me encanta futbol

i was sitting at maestro's the other day when this painting caught my eye:



"that's not what happened!" i said, before reading the title:


clever artist (:

"it was nice growing up with someone like you - someone to lean on, someone to count on... someone to tell on..." -unknown

this is my little brother, ian. he's the baby of the family.

cute, huh? (click for a closer look)

except recently i've noticed that he's not so much a baby anymore.
it might have started when he got taller than me. like 6'2" tall.
and i got an inkling when he suddenly needed a social secretary.
but i think the kicker was when i started taking him driving to get his night hours.

my little brother ian isn't so little anymore. he's almost 16! he's a junior. he plays lacrosse, piano and the cello. he cooks. he speaks spanish fluently. he changes my oil for me. he likes to play with kids. he's got a countdown to his nineteenth birthday on his wall.
and he loves my mom.

hot, huh?

oh, and don't worry. now he's teaching himself the guitar.

"is it weird in here, or is it just me?” -stephen wright

i don't scrapbook.

i tried once, but spending obscene amounts of money on paper and embellishments was about as far as i got.

but that misguided attempt and the fact that my old boss's visiting teaching companion owns die cuts with a view means i basically have enough scrapbooking supplies to start my own business. (i could probably start it out of my garage, since that's where it all is now. stuffed between my washer and drier).

but after this week, i don't think that would be such a good idea.

...

for all you people who do scrapbook, daisy d's had an office right next door. i say had because they moved out about a month ago.

they were quiet neighbors. the only thing i ever really noticed was that there were like 10 men that worked there. (but the men moved, and they took their 10 love sacs with them, rolling them down the stairs one by one.)

all was quiet for a couple weeks, until one day i looked out into our foyer and saw two women looking in the window at daisy d's. after a minute they pulled out a camera and started taking pictures of each other standing in front of the logo on the door. they then saw me and asked me to take a picture of both of them. i did so and they went merrily on their way.

that's not something you see every day, but i didn't really think anything of it.

until it happened again.

3 more times.

the last group showed up on friday and i couldn't contain my curiosity anymore. in between camera flashes i decided to ask:

me: so is this some sort of scavenger hunt or something?

scrapper: no, what makes you say that?

me: well, you're the fourth group of people i've seen this week taking pictures outside daisy d's.

scrapper: oh really? huh.

me: yeah, so i was wondering if there was some scavenger hunt in a scrapbook magazine or something that asked for a picture in front of daisy d's.

scrapper: uh...no... where'd you get that idea? that would be really weird....

...

this from the lady taking her picture in front of an abandoned office for no apparent reason.

a thousand words

heaton ranch, august 2008