13 random things about fire, palm trees, dogs, and music. And airports.

1. There was a chimney fire. Rather than start putting out the fire, my grandfather sat down and started drawing up plans for a new house. My grandmother got help from the hired hand and they put out the fire. My grandfather really really enjoyed building houses, and apparently took glass half full to whole new levels.
2. Zach and I all have some form of musical ADD. Mostly we only listen to CD's that we have burned. Seriously mixed CDs. Occasionally there will be two songs by the same artist or group on the same CD, but mostly it goes something like this: Frank Sinatra, Linkin Park, Louis Armstrong, Elvis Costello, Italian classical music, Maroon 5, Cake's cover of Kenny Roger's Ruby Don't Take Your Love to Town, Elvis Presley,Kelly Clarkson, the Beatles, something from the soundtrack to Sweeney Todd. No themes, no cohesiveness.
   
3. Another facet of our song ADD involves being almost completely incapable of listening to an entire song while driving around in the car. I find that I sit slightly forward in the Suburban so I can reach the next song button within a third of a second...
4. But I will listen to the same song 5 times in a row for days on end. Then not listen to it for several years.
   
5. When I am listening to my Ipod it has to be on shuffle of course, and I get annoyed if it plays too much of any singer or group. Shuffle should not alternate between Elvis Costello and Linkin Park. That's not shuffling. That's just being lazy.
   
6. I have to listen to Linkin Park's Breaking the Habit in every airport when I am flying. Even those I am just passing through. I have been doing this for four years or so, ever since I first heard it when Zach played it for me at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. I forgot to listen to it in Phoenix SkyHarbor when we went to Italy in March. And what happened? Our plane reservations for the flights home were canceled. We were stuck in Rome for four or five hours while they figured out how to get us back to Arizona. Had I listened to Breaking the Habit in SkyHarbor, never would have happened.
   
7. I get seriously giggly when I reach a certain point of exhaustedness. I always have. My family remembers a trip to Washington, DC, and how I would laugh at everything and anything around 4:00 every afternoon (I was 4). My kids do this too. So much better than getting cranky, right?
8. We had a dog -- a beagle basset hound named Theo -- for 16 years. He was goofy looking...he had the classic basset body, with the bow legged front legs, the long body, the stumpy legs, but he had a beagle head. He had a thick neck. You couldn't drag him with the leash, because he could slide his collar over his head -- if we tightened the collar enough to prevent that, he wouldn't have been able to breathe. He was a well-traveled dog -- he lived in Germany with us, and flew back to the US once or twice with me when I was visiting my parents.
9. My Mom accidentally almost strangled Theo once. She tied the leash to the garage door, and then promptly forgot and opened it. She turned around, and there my poor dog was, dangling from the garage door by his neck (I don't know why he didn't slide his head out of the collar this time. He was a really really great dog, but not the smartest dog ever.) My siblings find this very very funny.
10. I own palm trees. I cannot begin to express how deeply weird this is. I own palm trees. Four of them. (There used to be five, but the little one didn't survive the really cold snap last winter.) We are not really a palm tree family. Oaks, maples, evergreens, sure. But not palms. Mostly we live in cold or damp climates.
    
11. I think palm trees are of the genus stupid. I don't like them at all. I mean, I think they are probably awesome in whatever climes they are native to (sorry. To which they are native. dangling prepositions and all that, don't you know...) but in California and Arizona? Stupid and annoying.
    
12. But totally awesome to photograph. I love to photograph the weird textures of the bark and trunk and leaves. Plus I have a couple of really cool photos that I shot straight up under a palm tree...So really, it's kinda crazy I don't like palm trees...But I have never claimed to be particularly sane.
13. I have never been to New England. I have been south -- Florida, Virginia, one of the Carolinas (I don't know which one. It was a very long time ago.). I grew up in the midwest -- I have lived in Minnesota and Illinios, and traveled a lot in or through the Great Plains. I lived in the Pacific Northwest. I adore the Pacific Northwest. I live in Tucson, which checks off the desert Southwest. But I have not been to New England. This is very wrong. Someday, someday I will be in Maine and Vermont and New Hampshire and which ever other states are the New England ones. Someday. Not today. Or next week. Next week is really busy.

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