lillis and i headed down to south georgia to go camping in fdr state park with two other friends (darrell and alice). here we stopped for a team photo while hiking the loop. this required me to balance the camera on a rock and run across some water and hop up on the wall. you can barely tell i’m winded. we hiked about 2 miles in to our campsite and then knocked out a 7 mile loop. it was quite a day
these are leaves. they’re red leaves. it was still fall, so they were in the tree. later they would lie down on the ground for a nap. i know inanimate objects don’t lie (they lay) but i’m using anthropomorphism. hips are something else that don’t lie.
here’s the sestup outside my tent. i brought enough supplies to last us the night. those are mini-beers (or pounders as i was taught to call them in college). usually if a beer was that little, i would throw it back. however, these were so cute, i had to drink them. otherwise i would have to carry them back out. i figured i’d rather be hung over with a lighter load than feeling good but with a heavier pack.
i brought a drawing tablet with me. this is a picture of lillis with granola bars in her hand. however, at the time i drew this, in real life, lillis had already eaten all of her granola bars and most of mine.
here alice holds up a picture i drew of her. it’s safe to say that alice has a mild fear of stepping into cold water, much like gazelles are a little bit scared of cheetahs, except gazelle’s response is flight, and alice’s response is more of a “wait and see” approach to fording streams.
here’s another leaf. i like it
we really had a great time on the trip. it did get a little cold (maybe down to 50 degrees at night) but we served just fine. i had never had the “add boiling water and eat” dinners before. i gotta tell you, they were pretty darned good. darrell got us all set up with the cooking dishes and stove and all. it was a nice night to be out in the woods and was a pretty relaxing and peaceful sleep. thanks to darrell for setting it up, and to alice for entertaining us thoroughly during darrell’s personality profiling game. a good time was had by all. oh, and
here’s a link to more pics from the trip.
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of course, i don’t know peggy sue, but i DO know heather and stephen. and while not married, they are engaged, which is step 17 in tommy nelson’s 21 step guide to getting married : ) anyhow, stephen and i are geniuses and as such, we hatched an elaborate plan (that involved sara faking a birthday) to have a suprise engagement party for him and heather. we invited many of all of our friends over to the nix residence (after all, it was sara’s fake birthday) and had willie’s cater the event. our backup plan (if she had said “no”) was to not let any of her friends in and to shift the focus from tacos to margheritas. luckily we did not have to envoke our emergency scenario protocols as she did accept the ring (which was lovely btw). we had plenty of good friends, good laughs, a champagne toast, and a really touching and amazing mini-speech from heather (which followed an uncharacteristically laconic pronouncement from stephen). the bar has definitely been set for stephen’s address at the rehearsal dinner.
anyway, here is a picture of most of the hosts.
and her is a picture of lillis attempting to choke me to death. that would have certainly cast a pallor over the scene.
here’s the lovely couple. this pic is notable for three reasons. the first and most obvious is that they’re the engaged couple. the second is that it is stephen’s first ever picture with his eyes fully open (after a little pre-pic coaching),and the third is that it is about 11PM at this point, and heather is still awake and energetic despite not having slept AT ALL the night before. i suspect that the light from some distant star was reflecting off of her engagment ring filling her room with far too much light for sleeping.
finally, here’s a “late night” picture of brent getting cozy with his pooch. what a lovely couple, they are.
anyway, we couldn’t possibly, be any happier for stephen and heather. particularly, having seen much of stephen’s growth (along with mine) over the past 2 or 3 years and having had numerous discussions (about the ladies) it is amazing to see him moving forward into marriage. i wish them every possibly happiness. here are the pics from the partay (along with some awesome – or aweseomely bad – videos).
oh, and if you don’t happen to know the story, here is the snowboarding video (scroll down to the bottom of the linked page) that i loaded onto my phone so i could show heather at a fusion event, thereby allowing her to be impressed by how “awesome” stephen is on a snowboard – $20K worth of lessons, well spent!!! i tried to impress lillis with my “taboo” skills and my “wakeboarding” skills, but she was better at taboo, and better behind a boat. i guess i’ll just have to settle for having killer “nun chuck” skills.
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i shook the dust off of my feet in tuscaloosa pretty early on sunday so i could hustle back to atlanta. why? a polo match, that’s why!
we went to some place that was very far from my house to watch susanne play polo (something i had been meaning to do for a while) and to raise money for lighthouse (something that sounded like a good thing to do – they’re nice people doing great work and i’m sure they could use the money). it was my first polo match. i wore a brown dress with white polka dots and a matching wide brimmed hat. however, after being propositioned by jason alexander, i switched back to regular, more masculine clothing. anyway, for anyone who doesn’t know how polo works, it’s a little like youth soccer. everyone is pretty much clumped around the ball, and then someone gets it going and they break away for a goal. the exception is when (as in this picture below) it appears that no one can find the ball; then they’re sorta like a bunch of atlanta road crew workers on horses.
here lillis and i take a break from the action to pose for the papparazzi. they adore us.
here, susanne rides her fiery steed past us in between innings (or whatever they call the time periods in polo – i know it’s not quarters b/c there were 6 or 7 of them).
it was a fun time and i could see where i’ll go back for more polo. you get to bring food with you and sit out on a blanket in the sun. you also get to tell your friends, “no, sorry, i’d love to do that with you, but i’m attending a polo match tomorrow afternoon.” it doesn’t get any more sophisticated than that!!!
aaaaand, here is a picture of me, or more specifically of my beard. this posting will be a lasting testament to the power and masculinity that was my beard. fare thee well, my strong friend, fare thee well.
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