observations.

What a weekend. Really. It was Jill’s birthday Saturday so we went out. We went to Red Robin first where she got a free burger. Then it was off to Cold Stone Creamery for her free ice cream. She’s so thrifty. There’s a lot of stuff you can get for free on your birthday. Just for being born. That means everyone in the world is entitled to something for nothing once a year, unless you were born on February 29, then you’re out of luck except every fourth year or so.

After all that thrift and indulgence we headed to a small place to hear a friend of mine’s band play. I hadn’t seen them perform in about ten years and man, have they gotten better. Great music, more gelled, incredible energy. My old high school classmate, Chad is an incredible musician and hit the vocal harmonies flawlessly. What a great time. It’s been awhile.

Outside of the music and the band and stuff, it was way cool to seed Chad and a couple of other guys I went to high school with. We’re few and far between, Hesperia graduates. This world is big and Hesperia spits out around eighty graduates every year give or take a drop out or two so I don’t too often run into another one that I know of, or that I knew anyway.

So my topic of choice for this entry? Smoking. Sorry if you’re a smoker (and hopefully this gets to a few of you) but what’s the point? If it’s truly the nicotine, get some gum, get a patch, get some chew, whatever. Anything that doesn’t affect me or my health. Oh, your rights? It’s a free country? If you don’t like the smoke, you leave? What about my rights in this free country? We spent the evening at this establishment and I’m pretty sure we were two of the four people who didn’t smoke. As a non-smoker, I don’t get it. There is fresh air everywhere, except for in a vacuum (no, not the kind in your closet that you don’t use enough, the kind in a lab or something. The kind with an absence of air). Back to fresh air. And so people, many of whom are so pro-this and that blah blah blah, choose to inhale the fresh air while filtering it through this, well, anti-filter.

Yeah, what’s up with this whole thing? Hey, while you’re at it Mr. and Mrs. Greenpeace flick the still lit cigarette butts out the window of your sticker coated land roving Rainbow Warrior. Yes, that’s how we’re going to make the world a better place. By tossing garbage on the ground, on the road, even directly onto the floor of the venue we attended Saturday night. Sweet. Because, after all, that’s what good music and good times are all about: love, peace, harmony, and killing ourselves and those around us while simultaneously littering and polluting our mother, Earth.

Oh, I forgot to say that everything stank like we were nic-addict smokers when we got home. We piled our clothes up and immediately put them into the washer. The car we drove stank like we had smoked, Jill’s purse stank. Why would people do this to themselves to this by choice? Please let me know and we can discuss it.

Today we went and visited my grandparents. Along the way we saw these amazing trees with ice on them. They were beautiful with the sun shining through them.

My paternal grandparents are in their nineties. He lives at home with live-in care and she lives in a facility about twenty miles from him. They never have been the away from each other type of couple and it is heartbreaking to see them apart. She looks like she could start crying any second and as cute as it was, it was kind of sad that he tried to pull a fast one on my brother and I by trying to get us to take him to see her. He knows he has an infection that he has to get over before he is allowed to visit and the nurse is scheduled to clear him tomorrow. He wasn’t happy that we followed his care giver’s rules. But we don’t want grandma sick either so…it’s just sad right now. It was great to visit with them though and talk and laugh together. What a weekend.