I really wasn't kidding when I said that I had a backlog of pictures. This should just about catch me up, except for the goofy vacation pictures.

I have to wonder if Pla-Mor Lanes loves or hates us. We're loud, we're really loud, we don't take our bowling seriously…but we're incredibly profitable for them. After all, we buy beer. So here's snippets of our typical Thursday night madness:

Lots of balls?
by domesticat.
(images link to larger versions on flickr -- or see the full photoset)

Flickr
Chris Frost getting his wondergeek kiss.

Flickr Flickr
Geof can do both floor bowling and sumo bowling.

Flickr
This is a typical group picture.

Flickr
I cannot explain Heather's nor Jessica's expressions in this picture.

Flickr
Nor Sean's in this one.

Flickr
Bowling inspires munchies.

After returning home in the early afternoon from a quick shopping trip with Kat, I came home to find a business card shoved in our door. It was a card from the Athens Police Department, with a handwritten note on the back that said, "Please call," and gave his direct line.

Now, granted, I'm a good little law-abiding citizen, but the first thing that popped into my head was, "Wait. Even if I had been bad, I haven't been through Athens in months!"So, I returned the call and got the bane of current-day corporate-America: voice mail.

Approximately an hour later, he returned the call. (So as not to be a total jerk, I'll not print the name of the person he was asking about.)

"Do you know a person named C.A.J.?" he said?

(Side note: the webcam's back up. I'll point it at the cats when they're in the room with me. Enjoy.)

Several months ago, I stopped questioning why I was writing for this site and simply got into the business of writing for it. In the end, I think it was the right thing to do; instead of wondering about my motives and my variously interesting neuroses, I decided to do what I enjoy most: the arranging, scattering, and recombination of words.In the almost-365 days since I started writing for this site last year, I've written about a little bit of everything. From dealing with marriage and death and joy and confusion, it's all here, in varying shades of clarity and obfuscation.

In my way, I had my own Walden-esque goals: to write about the things that mattered—and not just the things that matter today, but the people and events that will still matter to me ten, twenty, forty years from now.

While talking with a cable company phone rep this afternoon, I read a post on a weblog that pointed to astrology.com, and for the sheer amusement value I decided to pull up whatever they had to say about me.

Flickr
(see full version on flickr)

Read on to see what they had to say about me:

You are very strong-willed and proud, but intensely private and not easy to know well. Behind your quiet exterior lies a great deal of emotional depth, sensitivity, complexity, and also fierce determination. When you want something you go after it rather quietly but insistently and wholeheartedly—and you usually get it.

In semi-related news, I'm an idiot. You'd think that when I bought that last batch of Mason jars about a month ago that I'd have thought to check the sizes, to make sure they were what I needed.

They are, of course, too small—and I already had four cups of pitted and stemmed cherries waiting to go. At least I hadn't mashed the cherries yet; that would have been a royal mess. (The cherries certainly were yummy to snack on while watching Daria this evening, though.)Tomorrow: back to the store to get the correct size of jars. This time I'll read the labels a bit more carefully, to make sure I get the right ones.

The bags of cherries I bought today are large enough that I can get two batches of jam, if I so choose. I've only pitted half of the cherries; I'm going to wait to pit the others until I know that I like the jam recipe that I've got. If I don't like the jam recipe, it's cherry pie for everyone this week.