So I made red sugar water and hung it outside. Hours later, a tiny bird visits. He loves the red stuff. He tells his friends, and within days we’ve got a wee flock. They’re cute and quick. I begin to get attached. I imagine they are developing a deep sense of gratitude and affection toward me. I consider naming them. Joy was generally zipping around my backyard and my heart, until about 3 hours ago when they tried to murder me.

I go out to check the feeder and see that it’s empty, and then I see him: One tiny bird on a wire giving me the eye, and beeping menacingly at me (they beep, honestly). When I return with more red juice, he’s gone, so I stand on a chair to reach for the feeder, when two hummingbirds zip out of a bush 1.5 feet from my face and try to gouge out my eyes. I scream like a girl, wave my hands spastically, and almost fall off a chair. These birds are saying I should hurry, and I’m gonna pay if I don’t. Even after the refill is done, they zip around me and dart at me, like this is their turf and I should think twice before I steal any of their nasty red slop (which I made for them). Ungrateful little humming ingrates.

Imagine my surprise when my late model Camry (which belches no fumes o’ death) was filled with the mouthwatering scent of beef. If one were to ask at that point, “Where’s the beef?” I might have been tempted to look for a charbroiler in my backseat. Instead, I look to the left, at the local Burger King, which I am considering may be responsible for the waft of deliciousness, and say (and I quote), “Why is it hamburgers in here?” And Paul replies, “Biodiesel.”

The gentleman driving the Merc (as the Brits say) has taken off and is driving a cool 55 down Florence, so we hurry up and tailgate him. Sure enough, dude is running his car on a cocktail of french fry and burger drippings. I think about embarking on a long internal monologue about how this overweight, middle-aged hippie finds, what I understand to be, the extensive time and energy to turn his crap-bucket of a car into an earth friendly beef-burner, but I decide to enjoy the aroma instead.

Where’s the beef? In that guy’s gas tank.

I would like to make a few observations on the importance of alone time. Number one, it’s important. Number two, I’ve been doing a lot of it lately. Spending time alone is right behind oxygen and chocolate in terms of things necessary to my survival. That’s it.

I’m not sure why, but riding a bike permits one to be friendly and outgoing in a way that is not otherwise socially permissible. Riding a bike makes it absolutely okay to smile and wave to pedestrians and people hanging out in their front yards. Riding a bike makes you instant friends with other people riding their bikes. If you’re just out walking and you pass somebody else who’s just walking, you don’t ring bells at each other and greet one another with cheerful abandon, but on a bike it’s totally acceptable. Riding a bike also makes it totally okay to enjoy yourself like it’s 1999, or some other year when you were younger and more carefree. Thank God for summer.

We’re back in Downey, but not actually moved in. House ready in about two weeks.

Last round of dissertation edits about to be completed, and will in fact be completed sometime this week if they stop trying to murder me with their heinousness. Let me know if you want a bound copy, which should run about $65. On second thought, you can just have my copy.

Off for a bike ride, if it’s cooled off into the low 100’s finally. Not sure to where. I’ve got a lock for bike now, and the world is my 2-wheeled-vehicle-accessible oyster.

I’m sharing an office with a coworker the other day when I turn and look at her computer screen, and her gmail page is displaying an email from Danielle Ferrulli. I check to make sure my computer didn’t get somehow transported to her desk, reassure myself there is likely to be only one Danielle Ferrulli in the world, and then recall that my coworker is an ASU grad. And for a moment I had that weird the-universe-is-tiny feeling, and then I remembered how much I miss the Ferrullis. So Mike, enjoy the trip and may the power, grace and love of the Spirit of the Most Holy God be lavished upon you so that your work may be to His glory. We pray for your openness to learn and a safe return.

Anyway, Sunday is unpack-the-moving-truck-at-a-storage-facility-day if anyone wants to come party it up. Any by party it up, I mean move heavy boxes.

We’re moving. Again. I just started packing and have already run out of (a meager supply of) boxes due to the enormous number of books I own. Damn books. They are a labor of love.

We’ll be in town this weekend, and then back to SD for more packing, and finally moving on the 12th. Just in case you were wondering, we are desperate for assistance. It took me two weeks with help to pack up all this crap last time. Now I’m trying to do it alone in one week.

Which means today is also essentially the last day of my graduate school career. Which is nice, but I don’t want to think about it too much or I’m fairly certain I’d give even these final few paltry hours the finger and go to the beach.

I will then begin celebrating my new freedom by packing (always a pleasure) and perhaps a surf morning on Sunday (may even get my lazy behind wet this time).