circle

there was a baby shower/blessingway here yesterday. in the middle of the rainiest day in the past 6 months. onesies were decorated, the 4 directions were called, inspirational cards were shared, champagne was drink drank drunk, babies were fed, wigs were worn, flowers were everywhere, lemon pound cake was eaten, the strength of michelle was reinforced and celebrated.

moose humping mailbox

thank you animal planet

meditation and mantra

"may loving kindness come upon all things"

instead of screaming inside my head about things out of my control that i don't want to do, i've tried to repeat this sentence.

"may loving kindness come upon all things"

i'm not great at it, but the more i do it the better it will work.

here's another one:

'I sit down and say, and I run all my friends and relatives and enemies one by one in this, without entertaining any angers or gratitudes or anything, and I say, like 'Japhy Ryder, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha,' then I run on, say to 'David O. Selznick, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha' though I don't use names like David O. Selznick, just people I know because when I say the words 'equally a coming Buddha' I want to be thinking of their eyes, like you take Morley, his blue eyes behind those glasses, when you think 'equally a coming Buddha' you think of those eyes and you really do suddenly see the true secret serenity and the truth of his coming Buddhahood. Then you think of your enemy's eyes.'

dharma bums jack kerouac

with friends like these

who needs facebook?

i guess they're just kidding, but still.  taking playground teasing to a widespread public level.

camelback eli

this is turning into a dog blog, but what the hell. i love dogs!

kevin & eli have a trick where kevin squeezes the nozzle of the camelback water hose and eli opens his mouth and drinks the water. so he doesn't need a bowl while hiking. it's a great trick. nacho doesn't get it - he puts his head down and water spills all over him and he remains thirsty.

we hiked yesterday in pisgah national forest to john's rock which is a boulder outcropping on top of the world. the camelback hose wasn't spraying right so this is some next level shit.

nacho doggy

time makes you bolder, even children get older, i'm getting older too.

i've really noticed in the last month that nacho is aging. i thought he'd always look like a puppy, but now his face is getting whiter and something about his eyes are getting droopy. just when i thought he couldn't possibly look any funnier, he goes and looks even more like a nitwit dog. all 55 lbs of him will climb in anybody's lap, and when he greets strangers on the street he puts his ears way back and shakes his entire caboose. he's a good boy. i just wish he could freeze at 3 years old.

 

shrimp & grits

we had a dinner party last night & it was very much fun.

it started with 5 pounds of frozen panama bay shrimp from our good friend bob at shrimppeople.com.

kevin shrimp pierred them up.

i made jalapeno cheese grits.

audra brought fabulously fresh white hydrangeas.


lindsay and josh brought farm and sparrow seeded bread - i've never had better tasting bread.

michelle brought an amazing homecooked handpicked fall fruit crisp.


joey and paige brought the funk.


everybody brought their dogs.

got a text message this morning - "Sorry about the panties in your yard."


success!

too hot picnic table

pot holders, man.

send us money, we'll send cassettes

man's best friend

où sont les neiges d'antan?

magic hour

ladies love cool nachodoggy

san diego 2005. tilly the wheaten terrier. or wheaten terrorizer. she was only 7 weeks old.

congratulations MOM

my MOM won the club championship this weekend in her flight! in a playoff on the 19th hole. how clutch is that?!

this is a major lesson in facing your fears and conquering them. she had never played golf before and was discouraged when she picked up the game 10 years ago and was whiffing and hitting sideways, and now she is so consistent, she hits every fairway and has a ball playing with her friends and WINS CLUB CHAMPIONSHIPS!

GO MOM!

bluebells

i had a great labor day weekend in breckenridge colorado.

the weather could not have been nicer - full sun and high 60's.

went on some great hikes - this is from the black powder pass trail in the rockies. it was above the tree line and had outstanding vistas and made my lungs burn but in a good way.

walked around the amazingly beautiful breckenridge golf course and got taken into custody on the 6th green by an overeager player's assistant. it was the closest i've ever been to being arrested. i was soon freed from golf prison and had to ride around the rest of the holes in a cart. i found a dozen balls in the grass along the fairways.

met a super nice yellow lab named pivo. i wanted to dognap him.

played a bunch of ipad scrabble, and a game of real life scrabble in teams. badly lost the ipad games, we soundly won the real life one.

hung out with an incredibly kind and generous family i am lucky to know, including a really sweet 3 year old named piper. how cute is that name?

glad to be back safely in asheville with nacho & eli & cooler fallish weather on the way.

 

the call to adventure

The call to adventure signifies that destiny
has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual
center of gravity from within the pale of this society
to a zone unknown. This fateful region
of both treasure and danger may be variously
represented as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom
underground, beneath the waves or above the sky,
a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state;
but it is always a place of strangely fluid
and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments,
superhuman deeds, and impossible delights.

-Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

tighty whities wipeout

went to the asheville tourists game last night downtown at mccormick field. it's a sweet old field, and the bleachers are shaded and they have great ballpark food and it's good people watching and the tourists usually score every inning i've seen.

after what seems like every out they have little contests for people to win prizes like trivia, or little kids chase the teddy bear mascot around a car sponsored by local business. it's a lot of advertising, but the kids seem to like it.

this was one of the contests - 3 kids fit themselves into a giant pair of tighty whitie underwear and race down to the outfield and back. the kids in white tumbled and rolled around the whole time. kids in red won easily.