November 18th. The week heading into American Thanksgiving. I am going to keep my eyes peeled, because apparently Christmas pops up immediately after thanksgiving and I want to experience it. Lots of walks and looking around at houses. America, America. Well, I have something special to share with you. Something unique to this city perhaps. I am not sure. Perhaps unique to cities with a whole lot of leafy trees. What are those called? Deciduous or Carnivorous - I can never remember. Heh heh. Anyway. I awoke yesturday morning to the strangest thing. Piles of leaves at every intersection in the suburbs. Like huge piles. My roomate was tempted to just drive her car straight into it. I wish she would have.
We could have video'd it and won huge prizes on stupid videos.com. Oh well. our 15 seconds of fame will have to be for something else. Too bad. the funny thing about these piles is that people rake their yards and place their piles on the side of the road. They're not supposed to, but they do. Technically the tractors are only supposed to pick up "that which has fallen onto public thoroughfares as a natural result of the change of the seasons" as they say. However, what has fallen from trees into yards and onto roofs is swiftly gathered and placed in the gutter in hopes that the city will gather this and overlook the . . . unnatural process by which it was placed onto the roadspace. By the way, they call major thoroughfares "arterioles." I know it makes sense, but we don't say that do we?
Anyway. I found it quite fascinating. Bobcats and trucks were working well into the night. If they could tell that people or lawncare businesses put piles deliberately out on the road then they ignored the piles. However, the more sneaky people were fine. We discussed taking the 27 bags of 6 inch pine needles and driving all over town in the van and depositing our refuse in small increments so as to be sly and yet successful. Hmm. Last time it was cheating and this time it is . . . oh cheating the system. The things you learn about people when they go away, huh.
What else can I say. Life is good and treating me well. Our church participated in an all city 24 hour worship deal and so this morning at 4 am a bunch of us went to a central church and worshiped and prayed for 3 hours. I have got to tell you that i do find those hours to be ungodly, and thus, encountering God during ungodly hours was, well let us just say that it was quite difficult to conquer myself and engage in the festivities thereof. After about 1 1/2 hours and 2 trips to the bathroom I gave myself a thorough talking to and decided that if I am going to get up at such a ridiculous hour it will not be for nothing. So I jumped in with all of me, ignored my aggressively drowsy predisposition and sang loud and prayed. Whew. I came home and slept until noon. It is amazing how unco-operative I was with myself. We watched the sun rise and awakened the dawn. We were the psalmists this morning. That's saying something ( which is a funny thing to say, because that's saying . . . what exactly.. sort of a strange way to end something that you said by saying that what you said was saying something. Duh. Just thought I'd share. which, by the way is another strange thing to say, because you know I just shared. what on earth do I think I am helping you with when I tell you that i thought I'd share what i just shared. Isn't it rather self evident?)
I think it is time for bed. Big Saturday night. Played guitar. Played "Speed" with Maggie. Notice i said "played" not "did speed." And then a bunch more of us and a roomie played Scattergories. I think I won but the kids had to run off to pick up brother from the airport, so I didn't mention my score. I will just sleep with a smile on my face tonight knowing that despite the fact that my worth is not based on my performance, well, I sure had a great performance and it's worth smiling about. I will, however, admit that Maggie probably beat me in Speed. We didn't really keep track, but I do believe I lost more times than I won.
Tomorrow a roomate and i are going to ask a bazillion people to give a one word synopsis of their city and then we'll take their picture. It's for her art project. She doesn't want to go by herself. I figure that will help me not be such a scaredy pants and maybe we'll come up with some good stories of interesting people we were able to encounter. you never know do you? Well, I am trying to give you a taste of life here. How am I doing? Sort of get you here without you actually being able to be here. So by the way, that's the couch I was sitting on writing my blog. It's in the living room of our wee little female community of five. Our women's dorm. Our Doll house. Our .. uh, house.
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love ya friend
Jamie