roll on buddy

First class in graduate level statistics. This class will be a challenge for me. I have a lot to do. I am glad I have new shoes. Balmy and stormy today, like April. Global climate change. I am also taking design II, in which we plan to develop the railroad corridor that runs through town. Exciting stuff.

Surely someone has done this joke...

I lived most of my life in a state that has a primary in May. By the time we got to vote, the winner was already determined. It sort of ticked me off, in the abstract anyway, that we never got to pick the nominee. Now that I have moved to Mississippi, well...things are pretty much the same as they were in North Carolina. Nobody campaigns here in the winter. But now I look at what those poor people in Iowa and New Hampshire are going through and I'm kind of glad that things are the way they are. All I can say about the primaries now is that the fact that RuPaul is running really says a lot about how far we have come as a country. I am just a little surprised she is running as a Republican, I mean, I thought she would be one of us...

movies

Waterhorse: Surprise: it didn't suck. Great costumes and scenery: a castle by a Scottish loch. Classic tale about a boy and his secret pet that the grown-ups all consider to be a monster. Saw it on the big screen today with my fidgety boys.

Arsenic and Old Lace: clever script and great physical comedy. Franz Capra and Cary Grant, 1944. I think Michael Richards took some of Cary Grant's interpretation of Mortimer Brewster for his Kramer character. A scrumptious Halloween treat. A spooky, Karloff-esque character, some Irish cops, some sweet old Brooklyn sisters. Nothing like seeing a beautiful blond in a graveyard with the Brooklyn bridge in the background, streetcars rolling behind her and leaves falling all around. In classic black and white.

Daimen Icker

Daimen Icker sits at the black table in the bay window with his Mississippi topo atlas, scribbled notes and laptop perusing the scanned pages of the ancient land office records while the dog scratches and half-naked children with magic marker painted faces scurry about in the chilly air. A walk around the block, a jog around the playground, stabs of pain, forty push ups, no chin ups, Daimen Icker feels old. He collects samples for the eyeclops back at the house, a toy magnifier that projects an image increased 200x onto the television screen. Delighted to find a pair of tiny mite-like creatures in a piece of moldy wood, he returns to his ant-like tasks. Now it is dark.

Christmas at the beach

Well I am back home after a lovely Christmas in a cottage on the Carolina Coast. We had some lazy days, built some sand castles, went on walks, drank stingers, watched the dog run on the beach, and hung out with Mrs. Icker's brothers and parents. Santy Clause came, praise God, and we ate a big dinner. We had the whole beach pretty much to ourselves and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Driving back and forth across three states with two kids and a dog in a 'Coma was a hoot, my lumbar section was surprisingly tolerant of the abuse. We got back into town on Sunday and had some friends over for dinner Monday night, New Year's eve, although nobody stuck around for midnight. I watched the ball descend on the television but got a little freaked out by Dick Clark and turned it off. On Monday I watched the movie Tommy, starring Roger Daltry and Ann Margeret, for the first time. It struck me how thoroughly fascinated I was with that story and the 1969 Who album at the age of eleven. Heavy, heavy stuff. That, "Horses," and "Sgt. Pepper" helped put me together back in the day. I'm glad I never saw the movie. But I have grown, of course, and moved on. My New Year's resolutions:

1. Six-pack abs
2. Get the compost pile going again
3. Figure out ants
4. Draw gooder

But right now it is time to get back to work on my prairie research.