Louie

Apartment life can be a funny thing. You live closer to your neighbors than probably anyone else in the United States, yet you often know little or nothing of them. The only thing you have in common (so far as you know) is your shared place of residence.

I live in a complex called The Gate. There is no gate, but the opted to name the apartments "the gate" regardless. We here at the Gate, more specifically those of us living to the west of the main swimming pool, we've got something in common: Louie. Louie is a neighborhood cat of sorts. Louie is a girl. Louie's owner is a girl. Louie's owner likes other girls, and that's my best bet as to why the girl cat has a boy name.

At any rate, Louie is greatly loved by every west-of-the-main-pool-Gate-resident. When we have small talk on our way to the parking lot, we get to talk about Louie when we're done talking about the weather. Louie greets everyone when they come home from work. Louie brings people together. I'm pretty positive that if Louie ever got killed by a car (like Foxxy the Pom), the neighborhood would probably get together and have a memorial of sorts.

So here's to Louie, the female feline that oft graces us with her presence and brings unity among the people. Keep up the good work, girl.

my worldview

Whoever designed my apartment complex did a pretty good job of making residents feel safe regarding others trying to peek through their windows. My initial thought towards having all of our windows blocked by trees was undoubtedly negative. Not that we would have been able to see far had the trees not been there, but the trees block the sun, which reduces the amount of natural light that is able to enter our rooms.

Over the years I've been very wrong about a whole lot of stuff, especially when it comes to first impressions of people, things, or situations. Well this is no exception.

I've been blessed with sightings like the one pictured above over and over the past few weeks. I never would have counted myself as a bird watcher, but I'm starting to recognize its appeal. When I can lay on my wonderful bed and simply look right out my window at a cardinal who doesn't know I'm spying on him (or her... I don't know birds yet), that's pretty pure.

This reminds me of when I was in elementary school and junior high. My Aunt Sherry would pick me up from school and take me to her house until my mom got off work. Each year, during our week-long autumn, I remember Sherry always talking about how beautiful the changing leaves were. I'm pretty sure I said they were too, but never really paid much attention to them. Now I could sit and stare at a fall-struck tree for thirty minutes and thoroughly enjoy it.

Events and changes like these are the subtle changes that make me realize the scary fact that I'm growing up.

I'm thankful that my God helps change my entirely screwed up mind and conforms it to look (and think!) like His.

Change is inevitable. That was on the wall in my 7th grade hallway. Whoever put those construction paper letters on the wall knew what they were talking about.

flight of the butter

Of all the pictures I've taken this summer, this one is certainly one of my favorites. I might even go so far as to say it's one of the top ten I've ever taken. I realize it isn't perfect, but hey, neither am I, so it works out.

Why the butterfly picture post?

Oh well I thought I'd switch up the pace a little. As you all know, the past few posts have been a little bit heavy, serious, and other non-funny things. Well butterflies are by no means a laughing matter either, but they can boast one thing: beauty.

That's right, butterflies are pretty.

And so for this post, I'll list a few things that I think are pretty, and in your commenting, if you so choose, you can tell the world what you think to be pretty.

Let it begin.

Sunsets, mountains overlooking rivers, puffy clouds in an otherwise blue sky, horses, puppies, old couples, human eyes, my sister, certain guitars, Chaco tans, paintings, traditional Chinese dress, smiles, butterflies pollenating flowers, and Utah.

hey kitty

Remember the kitties I posted about a couple months ago? Well if not, there were three of them: Max, Nig, and Stripes. Max is dead now, and everyone has Kent Cochran to thank for that. In happier news, however, Nig and Stripes now like to come in to the house. Here you see Nig entering and looking for food. They rarely find food in the house, but we let them look nonetheless. I must say it's quite unlike me to welcome any feline into my house, but I think I just feel for these kitties having lost a close friend, so I show them a bit of hospitality.

On a completely unrelated note, I need to apologize for my inconsistancy in font sizes. I like this size, but I often forget to change it to this... give me time... it'll come.

Finally, I think it's proper in the world of blog ethics to leave a comment if someone dedicates a post to you. Just a thought.

Extreme bug update

Quickly, I'd like to share this picture of the most recent bug incident caught on film at the Extreme. The orange bellied bugs are (seemingly) being dominated by the spiders of the house. Who will win in the end? Hopefully the humans, but only time will tell! Stay tuned!

kitties??

In an effort to keep the site new and wonderful (mainly for ol' Peanut because she doesn't know how to change it from her homepage), I'll attempt to post things more regularly. Here you see a picture of one (two if you look closely) of the Luther street cats. His/Her name is Maximus, but we just call him/her Max most the time. He/She got his/her name because he/she is much braver than the other two cats. Max has been so brave as to almost eat out of the hands of both myself and Colby. Despite most of the houses residents disdain for felines, we've opted to keep these around to kill the Luther street rats. I don't know how we're teaching them to hunt however, seeing how we feed them tuna flavored cat food.

weekly update

It seems that this website is quickly becoming the D.O. bowling update webpage. In an effort to keep this from happening, I've added two pictures on this post. One, inevitably deals with bowling, and the other, well, just read on and see. The photo above (taken by the critically acclaimed Jon Tettleton), is a portrait of me and my cute little bowling ball "La Pat." She's the same ball that bowled an unprecedented 124 last week, and this week, well, the results speak for themselves:

Game I
Jon: 114 D.O.: 80

Game II
(incomplete game due to time constraints)
Jon: 58 D.O.: 58

Needless to say, this week's games didn't size up to be the high scoring epic of the previous week, but fun was had irregardless. Just kidding. That's not a word. The fun was no joke, however. Good game Jon. It's worth noting that Mikey's 139 of last week beats the sum of my two scores from this week. Unacceptable.

In other news, the Extreme has been graced with the presence of many bugs in it's time as a house, perhaps none so prevalent as the mystery bug pictured below. We've had (and still have) our share of roaches, wasps, lovebugs, and spiders, but these orange-bellied pests take the cake.

That's all in updates from this week. Perhaps you guys won't have to wait an entire 7 days for the next update. I'm sure Lauren Rouse would appreciate that, seeing how this site is her homepage.