Five-Point-Five Liter Americana Overdrive!

"Spring starts when a heartbeat's poundin'
When the birds can be heard above the reckonin' carts doing some final accounting"
- Tragically Hip (incidentally Canadian)

So I'm still dumbstruck by this whole "nice weather" thing, and am likewise coping with some of the consequences of being dumbstruck by this whole "nice weather" thing... most notably the involuntary nature of some seasonally-dependent behavioral expressions.

Autumnal expressions, for example, might include rolling in piles of leaves and any number of things relating to apples or corn. Brumal expressions might include wearing inappropriately scant clothing outdoors and instances of tunneling. Vernal expressions of seasonally-dependent involuntary behavior are, as witnessed by the weekend of April 19th, in a word, exhausting.

The prior 72 hours included multiple occurrences of each of the following activities: Running, playing basketball, playing frisbee, bicycling, driving with the windows down, night-creeping, tree climbing, beer drinking, weight lifting, grilling, Dairy Queening, crawdad hunting, and, finally, whiffleball playing.

In order, that would be crawdad hunting, playing basketball, running, bicycling, tree climbing, driving with the windows down, playing basketball, playing frisbee, playing wiffleball, dairy-queening, driving with the windows down, grilling, weight lifting, night-creeping, running, crawdad hunting, grilling, driving with the windows down, beer drinking, night-creeping, weight lifting, running, bicycling, playing wiffleball, tree climbing, dairy queening, and beer drinking.

OK, so I only played frisbee once.

In any case, there was no decision making involved any of this. This was all completely involuntary.

Amplifying the sense of childlike jubilance is the amusing fact that on Friday I was payed 1/3 semester's tuition to produce an image of something as juvenile as little girl walking her pet Brachiosaurus into some power lines... it looks like this, and represents a change in my life that I am honestly still trying to wrap my head around. The conceptual prowess and quality of execution of the work, in conjunction with the assigned 'value', are such that I feel like I've somehow cheated some elaborately conceived system... one with checks and balances in place to keep me --if not broke and hungry-- something short of commercially viable. I mean, I get paid very well by crapshoots like Threadless, but to be sought out and propositioned for well-paying gigs is a new and welcome experience.

I mean, just think of all the whiffleball bats I can buy now!