There's just something ...

... about a grown man, wearing a quarter of his body weight in padding, doing the splits on a sheet of ice while wielding a 4½-foot-long stick that's so completely impressive -- I really admire hockey goalies. All hockey players, actually, but goalies -- it's like gymnastics meets full-contact football meets figure skating meets soccer meets a few other things ... wow.

Other randomness:

Not very grape-ish
I've noticed that grape tomatoes have gotten progressively larger so that they now no longer resemble grapes. They're more like slightly smaller cherry tomatoes. Very oblong-shaped cherry tomatoes. Remember when they first came out? They looked like ... well, they looked like grapes. And the packages of grape tomatoes are conspicuously less full, yet more expensive these days. Unjustice.

It's the butt
The large human butt (compared to the rearends of other animals) keeps us from tipping forward. That little (or large, rather) fact was brought up during a special on PBS last night about marathon running. "Team Nova" took 13 sedentary individuals and, in nine months, trained them to run the Boston Marathon. Of the 12 who completed the training, all of them crossed the finish line. I was incredibly impressed. It was a human-drama documentary mixed with a Discovery Channel-type explanation of physiology and the changes that happen to the body during training, which is where the butt comment came in. Hurray for the human butt.

Naughty monkey?
Who in the world names a shoe style the "naughty monkey?" I really don't want to have something with that name on my feet. I'd think of Craig Ferguson every time I put them on. I'd giggle ... but I still don't want to wear a "naughty monkey."

Razed
Mom and I are road tripping next month, and we've decided to go through the town where she grew up ... she's never been back for a high school reunion, and she's never been back to visit her parents' graves. So I called the school to see if we could get a tour of the building (we'll be there on a Sunday) ... only to find out that her high school building was torn down and an elementary school has been built on the site. Sad.

But her childhood home is still there, so we'll go see that, and go visit the cemetery and, hopefully, some old classmates who still live there. The last time I was in this town was when my grandpa died (I was about 5), so I have zero reliable memories of the place, except that it was hot and had lots of gnats (the gnats made me cry). And my grandpa's wife's hair net (don't ask). And the babysitter during the funeral (she gave me a 7-up and a cookie. I thought she was a great person). And I remember (as a 3- or 4-year-old) my very tall grandpa. Turns out, he was a rather short man. But everything is ginormous to a child, right?

We're hoping to see Linda, one of Mom's old roommates who has been more like an aunt to Matt and me all our lives, and I think we'll get to see Jeff and his wife, Robyn, which will be nice. I haven't seen Jeff in years, and I've never met Robyn. And then we'll go see my Aunt Liz and Uncle Elo at their beautiful house on the lake ... going to see them is always like escaping to a retreat.

And that's this summer's first vacation ...