Wanting Some

The month of April which has been surreptitiously inserted into May continued unabated with another day of rain and gloominess. It was almost like being transported back to Frankfurt, Germany where a clear day (a truly rare occurrence) was reason to celebrate. The only good news concerning the soaking is the emergence of the grass seed I planted a couple weeks ago to repair the “Buddy spots” in the back lawn. Those spots are now jealously guarded by whatever lawn furniture I could muster to keep him away from them. I also get him psyched up before I open the door intimating either a squirrel or rabbit is in the back yard. He immediately charges out and heads uphill away from the spots.

California Girls out on the Town

I got to spend some more quality time on the computer yesterday with a couple FaceTime calls with my three California ladies. My granddaughter continues to develop at disconcerting speed. She’s crawling as soon as she’s put on the floor and this means expanding her play area. Her grandmother, AKA the Favorite Panamanian, is reveling in the time she gets to spend with her granddaughter. Last night all three went out to eat and the littlest one behaved perfectly. My wife says she’s inherited her grandmother’s interest in all things, a real little busybody. Whenever they go out she’s immensely curious about everything, especially other people’s conversations.

Son Will Tear Himself Away from Riggins for a Couple Hours

I also spoke shortly with my Favorite Son who reports he will be down to Worcester on Saturday to pick up his Christmas present. I’m jealous he’s the one that gets to ride around on a lawn mower now. The new house doesn’t have enough back lawn to justify one – one of the true selling points – but I strangely miss those interludes.

I went to see Everybody Wants Some last night which another in Richard Linklater’s movie odes to his youth. It’s advertised as the spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused as a completely new set of characters move from high school to college in the early 1980s. That was close enough to my own experience to have a lot of nostalgia come raining down. The story follows a freshman showing up to college and as a baseball recruit falling in with the other inhabitants of the team at an off campus house. There isn’t any high drama or cheap stereotypes (although there are a lot of types) just a lot of well-defined and interesting characters. The film is also an insightful look into that time where everybody is trying to figure out where they’re headed in life, often without a clue. That certainly struck a note with me. Linklater does a superb job in making the ordinary seem extraordinary, which is what makes his movies so interesting and incredibly funny. I saw the ghosts of a lot of my old fraternity brothers haunting the story.