When the earthquake hit the other day, I was eating dollar tacos with my co-workers.  Boss’s birthday.  All we noticed was the table moved a little and Doug thought Bill pushed it and Bill thought Doug pushed it back.  A few minutes later we found out what happened.  The president messaged us to let us know the college would be open.  I couldn’t imagine anybody thinking otherwise.  We live in the mildest of places.  It made me mad to think about Haiti and people dialing up the college wondering if school would be open.  Good gosh.

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One of my favorite lines on Andy Griffith is when Barney’s cousin Virgil comes to visit from New Jersey.  Virgil explains how he was gonna send Barney a funny postcard with crab on it that says “Things are really bitin’ down here.”  Andy forces a laugh and then says, “I always love a good crab joke.”

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Yesterday evening, I got struck with the malaise.  It had to do with the dirty dishes and the dog hair and ever-present stuff Edie manages to scatter in a day.  The fact that these things gave me the malaise was the problem, not the existence of those things.  We went for a walk.  It was a quiet one, up Oak to the Coliseum, passed a couple people, the little man with the thick little eyeglasses and the little dog.  He’s a nice fella.  I like it when folks in their fifties and sixties wear Chucks.  And the dusty corner dog ran out and greeted us.  And Kelly and the fake Chope who was out of the fence for the first time and sporting a new hair cut.

The old lady across the street died a little over a month ago.  All her things ended up on the porch and the curb.  Folks picked over all of it.  She told me one day she had twenty-seven grandchildren.  It was one of her great-grandchildren who used to stand in the yard and holler at me, You like Spongebob? 

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