This weekend while I was out hugging trees and clearing brush with a few coworkers, one of them identified the marks on my legs previously believed to be skeeter bits as chigger bites. I stopped dead in my tracks and giggled to myself because I figured if nothing else, this was the final step in my Great Southern Initiation/Transformation.

It wasn’t to be.

These were omitted from qualification on a technicality since they were acquired in Texas, not Georgia, so I sighed and moved on. Back to stomping through poison ivy and blackberry brambles, back to clearing a tangled mess of dead limbs and throwing them in the chipper on the waterfront of Nancy Creek in Chastain Park, back to obtaining mystery marks “With Love,” from nature.

My circle gets a square wasn’t seen/found until a few hours later, when I’d finished hurling practice and sat at Steinbeck’s with some teammates and a nice, cool adult beverage. It may resemble a bruise, but it’s not.

The Mc first hypothesized that it might be a tick bite but we (he) quickly ruled that out since it pushed me into warp speed planning my recovery from Lyme disease. His next guess was ringworm, while mine were avian flu or ebola. Or leprosy. I mean, if Mother Nature is going to take me down, it better be something really good.

Guesses? I have three doctor appointments scheduled in the next two weeks, and I don’t need one more for a silly mark on my arm.

1) Looks like Mozilla finally decided to catch a cab to hop on the RSS meets social networking bandwagon

“The Coop”, a Mozilla Labs project to experiment with adding social tools to the web browser.

I’m still riding the fence between bloglines and netvibes (because neither one has won my heart, I divvy up my feeds they don’t get jealous of each other) and I’m not a fan of the bloglines notifier so I’m wary to play with yet another plug in, we know how I feel about IMing and Trillian and Flickr…so whatevs. I’ll give ‘er a spin around the floor and see how she does.

2) The Mc says he’s never seen anyone put honey on toast. Surely I’m not alone in this. Back me up, here, folks.

I’m off for belated Earth Day clean up in a local park followed by hurling and hopefully a restful evening.

Cheers.

Come January when my team is back in the office and we’re all attempting to recover from our Christmas 15 and the budget blues and we’re struggling against the urge to settle in for a long winters nap, we do the only thing that makes sense: we have a white elephant regift exchange.

This year I wound a picture frame and a Nike hat that Mike’s sister had given him (price tags still attached), but there was a bonus: my boss’ picture in the frame. So I came back to my desk after the rounds with flashlights and maple napkin holders and action figures and tickets to local tourist stops and set my boss on my credenza.

But that wasn’t good enough. Oh no. Kelly and I decided we should start making outfits for him.

Sometimes Photoshop is involved, sometimes it’s not…and maybe one day I’ll share his entire wardrobe with you, but for now, I share with you the outfit I came home to after Texas.

What can I say. I’m paying it forward, yo.

19…*bump*…”sorry”…20…21…22…23…24…D.

“That’s me,” I say to the man on the aisle, and weakly smile as I’m suddenly aware of my blood pressure. Overly conscious to quickly take my seat for fear of inconveniencing anyone, heaving my big red bag into the overhead bin and trying not to clobber him with the smaller but heavier blue bag that’s destined for the seat in front of me, I’m not expecting it when he smiles and responds “I’ve been saving it for you”.

There’s a comforting hint of South Africa on his breath and a lean physique that screams athlete – a rapid assessment tells me he’s not a threat in the time it takes me to get situated and lean against the window to begin my mental separation from the long weekend in Texas.

The whirring engine lullaby works its magic and I’m slumbering when I half hear the announcement we’ve been delayed…then wake up on decent. The houselights still down, I’m aware of the new guy between South Africa and I with salt and pepper hair, an office polo and respect enough to try to maintain his two feet of horizontal space. Sweet, though unnecessary…and endearing.

Still no words are spoken. I’ve done this too many times, I’m self absorbed and distracted and want to get home and I’m groggy and cramping and start doing the math for my connecting flight. What once was a 1:10 connection window has been eroded to :40. Boarding is :30 prior…if all goes well I’ll deplane in :07 and that leaves :03 for me and the little busses in Houston to get me from one gate to the next.

I’ve conceded defeat.

No use getting worked up. There will be another flight and as things go…I’ve got bigger issues.

As we taxi to the gate I marvel for the second time in a week at the bizarre waves of concrete culverts on the runway that threaten to trip a plane, the stumpy stature of the buildings that surround the main structure and the number of gas (and oil) consuming vehicles at this particular airport. Not surprising given it’s oil contry…I ponder their impact on global warming and their long term plan to erradicate the contaminators…then erase it all.

At the gate, the panic shuffle starts and I remain seated. I remain seated and nothing happens but people acting like the wee critters in an ant farm gone etch-a-sketch. I remain seated when the pilot comes on and tells us they’re having issues with the gate. I remain seated and glance out my window to find work boots and tan legs hanging out from under the gate with a left hand dropped and holding a Fluke. The leads to the meter dangle and a story ribbon spills out, telling me about the guy in the boots and the next guy who comes to help, and the next.

The man who tried to be half of himself and I begin to talk. He comes to Atlanta for training from time to time, I suspect at the Gallaria. I’m right. “There’s not much doing out that way” I say (suddenly channeling a vocabulary that’s not mine) and he confirms which hurts a smidge since it’s not far from The New Life. He’s in route to Costa Mesa. I smile inside at my memories of California. We’ve run our course.

I lean in front of him to South Africa and ask “where are you headed?”

We’ve been on the ground at least 15 minutes now and he doesn’t hear me in the churn. I look at the ticket in his hand with the one good eye that can’t make out anything but smudges and the man next to me does the same.

“Trevor Romain…the author?” he says to South Africa who responds “one and the same” and the same genuine smile I’d seen an hour and a half before. My neighbor introduces himself, though it’s not needed because this newly identified fellow remembers him. He remembers him from nearly a decade ago when my neighbors son had cancer and the kind fellow who kept watch on my empty seat connected with him in the hospital.

There was a reunion I won’t elaborate on other than to say I turned my face to the window to allow them privacy. Privacy, a celebration and a call to a boy who clearly remembered South Africa.

The stranger: http://www.trevorromain.com/blog/
The reminder: everything happens for a reason

Things I learned while in Texas this weekend:
- Using a flash when taking pictures of a bat can interfere with their radar. Whoops.
- A Mexican Martini shares ingredients with a margarita, but is really nothing like it (despite what our waitress tried to tell us). I would argue it may even be more delicious than a margarita and it’s certainly tastier than a martini. Blech…martini.
- If you get poison ivy, you must see a doctor if you actually want to get rid of it. If you don’t, it can “go internal”. We met a lady whose sister had it for 6 years and finally had to be “cleansed”. *shudder*
- Snakes grow approximately a foot a year until they’re 20. Then they eat you.
- If you cut down a cedar, 18 babies will shoot up from it’s roots.
- If a cedar burns, it burns so hot that it “kills” the soil and nothing else will grow there in your lifetime.
- You can make gin out of Juniper berries and some other stuffs. I’m fascinated by this, even though I loathe gin. It’s like dandelion wine. Interesting, but not interesting enough for me to try.
- Texas mosquitoes love me, and I have no less than seven quarter sized welts on the back of my left leg and five on my right to prove it.
- I am very cranky after I nap. Actually, I already knew about this. I’m starting to think I should have it engraved on a kind of Medic Alert bracelet.

Potential trips on the horizon:
- Hostel in the Forest with Kimbo at the end of May
- Seattle with Julie and Slim in July
- Somewhere out of the country with Kimbo before October (her first time, she doesn’t fly, she’s having a big b-day)
- SF with Gaea and Erinn in October for a “Closer to 40 than 30″ group birthday celebration
- Anchorage for a white Christmas

I need to look in the mirror more often. Or at least at the site via IE. Holy cow I didn’t realize how bad it looked…sorry kids. Clearly I have more work to do.

I’m here to report that Houston smells like a roller rink. Just in case you wanted to relive 4th grade and the backwards skate, it’s the place for you.

Austin, on the other hand, is full of rad folks and some of the itsybitsyiest little flowers I’ve ever seen. And bats.

Pictures here.