Friends, Birthdays, God

For Heather's birthday we went out with our friends Rick and Karen the other night. Okay, it was FUN! Laughed alot, good food and good convo. It was Rick's birthday too. I love when people have trouble keeping their eyes open for pictures. It's especially funny to me when you say, "Okay, let's try that ONE MORE TIME," and it still doesn't work. Rick did manage to get one of his eyes just barely opened, before he finally went "balls out" for our final pic of the night.

Balls Out: I believe this expression originated with the early steam engines whose governors were a pair of spinning balls, which described a larger and larger circle as the demanded speed, and hence their rotational speed, increased to control the steam valve and hence the flow of steam from boiler to pistons.

When the rods were spun around their vertical axis, the centrifugal force given to the balls caused them to pull out, thus making the hinges bend? Tho I can't give the definitive source, I can confirm that "balls out" does come from the days of steam engines and their governing devices. To know this sort of detail about steam engines, you'd have to be kinda geeky, which I'm not, so I looked it up. (Way less geeky)

Anyway, I have told Heather before that Rick kinda reminds me of God. And here's why: He's pretty strange in an endearing sort of way; somewhat childlike, funny, easy to be around. I think God is like that. The only other people that I've imagined God to sort of be like is this amazing bass player named Abe Laborial. Abe is an overweight black man (jett black) with white hair. When I saw him in concert, after every worship song he played, he would throw his hands up in the air and start clapping something fierce for God. Loved that. Oh, and most recently I thought Annie Lennox probably looks like God. I saw her perform for "Idol Gives Back" and was mesmerized by her. Check out my post on that here.

I realize this puts alot of pressure on Rick :) Looking like God would be, ya know...stressful. Anyway, when I first said this to Heather, quite a while ago, she said, "Why?" And I wasn't totally sure; but the other night Rick did something that made me think, "That's it! That's why!" As we were talking about yard work and planting flowers and stuff, he said (and was totally serious)

"I like dandelions."

To which I replied, "You mean daffodils?"

"No. Dandelions...you know, the weed ones."

I've actaully had this feeling before but felt like I shouldn't like them. Kind of how I feel like I shouldn't like Blue Jays cause Heather says they're in the same family as Crows and they eat bird eggs out of nests. (She's always ruining crap like this for me.)

"So why do you like them?" I say. (I was reeled in)

"They're yellow," he says, as if to say, "What's not to love?" Then he says, "They're all over my yard. I dunno, I just think they look nice." "Oh," he added, "Plus you can do that 'Momma had a baby and her head popped off' thing with them."

I think I'm going to embrace the fact that I like Dandelions. Although when Heather finds out she'll probably tell me they cause Gangrene. If she does, I'll think I'll just say, "Oh, I know. I like Gangrene too.