This album might be the best thing I’ve heard this year. I know it’s in Swedish, but it really doesn’t matter. That’s how good it is. Go get it immediately.

I dunked a mini basketball this afternoon while goofing around with the kids at work. It was completely unexpected and caught me off guard when the breakaway rim loudly snapped back into its original alignment. A pretty clean dunk which I then followed up with a couple more polished clones. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and I don’t know how it happened since the last time I tried I wasn’t even close. Strange indeed. It’s almost enough to inspire me to start working out my legs more. Mary and I joined MVP Sportsplex yesterday afternoon after being offered a moderate corporate discount (no initiation fee) through work. If the whole vertical leaping thing isn’t enough motivation maybe the obscene amount of money I’m pouring into a fitness club will do it.

A squirrel chattered angrily in my backyard this afternoon. Probably the same squirrel that’s been gouging holes in my baby grass. So I sprayed him with the garden hose. It was a gentle spraying since he was about twenty feet up a tree, but he chattered and ran off nonetheless. I generally lean heavily toward the “be kind to animals” crowd, but this amused me to no end.

My Firefox weather plug-in is informing me that it is currently 92 degrees F and hazy. One of those days where all you want to do is lie on your cold basement floor and move as few body parts as possible. Which of course I did after spending an hour and a half playing basketball in an air-conditioned gym and another hour and a half playing soccer on a scorched baseball field. Sometimes there’s nothing better than to be sweat-drenched, Gatorade-commercial-style. As long as you have the cold basement to go back to. Our new lawn seems to be maintaining its greenness in spite of the weather. Check it out.

Helped along of course by copious waterings and a few big shade trees. Speaking of copious watering, I’m convinced Taylor has the wussiest bladder of any ten-month old dog I’ve ever met. I’m at the computer this afternoon with Taylor stretched out on the foof chair behind me and I hear this whooshing sound. I whirl in my chair and look back in time to see her gushing pee all over the place while she calmly lies there with a goofy grin on her face. I don’t think she even knew that she was doing it. Maybe it’s all the toilet water she drinks.

I will post in glorious detail again soon. In the meantime I’m invoking the “too busy” excuse. In brief:

The vacation was a blast and thoroughly spontaneous despite perhaps being a couple days too long (pictures soon). The back lawn is long enough to mow and is nearly glowing with its greenness. For Sale signs have been purchased for both the house and property and we hope to move by the end of the summer at the latest. And this entire week has been a royal pain as my work-related lifeguard training has me swimming over a quarter mile a day (with no previous lap-swimming experience).