We went down to Louie’s Backyard BBQ last night for a beer and some pool, but Tuesday nights are league nights, so we weren’t allowed to play. I ordered a beer for myself - $1.50 Yuengling draft, not bad, not bad - and a tall water for S., and we sat back and watched two women play two games which lasted at least half-an-hour. Never have we seen so many mullets of so many shapes and colors. It were indeed a sight to behold. I don’t think the Mullet Festival even has quite that many mullets in such a small space.

At any rate the excursion was largely a bore, though I was slightly amused to overhear a conversation about Willie Nelson that included a statement something like this: “I’m not a pothead - I mean, I never touch that s***, but if I had an opportunity to smoke marijuana with a legend, you know I’d be like ‘Gimme that bong! Puffffff!’”

I’ve developed a water addiction, somehow.

The baby’s registeries are finished and up at:

Target
Baby Style
Babies’R'Us

Our orchid decided to die last night, though that isn’t entirely true. The four blooms, which were in their height of regality, chose to wilt at the same time, as if in protest to the broken air conditioner, Michael Bolton’s nomination, or perhaps in deference to Cannes, what-have-you. However, I should think heat wouldn’t be an obstacle for orchids. Just poachers, screenwriters, and journalists.

The night before last N. and I were hanging out on the couch after supper — myself staring at the ceiling and he reading an article in The Atlantic — and the baby started to jump around with much gusto. I eventually noted how rhythmic and centred its kicks were and pointed it out to N. who was quite bemused. We decided that we must immediately buy the infant a percussion set that he might get an early start. A few minutes later I realised it was our baby’s first case of the hiccups. Hic c u p. Hiccccuuuppp. 27 weeks 5 days.

Saw this new, electronic side project of David Bazan’s reviewed the other day on Pitchfork. Hadn’t, I don’t think, really heard anything about it until reading this, although I’m pretty sure I heard Pedro the Lion perform a number of these songs at First Ave last spring.

N.’s sister graduates from Rocky Bayou’s high school tonight. Congratulations to her.

My father bought us a Baby Jogger. It arrived in the mail a couple days ago. It’s pretty neat.

I’m currently reading Salman Rushdie’s Fury. It’s pretty great so far. Postmodern absurdism hiding somewhere in New York City in the months before September 11. Somewhat in the vein of White Noise and DeLillo’s other pop culture oriented absurdist works.

Our Roma tomatoes are almost ripe. Much excitement.

We watched The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy last night and then went down the block to Bluepoint Fish Club to have a drink. The movie was humorous enough, but it ended up being more cute than I imagined it would be. I guess it’s hard to turn nonsense into a Disney blockbuster.

The drink was a bottle of Evolution from Sokol Blosser Winery of Oregon. It was tremendously fruity, more than we cared for. We sipped on it for an hour or so before some friends of ours arrived. Some topics of conversation with said friends were the now-defunct band twothirtyeight - in my opinion the local music scene lived and died with this band, but a lot of my high school friends that are still in this music scene would probably slap me for saying that - and James Gustafson’s Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective. Chris Staples, the lead singer of twothirtyeight is now in Seattle with a solo project called Discover America. I’ve only listened to a couple of his new songs, but they’re not bad. Gustafson was proposed to us a Reformed thinker, but I doubt that seriously. I guess if you believe in the sovereignty of God, you’re Reformed to a lot of people. He sounded more like a determinist - a theo-fatalist, but I don’t know, since I had not heard of him before last night. Does anyone know of him?

The men’s prayer breakfast at Trinity Pres. is reading and discussing The Man God Mastered, a biography of Jean Calvin, by Jean Cadier. Previously, we’d been studying a biography of Luther, and I believe that next we’ll be studying a biography of Knox - a rather limited list of Reformers, but immensely helpful nonetheless. It’s so much easier to understand the doctrines that have shaped the Reformed church when one can understand the situation from which they arose. Being able to look at the letters of men has always been of great benefit to me as well - I guess that I don’t pick up on themes in literature as well as I ought (this is probably because I am usually a skimmer), so being able to read apologies by the authors is quite nice. At any rate, though this particular biography is somewhat lost in translation - a number of sources are purposefully left out, the translator tried to soften the scholarly feel of the book, etc. - I highly recommend reading biographies of men like Calvin and Luther.

On a side note, another biography that I found worthwhile was The Education of James Madison, which I mentioned a couple years ago here. Does anyone have a biography that they’ve read which really chanegd their opinion of an historical figure or changed their point of view on a subject - not as easy as that gun on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.