A most unexpected ending to an e-mail from my cousin Rachel.

P.S. You do realize you're the same age as me, right? Stop calling yourself old, or I'll drive down there and tickle you to an early death.

This weekend in summary.

Drove to McKinney.
Had dinner with David and Charlie.
Drove to Austin the next morning.
Got to church with 10 minutes to spare and powered down a sandwich.
Had church.
Powered down another sandwich afterwards.
Went to Charlie's sister's house in Austin.
Sister isn't home. Hung out with Charlie's sister's awesome roommate. (Which we decided was my second-cousin-once-removed's roommates' sister's roommate. I'm practically related.)
Went to Jon Bryce's home.
Went to the Riverwalk.
Slept at Jon Bryce's home.
Got up; ate awesome breakfast.
Packed up and went down to the Guadalupe.
Tubed for 5 hours.
Got burnt.
Left San Antonio; checked Charlie's sister's house again.
Still not there; hung out with Charlie's sister's awesome roommate again.
Took showers.
Ate cheap pizza.
Played a board game.
Drove to McKinney.
Slept very little.
Drove home to work.

Attention!! We are in need of a large body of water!

I'm getting baptized tomorrow. Ocean's eleven? More like Ocean's 6'7".

That was lame. <3 you guys. I'll see you on the other side.

Oh, and a quick shout out to all of you that I've tossed this around with in the last couple months. You all know who you are.

Forecast for Monday, July 24th: Mostly uneventful with a slight chance of crappy.

Aw man, it started crapping! I'm getting crappy all over me!

Phew. Glad that went away. It's better now.

Boy, it sure smells nice in he--GAH!!

I went out to my car a couple minutes ago on my break. I was going to go across the street and get some chips to snack. I jump in and I smell this wonderful fragrance in my car. I don't know where it's coming from for a moment, and then it dawns on me. I had taken a stick of deoderant with me the other night for after Ultimate, and left it in the car. I turned around and grabbed it as fast as I could, and liquid deoderant was oozing out of the case. I opened the lid and turned it over in the parking lot and it was total liquid.

Then I dropped that and opened my back door. Crap. Liquid and crystalized deoderant all over my backseat. The whole deal with my car smelling really nice all of a sudden wasn't nearly as important to me anymore. I grabbed some spare napkins and started mopping it up.

...I know there is still quite a bit of gelled deoderant on my briefcase.

Ultimaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate!

I accompany a UT Tyler student for his vocals lessons once a week during the summer right now. Yesterday we went out to lunch afterwards, and he mentioned that he was going to be playing Ultimate Frisbee that evening with some friends. I didn't even know people played Ultimate around here. "Can I come?" "Sure! We play over in the soccer field at 7pm."

So after another couple rehearsals, I show up there at about 7:25, and they've just split up teams. I get out of the car, and I start to feel a little awkward because this is definitely a huge group of teenagers. They see me stop and get out, and they sort of look at me like "Why's the old guy coming over here? Is he going to tell us to get off the field?" Finally I get up close and I'm like, "What team am I on?" and everything goes back to normal. The friend that invited me finally shows up, and then I feel validated for being there.

All in all, I had a great time. I imagine that the majority of the kids knew each other from a church group of some sort. They were all really nice, and they didn't have those bad teenage attitudes you just come to expect from kids their age. They took to me right away ... probably because I'm overly enthusiastic, a big chatterbox all the time on the field, and I run the entire game so I'm not all talk. Oh, and I had to keep up the excitement level since I was the old fogey on the field, too. Don't want to start feeling like the chaperone.

They really took to me pretty quickly. High fives and hugs exchanged all around by midway through the evening ... another one of those things you just don't expect from total strangers an hour ago (especially in the 90+ Texas evening. Sweaty hugs, groooooooss). It was fun, I was pooped, and for some reason out of three games played (switching up teams every time) I lost every game. I can't feel responsible though, because some of my players never switched up either. I'm blaming them.

OK, sooooo .. what is the deal with the short game? This I will never understand. You have me expecting these teenagers to play an aggressive crazy game, and I'm running all over the field trying to lose my defenders, and I never see a pass for the first 30 minutes. They're all passing it to each other about 10 feet apart. And calling out names as they do it. I mean, I'm looking right at you, you don't have to look at me, say my name, and then throw it. Why not throw in a signed Hallmark card and a balloon while you're at it? And THEN!! (Oh, this was aggravating.) Some of the kids would stand BEHIND the person throwing the frisbee and be calling for it. I don't ask for much guys, but as my loyal blog readers, I implore you: DO NOT EVER THROW THE FRISBEE BACKWARDS UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. And certainly don't stand back there and ask for it. Eventually after I saw this as a trend, I started getting my team together and saying "OK, guys, why don't we try some long game for a while and see how that works?" "We can win this thing slow and steady. Long passes are so risky."

So that's how it's going to be. Huh. After that, anytime the frisbee fell close to me, I ran straight for it as quick as possible, looked up, and hurled that sucker to the endzone. The field was short enough for endzone to endzone passes, easily. And you know, it didn't matter at all that the majority of the people were playing the short game ... there was always some lazy guy standing down in the endzone cherry picking, so I didn't have to worry about waiting for someone to show up down there. The game started picking up quickly after that.

OK, I'm done with that rant. Just remember: No one likes short game except people with no endurance.

Anyway, it was a good night, and I plan on doing it once a week now as long as they keep playing. I can't even pretend that I didn't get home last night and not collapse into deep sleep instantly. Hey, I ran way more than kids 10 years younger than me. :( That reminds me ....

I'm old.

So, Karl walks into the endocrinology office ...

Stop me if you've heard this one.

Dr. Casas: "Do you smoke?"
Karl: "No."
Dr. Casas: "Ok. Do you drink?"
Karl: "Yes."
Dr. Casas: "Socially?"
Karl: "As opposed to like ... drunkenly?"
Dr. Casas: *shrug* "I have to ask."

So I wrote this new song. . .

But due to my pathetic internet connection right now, I can't make it upload anywhere. And I really want to share it. I mean, it's not the end-all of music creation as we know it. But I like it, ok?! It's cute. And simple. Like ... children. Or a big rainbow lollipop.

I'm going to try uploading it again.

Edit: Yay for friends. The song that is thus far untitled.

A quote from yester-year.

Here's a quote I found digging through some old archives that I've had over the years. I found this online a couple years ago. No one famous -- just some guy on a message board.

"To simulate what's happened to me in the past few days, go to the closet, dust off your copy of 'The Game of Life' and smack yourself in the face with it. On second thought... leave the dust."

I had a concussion.

So says Dr. Desirée. I think she's right.

A new day, a new blog.

If you get a chance, check out Mike Keesee's new blog (the link is on the right). He's halfway interesting, and he's my second-cousin-once-removed-in-law. I also think I may be the only link gateway to get to him, so if he doesn't get many readers then it could be all my fault. At least check it out once.

I'm not sure who took this ...

...but it's one classy photo.

It's the ultimate "I know what you've been up to" pose.

P.S. I know what you've been up to.

Tears suck.

They get all over everything.

And they're hot, which is useless during the summer.

Patriotism is dead.

I'm tired. The weekend wasn't strenuous, but the hours of sleep received per night was. Overall, we at the Marshall household had a great time for the holiday weekend. But that's a different story.

On Tuesday (July 4th), most of us were just sitting around Marshall's house, talking, playing games, doing a whole lot of nothing because we were tired out. And for some reason, one person in the place starts singing "Ooooh, say can you SEEEEEE .." which then proceeds to be joined by another person, and another, until the entire house of people at the time is singing the song. And not good either. Everyone was trying to harmonize, but couldn't, so a cacophony of dissonant patriotism was flooding the premises, occasionally twisting and turning into something rather beautiful.

Eventually, this started happening a couple more times throughout the day. Every time it happened, every one in the house started singing along, adding strange harmony lines that Francis Scott Key never intended. We were so impressed with ourselves that we decided that our love should touch the general public. So, we took two carloads of us down to Blockbuster to get a movie.

We went inside and dispersed (but not too far apart). Everyone was checking out movies, looking around, and being generally unimposing. And then, David and I started singing "Ooooh, say can you SEE ... " and then from a few rows down you hear "by the dawn's early liiiiight." Eventually the entire squad of nine is singing the Star Spangled Banner. It was a glorious thing. Moments later I see the front desk teenager come back to me while we're nearing the big finale. "Hey guys, you're doing an awesome job and everything, but we really need to keep it down in here," to which his boss (who came up right behind him) says, "It's entirely too loud," to which I reply, "*blank stare* It's the 4th of July, man!!"

Super letdown. The general populace couldn't even appreciate our public showing of patriotism for 2 minutes. The worst part was that I then scanned the room (I'm 6'7", I could see over all the racks), and we were the only people in the store. The nine of us. And bossman and his lackey. Maybe they would have felt worse if we had gotten to the part about the land of the free before they stopped us. Maybe that's why they felt compelled to make us quit so that other people that came to the store didn't think this was some sort of promotional stunt and all 4th of July video rentals were free. "For the laaaaaand of the freeeeeeeeeeee! (promotion ends 11:59pm Tuesday July 4th, 2006)"

To which David walks up to me and says, "...patriotism is dead."

And then Peder broke stuff.