Do you smell in color?

Last night I had one of those dreams that was such a relief to wake up from. What's funny is that I keep having these moments of "oh no!" and then I remember oh yeah, it was just a dream.
Okay, enough build up, here's the dream:
I was visiting a friend who lives out of town and I was meeting new people. Everything was going great. So, I moved there. And I'm hanging out with some of my new friends and one of them says, "Oh Shad, I'm sorry, but you do not smell good today."
I said, "Oh no! Is it bad?"
Another new 'friend' pipes in, "Yeah, it's worse than usual."
"Than usual?"
"Yeah, I'd say it's probably... twice," he looks to the others in askance "as bad?"
They all shrug and nod.
I apologize again and leave.
And then I woke up...
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It must be found.
Maybe the movie The 5th Element, wasn't so far fetched. Well, okay, the movie itself probably was but I just read an interesting article about an inkjet printer that makes human skin. Just put in the DNA sample and presto. They say some day bones and organs may be possible too.
I'm thinking (hoping?) this technology could give mail-order bride a whole new meaning.

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Now that I look at this, I guess it's kind of strange that my "crazy dream" is about me smelling bad, and my look at what's going on in the real world is about using a printer to make a new person.

California Trip: There is a family in California that has somehow managed to be perfect. We got to stay with them this summer. Left to Right: Marcella, Sharon (my sister), Audrey (Marcella's twin sister), an me (no one's sister, but my sister's brother).

What Dad said about Banza...

So, I asked my dad about the paper with the message from Banza Kane on it. He looked at me kind of sharply and like he was confused. And said, "Where did you find that?"
"I was looking for that old bat Will gave me, and found it in an old Bible of yours."
"Wow, I haven't thought about that in a long time."
"Where did it come from?"
"Oh, it's nothing. Your uncle Mark and I were thinking about writing book about a vampire hunter, and he wrote that to get us motivated. We never ended up doing it though, too bad."
"Yeah," I said, maybe a little disappointed, "That would have been pretty cool."
I went and saw the movie Sideways with my friend that night (last night), as I was walking out the door I noticed my dad get up from the sofa and head towards the garage (where the attic entrance is, where the piece of paper was...).
He only acted a little off-balance. Just enough for me, and all of my bored, wishful thinking, to wonder if there isn't something else to his story.
Oh, well. Probably NBD.
I enjoyed Sideways. My friend likened it to wine (for those of you who don't know, wine is an integral part of the plot), how the story had so much history, sweetness, bitterness, hope, anticipation (you might need to see one of the character's description of why she likes wine, to understand). I thought that was a very cool parallel to draw, and I felt a little silly for not drawing it myself.

Pics make blogging a 100Xs more fun!

So, my beautiful sister is super model material. I'm having doubts about posting this on the www. Oh well, I'm not mentioning any names. I wonder if this image belongs to anyone other than her... I hope this is legal.

Shark!

Another pic from aquarium day with "alisa". This Jaws doesn't look like he's just 16 inches here does he?

My beautiful friend (let's call her) alisa (for the sake of the world wide web) took me to the aquarium to play with my new digital cam... Don't you think she looks like Maggie Gyllenhaal here?

Oh, nevermind...

I guess it was the blog itself that was tightlipped. Now it's posted as one of those cool thumbnails I was wanting (apparently that's automatic (and a little delayed)). I wish they would make a magic button that could erase a previous blog, then I could just delete my ignorance. Oh, I guess they have that too...
(just kidding, I guess I'm just hungry for words to fill these entries).

Bummer...

I wanted this picture to be one of those cool thumbnails by my profile info (before you actually have to click on my profile). But it's only on my profile after you click to see my full profile. If I could avoid having a picture of myself being an entry, that would be cool too. But the help menus are a little tightlipped.

So serious. This'll be a good profile pic.


I'm going to start hiding pics in the archives to use for my profile. That way I don't have to dedicate an entire new entry to a pic that you'll see everytime you visit for a while anyway.


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Stumbled onto...

Here's a question:
Do you ever find yourself reminiscing about some happy time in your life, and in the memory you have some object (like a toy or gadget or maybe some article of clothing) and you think, Where is that thing?

Well, I had that happen to me yesterday.

I was thinking about a time when we were visiting my cousins (those are always good memories for me) in Amarillo (actually outside of a small town outside of Amarillo) and I was playing with a miniature baseball bat my cousin, Will, made for me.

He was always making/fixing/inventing things. When he was 16 he completely dismantled and rebuilt the engine of his S-10, by himself. Handy guy. Anyway, I think he'd probably just made the bat for fun and then off-handedly decided to let me have it, but I thought it was the greatest thing ever.

I thought so for many reasons. Namely:
1) Will was several years older, very cool, and one of few on my idol-list. Anything from him was a treasure.
2) The bat was crafted by the greatest craftsman in my world. A much sought-after relic entrusted solely into my care.
3) It was just over 2 feet long, so I could easily wield it one-handed. So I rarely associated it with baseball, it was my weapon of choice for defending my sisters from trolls, ninjas, and hot lava (I don't remember how I used it to defy lava, but I do remember lava being a constant adversary and I couldn't have survived without my bat).

So, I was sitting back remembering one of those good times and remembering the feel of that bat in my hand, wishing it was back in my hand. And I couldn't, for the life of me, remember what ever happened to that thing?

I couldn't even remember the transition from playing with that bat to some other toy. It was just gone from my mind. It scared me that something so precious to me could have so easily been tossed aside and forgotten. And that it might be gone forever.

It might've been thrown out during one of my dad's many (and for the most part ineffective) attempts to "finally turn that garage into something other than a storage dump!" But I had to know. So, I went to work to find my old bat.

I started up in the attic where I knew there were a lot of boxes and a couple of trunks that weren't usually involved in one of the garage rearranging events. (I usually resented that "rearranging" was all we really ended up accomplishing after so much work, but yesterday, all my hope hung on the possibility that my bat may have only been shuffled around and not disposed of.)

Here's a question:
Have you ever started going through old boxes, looking for something specific, and ended up letting yourself get carried away with different curiosities and interesting finds along the way?

Well, I had that happen to me yesterday.

I got so caught up in looking at my mom and dad's old stuff that... I sort of forgot about my bat.

I still haven't found it, but I don't care so much right now. I stumbled onto something that was a little more interesting.

Stuffed into a very old Bible of my dads (maybe older than him), was a yellow, wrinkled, slightly torn at the edges, piece of paper. Only one side has any writing on it.

It reads:

If you’'re reading this, then you’'re probably thinking that it’'s already too late.
You're wrong.
I still don't know much, but I know so much more than I did when I got involved. I've learned things that could give us a chance. And, hopefully, as I learn more I will be able to pass that information along as well.
Some of the things you’'ve heard and some of the things you’'ve read aren’'t strictly fairytales.
I don'’t think anyone is really trying to keep them a secret, but I think they enjoy that people only know what they'’ve seen in movies, read in books, or heard in stories. It gives them a chance to be more frightening and seem stronger than, I think, they really are.
I'm sorry, I know this is vague. If you don'’t understand anything else you read here please understand this:
You can fight them. You can beat them. They can be killed.

My name is Banza Kane, and I'’m a vampire hunter.

Yeah, bat shmat. I'm going to go talk to my dad.

Everybody says something stupid the first time.

That's what she said to me right before my very first kiss. She was right. I thought it would probably be true of a first blog as well.

After sitting here for about 5 minutes trying to figure out a clever "intoductory type" explanation of my ascent into blogland, the best I can do is:
All my friends were doing it.
Baa.
Did anyone else actually read through the Terms of Service when they signed up?
Near the end it reads:
(e) IF YOU HAVE READ THIS FAR THEN YOUR EYES PROBABLY HURT. ALL CAPS, WHAT WERE WE THINKING?
Isn't it funny that you can't anticipate when you're going to feel like a shmoe? I didn't plan on actually reading it, I guess I got distracted (from my plan to skim) and inadvertently got sucked in. I'll have to watch out for those gripping TOS's from now on.

Well, I bet most people start blogging because they have something to say. Not me, I started a blog because I don't have anything to say and I wondered if this would help. (Apparently I don't believe in that whole "cart before the horse" thing either).

Alright, that's all.
Until next time.