My parents have a friend who's in his eighties, and he went to prep schoool with my (now deceased) granddad. His name is Bob and he still works out on his rig every day, even though he's old as sin and richer than forty acres of garlic. He came to church with his boots all muddy from the oil rig and my dad showed Bob his class picture from my granddad's yearbook where he's looking all dapper and studly. Bob said "Now there's something that's gone all to hell, hadn't it?" Oh, I love the funny old men.

My mom has a wooden sign in the entryway (foyer, whatever you call it) that says ANGEL COLLECTOR on it. Cracks me up. She actually has really good taste, very French-country, with a tiny tiny bit of American-hick-country thrown in, like wooden pineapples that say WELCOME on them and stencilled houses in country blue on the walls. She got out of the pineapple and stencil stage a long time ago though, the only remnant is pretty much that ANGEL COLLECTOR sign. She doesn't even collect angels, that's the funniest part. They bought this house two years ago and used the equity from their old house to totally gut and redo it, and it's gorgeous and perfect and I feel like I'm in the lap o' luxury. The doors and faucets and molding and everything are new and gorgeous and there's indirect lighting everywhere. I feel like I'm at a spa a little bit. Too bad they're so politically charged or it actually might be downright pleasant visiting here. Just kidding, it's actually not too bad this visit. When they were remodeling she picked the deepest bathtub she could find and it's insulated on the bottom so the water doesn't get cold. It's heaven, I tell you! Heaven! Last night I lay in bed watching Hope Floats while going to sleep. Why didn't I get to have cable and a VCR in my room when I lived here, huh? Am I being a brat? Probably.

Let me talk about Sonic. They don't have them in Seattle, I've only seen them in Texas, but they run the ads in Seattle to tantalize me. It's the best fast food place. Best because it has lemon-berry slushes, which are frozen lemonade with strawberry syrup and big huge sweet strawberries stirred in. OH MAH WORD. And they have country fried steak sandwiches on texas toast with country gravy. And they have breakfast sandwiches that involve the texas toast, lots o' butter, perfect amount of frying, scrambled eggs and bacon. All in one. Why can't McDonald's make those? They beat the Egg McMuffin all to hell.