And now, here it is...your moment of Zen

4 a.m.

If you can handle it, even just once, go for a drive sometime at around 4a.m. Watch your town sleep. Find out how different it can look.

There's a fairly specific window - up until about 3a.m. you still have the late-night bar-crawlers, out looking for something to eat after last call; after 5 people start stirring, getting up & getting out (yes, it's hard to believe if you're not one of those people, but you'd be surprised how many lighted windows I see after 5a.m.)

At 4 o'clock everything is very still. Traffic lights are blinking, morning radio isn't on yet, and one out of every three cars you pass will be a cop. Wendy's and Taco Bell are closed. Businesses have their overnight lights on - those lights that, for whatever reason, never get turned off. At the State Bank on 66th, there's an office in the back that always has the light on. There are ad posters, and some clothes hanging inside - promo stuff? - but I've never seen anybody in there...probably because it's 4 in the morning.

Anyone you happen to run into at that hour will be surprised to see you.

Here in Lubbock, in the middle of the night, the local ducks leave their ponds and wander the streets. I've come across ducks in the weirdest places...

If you stay out until 6, McDonald's and the grocery stores start to open, and people start looking outside to see if the paper's there. Breakfast options abound, because everything in the bakeries is first-thing-in-the-morning fresh, and there's usually a pot of just-brewed coffee somewhere.

If you're still out & about after that, and it's a weekend, you can probably find a few garage sales and get the good early-bird items.

Or you can do what I'm about to do - go home and go back to sleep.

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The Half-Blood Prince

Who is the Half-Blood Prince? Easy. I figured that out in the first quarter of the book.

What I still can't believe is how the dumb book ended.

I think this is definitely the best Harry Potter book yet. Up till now, Goblet Of Fire has been my favorite, and this one is as good, if not better - funny, witty, light-hearted even while dealing with the deadly issues of school, war, and teenagers in love. I read it in twelve hours, and loved it - except for the last two chapters.

How could she???

Stupid thing is, I think we all knew something like this was going to have to happen sooner or later. And if it had to had to happen, then it was done with all possible flair and grace. But I still can't believe it really ended like that...

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince does indeed provide a lot of answers to things we've been wondering about for a while now. But it raises as many new questions, and leaves a lot of things up in the air.

Was the locket really destroyed, or is it still out there? Who is R.A.B.? (My guess is Regellus Black) Was that really McGonagall talking of closing Hogwarts? Is Snape still playing at some weird, two-sided game, or was what he did really real? Will Harry go back to Hogwarts for his last term, and if not, what's in store for him? And when are Ron and Hermione ever going to come to their senses and get together?? What happened to Dumbledore? - that couldn't have been real, it just couldn't. It was too easy, too simple - Dumbledore had to've known, figured out some double-trick - something, something, isn't what it seems. It can't be...

Ms. Rowling, you better write that next book fast! Please, please, I don't think I can wait another two and a half years.

This post is dedicated to Jessica, Lindsay, Monica Q. and Shari - all my fellow Harry Potter fanatics.

If I Had A Band

Here are some ideas for what I'd like to call my band if I had one,
and what the title of the first album might be:

Drowned Wednesday - Don't Kill Kenny

Poppaveda - Blue Pearls

1415 - Going On Seventeen

Rudgepot - Moments Of Dyslexia

And if I sang by myself:

Halaylah - Call Me Hal

Bump in the night

So it was about 12:30, and we were...not asleep, but headed there. We were all curled up in bed, talking, nonsense (he was tickling me, if you must know, and I was trying to get him to stop - no small feat, as I've discovered to my dismay, because he's much bigger than me.)

Suddenly there was a crash, that sounded like it came from downstairs. We sat up - instant Red Alert. There was no other noise, but he had to go check it out just the same. Me, I'd have stayed motionless for a good twenty minutes, then crept over and closed the bedroom door and hid under the covers the rest of the night. I'd have gone downstairs in the morning to see what was gone or destroyed.

But that's me. He, being the man, was heading downstairs to see what was what. He told me to get in the other room, out of sight and nearer to the phone, should it be needed. What he was gonna do, I don't think either of us knew. When my sister hears a strange noise, she sits at the top of the stairs with a handgun, which she is perfectly capable of firing, and firing well. We, on the other hand, don't have so much as a baseball bat in the apartment.

So he's downstairs, checking it out, and I'm upstairs, praying and shaking and trying not to cry. After what seemed like forever, he calls up to me, "it's o.k." and I go downstairs...and there's nothing. Nobody was there, and we couldn't find anything that had fallen or was out of place in any way. We checked the doors and windows, made sure everything was in fact locked up tight, and headed back up to bed, baffled. I was just wondering if such a loud crash could possibly have come from next door, when he discovered my curling iron, which had slipped off its hook on the wall and fallen onto the bathroom counter, causing the "crash" that sent us into an intruder-alert panic!

• Practice Drill: check



• To Do: buy a baseball bat

Genus V

Joseph Stalin Catskills Napoleon Bonaparte Afghanistan Soviet Union Hippocrates Solidarity Rembrandt Watergate Zoot Suit Leningrad Notre Dame Spotted Owl Mount. St. Helens Russia New York Reggae Audubon Mah-Jongg John F. Kennedy Miami Jefferson Davis Nostradamus Nelson Mandela Japan Madonna Vietnam The Boston Strangler Devil’s Island Australia Dodo South Vietnam Nile Eiffel Tower Wounded Knee Fax Franklin D. Roosevelt Catherine The Great Buddy Holly Mao Zedong Antarctica Scud The Pyramids Aaron Burr The Red Baron Cuba William Shakespeare Compact Disk The Challenger Loch Ness Tiny Tim The Whig Party Cleopatra The Falklands Exorcism Godzilla Mardi Gras Geronimo Elizabeth II Alcatraz The Great Auk Aswan Grenada Kent State Humphrey Bogart Phi Beta Kappa Mona Lisa Statue Of Liberty Benjamin Franklin Earth Day Amish Titanic Marie Curie Bastille Scotland Yard Rasputin Leonardo Da Vinci Marlene Dietrich Gemini Kentucky Derby John Wilkes Booth Ultrasound Christopher Columbus George Armstrong Custer Apollo Whales Bible Pyramids Malaria Babylon Geneva Martini Olympics Sing Sing 1776 Jesse James Cyrano De Bergerac Julius Caesar La Marseillaise John Belushi Polyester Ozone Catacombs Oscar Wilde Bazooka Cricket James Dean Shanghai French Revolution Hollywood First Amendment Ellis Island LSD Mohave Desert Casanova Croissant Hair Merry-Go-Round Charlie Chaplin

On The Road Again

Well, once again everything I own is packed in boxes, and the U-Haul is loaded up and ready to go.

I wonder, how many times have I moved since I started this weblog, fifteen months ago? Let's see...I was at Catalpa, then I went to Beaver Run, got kicked out of there (not bitter not bitter not bitter) went to Portrush, then here to NM, and now I'm moving back to my hometown. Back to Texas - yay!

So, four moves in a little over a year...five, if you count the hotel room where I "lived" for three days, after Beaver Run and before Portrush. It feels like more than that. And here's hoping this will be the last one, for a while anyway.

The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate

Do you have any idea what it's like to be obsessed with something for four years...and then to get it?

I'm not complaining - I'm not one of those who gets what they've always wanted, only to find they don't want it anymore. It's just a little hard to believe, that's all.

I keep expecting somebody to show up and tell me there's been a mistake - you don't just get what you want this easily.

Some middle-aged guy, short and balding, in a cheap brown suit with a clipboard.

"I'm sorry, there's been a slight mix-up...completely our fault...but you see, the 'Happily Ever After With The Man Of Your Dreams' prize package was actually won by a Mrs. Sarah Reide of Newark, New Jersey."

"Your name was drawn for our 'Chocolate Cheesecake Fantasia' prize, featuring a lifetime's supply of Godiva's Chocolate Cheesecake ice cream, which you registered for at a supermarket two years ago."

And then he looks down at his clipboard, fidgets a bit, and h-hems nervously.

"Unfortunately, they've stopped making that particular ice cream..."

No Onions!

I used to work at a sandwich shop. It was in a small town, and sometimes - to emphasize the importance of getting every order right - my boss used to say "There's two people in this town who, if they touch an onion, they die...and one of them is a doctor."

Um...how did they know? I mean it's not like, if I get around cats my eyes start itching, or if I eat avocados, I break out in a rash.