In my view, one of the biggest down sides to owning a house is having a yard. I like the idea in principle, of course, since it keeps me from having to share walls with my neighbors and allows for shade trees which block out as much sunlight as possible. I even like the idea of having an attractive yard. Left to my own devices, though, I might end up just paving over the whole thing and calling it a day. If I had the money, I might instead consider paying someone else to take care of it for me.

But as for me, I hate doing yardwork. Absolutely despise it. In fact, there are few things in life I hate more than doing yardwork and being “in the great outdoors”. I’d rather clean toilets, or do laundry, or give blood, or even sit through a “Friends” marathon than do yardwork — or anything else that involves being outside in the sunshine, for that matter. Working in the yard neither relaxes me nor gives me a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction. It just makes me sweaty and itchy and cranky.

I didn’t like playing outside in the sun and “fresh air” as a child, and I whined every time the suggestion was made that I should do so. I react pretty much the same way as an adult. It’s no wonder I hate street fairs, as they combine two of the most distasteful things in the world: sunshine and large crowds. I make an excpetion for the State Fair, but I generally don’t even show up there until dusk. Hanging out by a pool or on a sunny beach is like torture to me. Heck, I don’t even like being in cars with sunroofs.

Though no fan of sunshine himself, Mark likes our yard. He’s willing to work out in the sunshine to give us nice flowerbeds and shrubs and trees. He finds it worth the payoff, which is great. As my part of the bargain, I’ve agreed to mow the lawn as needed, since he really hates doing that. I also water his shrubs and flowers every day when he’s gone, which is no problem since it’s better to do that after sunset anyway.

I very often feel guilty leaving him out there working in the yard while I go inside to do something (anything) else. I’m learning to get over my guilt, though. I’m glad there are people who enjoy making yards look nice. I’m just not one of them, alas, and I probably never will be.

Now that’s the kind of headline I like to see in my Saturday LA Times. Of course, I still haven’t forgiven the LA Times for this recent hit piece, but I’m not making fun of the Times because I’m bitter. No, not me…

I never really thought anyone other than the people who ran the House of Representatives cafereria took it seriously. I was wrong. As I was having my dinner last night, I looked up at the takeout menu and realized I was eating in an establishment that proudly served Freedom Fries.

I didn’t have any.

I drove to Roanoke, Virginia this afternoon. Roanoke is pretty. I’ve spent some time there in the past, but not a lot. We used to drive through a couple of times a year on the way to West Virginia when I was a kid. I had a weekend-long affair with a boy in a semi-dumpy 1940s motel there sometime in the mid-1980s. And my friend Duncan and I drove up there one afternoon from Greensboro to have dinner at the K&W, after which we drove right back.

This time I took a pretty good tour. It’s a cool place, one of those cities that was obviously much more important eighty years ago than it is now. It has a rather sprawling old downtown surrounded by some interesting neighborhoods in varying stages of decay, gentrification, or both, all set in a semi-mountainous backdrop. All in all, it’s a little reminiscent of Asheville, but without all the annoying hippie granola shit going on.

I like Roanoke. I may post more pictures tomorrow. It’s really nice revisiting these smaller east coast cities, many of which I largely ignored when I lived here before. Seeing them with my newer perspective — shaped by years of urban travel all over the country and by having lived in a major urban area — is like seeing them for the first time all over again. Seeing them in the daytime, while sober, enhances the experience somewhat as well. I missed a lot the first time around, although I wouldn’t trade my misspent youth for anything, really.