superchick CD (their first one is still their best, thank you) that I haven’t listen to in ages and ages. Lemme give you the lyrics.

Some people bring you gifts
Some bring you bricks to weight you down
So they can swim a little higher while you drown
Some people mean so well
Their way was the best way that they found
But any other way you choose is a brick that weights you down
So tell me what do I do with this backpack full of bricks
And sticks and stones and words that stuck to me like ticks

[CHORUS]
Let it go, let it be
Brick by brick we can be free of all the words we saved
Till we were our own enemies
Let it go, let it be
Brick by brick we can believe in the person God intended us to be
Let it be

Some people give themselves a brick
I know most people do
When we compare we fall short somewhere
It’s always true
If all we see is where we fall we’ve bricked a prison wall
Instead of trying to learn to fly
We’ve taught ourselves to crawl

We could believe in ourselves
More we could try for unique
Instead of trying to conform
We could defy what they tell us
Don’t buy the lies they sell us
If we’re brave we can believe in what we are

I think that’s pretty much self-explanatory. It better be, ’cause that’s all you’re getting! The point of that is… it’s true.

Oh, procrastination is a terrible thing!

Edit: It’s almost one a.m. and I can barely see straight… much less sew straight. It’s not like I’ve never stayed up late before… usually I’m just fine, but I’ve been up since six and ended up getting stuck on the grill all day. I have to do this really quietly so this machine doesn’t wake everyone up (trust me, seven year olds woken up at one in the morning is not a happy situation). And to top it off, I think the whole dang thing is crooked.

Edit: Two a.m. and the stupid thing is crooked. I suppose… once I stuff it and sew it up… and have the ribbon for the rings on top… I guess if I tell Steve (my brother’s the ring-bearer) to hold it with the good side out and move kinda quickly… nobody will notice or care. Anyhow, the rest can wait for tomorrow.

Which is, consequently, Nikki’s wedding. I’ll be down in Lawton this weekend… so I’ll talk to you all Sunday!

• Leaving: May 15 – From OKC to O’Hare, then O’Hare to Phil.
• Coming back: May 23 – From Phil to D/FW, then D/FW to OKC

Yes, my Texan friends, that means I’m coming through Texas, and I don’t have time to see you all! How awful!

Anyhow, I’m really excited. That’s a month from today. Tomorrow I’ll go tell Mona the days I can’t work next month (she’s already approved it, I think), and then I’m good to go. Oh, and the whole thing (round trip) cost about $260 USD. Not bad at all.

Also, I’ve been taking little side trips through my site stats today and yesterday, and it’s really funny how people come across my site. Mostly from unknown (meaning they probably typed it in themselves), from other sites of mine that link back to this one (not surprising), or for hilarious searches on Google and Yahoo.

I’m sure I’m going to jinx myself for listing these, because now more people will find me the same ways. At least I don’t get anything… completely out there. However, you will find me if you look for the following:

• butterfly “does god surprise them” – Yup, I’m the only thing that comes up if you google that. Darn it, what’s the word for that? When you google something and only come up with one result?
• rico cortes – Second page, google.
• oklahoma messianics – second entry… google. Scary that I’m the second one you find!
• sukkot oklahoma -first page, google.
• sukkot wedding – Odd! I’ve never been to a Sukkot wedding.
• jess (image search) – People found some of my camp pictures this way. Weird!
• ladies appreciation night what to do – Well, let me tell you. Muaha!
• camp yeshua – It’s amazing how many hits I get for this.
• melilyn – Someone consistantly searches for me on yahoo… like… all the time. It’s someone in the OKC area (*hides IP searches*). I think it’s Jessyca or Becky! I hope it’s Jessyca or Becky… else I’d feel stalked.

And that’s only out of the last 200 entries out of 11510. I just think it’s funny that google will send people to me just because I mention something offhandedly. I don’t see anyone searching google for “wonderful messianic webdesigner lives in oklahoma and could use some freelance work.” Nope, never see that.

However, now I will. Google is a strange beast.

I was about five feet away from him when I looked down and saw him… this angry looking, poofy, tail-straight-up skunk. Five feet in front of me. On my side of the road.

Whoa! I crossed the road fast… didn’t even look to see if a car was coming (thankfully, there wasn’t, or I’d have more problems on my hands than an angry skunk!). He kind of kept bristled and watched me walk by (by this time I had not only crossed the road but gone off the road into the trees… just trying to get away from him), and then when I was a safe distance away, he disappeared into a culvert and was gone.

Actually the whole walk to work today was weird. About fifteen feet down the road, I was calmed back down enough that I was back to enjoying the music. I glanced up at a branch that was right next to the road, higher than my head… and I see this owl, just sitting there. He was huge! I mean, he was probably a foot and a half, just sitting there in this tree.

To top it all off, there were these five, brown, yappy chihuahua puppies or something in the next front yard… jumping around and making general pests of themselves. All of this in one block. By the end of the block I was wondering what Disney movie I had walked in to. It was just… odd.

Edit: I walked the same way home today after work, and I’ve got an update. The gigantic owl? It was a statue. In a tree.

It looks a lot bigger in the dark, too.

For those of you not in the know, this site is basically a Messianic singles community.

February 3 – March 3, 2007, one entry a day. Think I can do it?

As a completely random note, I now have the same ring-tone as Drew Baylor from Elizabethtown. My day is thus complete.

You: Hi, how are you doing today?
Them: Not too bad. You?
You: Just fine, thank you.

This sounds like you’ve picked up a “Learn English in 30 days” (en espanol) and this is the dialog you must memorize to properly learn greetings and small talk in another language. Come on, seriously. When you ask someone you’ve never met, how are you doing, do you honestly care what the answer is going to be? If you’re having a lousy day, are you really going to tell them anything too different than “fine” when they ask you?

No and no.

And seriously, some of us go through variations of this conversation all day. I work the register a lot at work. I’ll go through this with each and every customer, well over a hundred instances of “and how are you doing today?” in any given day. Why? Because it’s expected. I guess it’s a shadow of small town stores where everyone knew everyone and this was the way you got in touch with your neighbors.

Small talk. It’s driving me nuts.

“We are not keeping it,” says Dad.

“Sure, Dad. That’s what you said about Chloe.” Chloe was going to be given away. We’ve had her for years now and she totally believes that she is Dad’s rightful wife.

Said kitten proceeds to snuggle up in Dad’s beard.

So really, there’s not much chance that we’re keeping him (or her)… I guess I can only hope and be delusional, as usual.

Anyhow, I was goofing around online one day in the semi-recent past, and I came across an interesting phenomenon. A lot of people say that there are so-called subliminal messages in songs, and that some of them come out by playing a song backwards. Kind of crazy sounding, but sometimes it’s quite convincing. An example would be the song by “Queen”…

Original lyrics: Another one bites the dust
Reverse lyrics: It’s fun to smoke marijuana

And if you find somewhere that has it backwards… it’s actually quite convincing sometimes. Well, a lot of people purposefully put things backwards in their songs as well, just hoping someone will catch it. I caught one the other day!

I pulled out one of my old John Reuben CD’s the other day and was listening to it when a certain song struck my fancy, I guess you could say. So I pulled out audacity and reversed it… and found hidden lyrics!

> Click here.

It’s funny what you’ll do when you’re bored. Anyhow, more tomorrow.

Nothing else to dwell on, unfortunately. Just… I guess you could say, daily life in its glorious entirety.