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last friday i went back in time at tapcade. it’s an arcade, bar, restaurant, and theater on the edge of the crossroads. i ate street tacos for lunch, and played old video games like popeye, missile command, gorf, galaga, defender, spy hunter, and dig dug. i took southwest boulevard home instead of the freeway, and pulled over when i saw a sign for pies. this kind of advertising always got my attention when my family drove through the desert. i went inside and met the owners, tracy and tami. their roadside food stand is called the peddler’s daughter. they have shelves full of amish preserves, zucchini relish (i bought a jar), and pies. they are open year round!

when i watch the news about anything trump-related, all i see is two opposing groups of people getting further apart, and not listening to each other. the guy above is robb willer. he is a professor of sociology at stanford university. here’s a nutshell quote from ted.com: “Rob Willer studies the forces that unite and divide us. As a social psychologist, he researches how moral values — typically a source of division — can also be used to bring people together. Willer shares compelling insights on how we might bridge the ideological divide and offers some intuitive advice on ways to be more persuasive when talking politics.” this is a 12 minute presentation that robb willer gave in sept. 2016. this gives me hope.

a few months ago i found out that i was selected for a maker-in-residence grant at the johnson county library! i called my family and a few close friends, but the news didn’t really get out until a local magazine that featured grant recipients started showing up in everyone’s mailbox. the image above is from the bottom of page 7. the image that i actually sent in for publication was this:

joshua and i found a fake bluff while geocaching this week… huh, i just realized that the words “fake” and “bluff” look funny next to each other. anyway this odd rock formation could be someone’s idea of landscape art, but i think a cement truck just dumped some of its excess where no one would notice– except geocachers like joshua and me! on our way back to his house we listened to crap from the past, hosted by ron boogiemonster gerber. one of the show’s highlights was this track sung in spanish by johnny mathis and deniece williams.

this pic was taken last sunday at camry & justin’s strawberry jam: a gathering of friends and musicians in kansas city’s west bottoms. when i met nora (above) she told me that she wasn’t a musician, but she was excited to play fruits with me anyway. i strummed my guitar and sang “let my love open the door” while nora played notes on a grape, a strawberry, and a cantaloupe slice. there was a bad connection halfway through the song, so i stopped playing, and nora ate the cantaloupe slice to a round of applause. now we’re friends on facebook.

chris mull and i started writing a song for a music video that will go online march 5! we’ll be among a handful of local recording artists taking part in the stay home and read a book ball (an online event to benefit the johnson county library). chris is one of my oldest friends, and we used to play music together all the time… but we haven’t written a song together since nixon bugged the white house!

these are screenshots from a video i made with josh, my guitar student. currently we’re still editing & patching things together. neither of us play an instrument in this video, but when it’s finished you’ll see us talking about our shoes, how often we wear socks, and why josh thinks crocs are not cool.

so there’s this friend of mine that posts one picture from a movie every morning at 8am on his facebook page, and then he waits to see if anyone can identify it. usually someone beats me to it, but i was faster on the draw for these three. i was pretty proud of myself (and jenny was too) for naming these movies before anyone else did. there are no prizes, just the satisfaction that one gets from knowing a lot of useless information. by the way, the correct answers are: the fisher king, the hitcher, and running scared. can you match the movie title with the right number?

i usually make posts about marengo in the summer, when jenny’s relatives converge on the fairgrounds there like a well behaved biker gang– but this post is about our trip that we took a few days ago to attend a funeral in that little iowa town. there was ice and freezing drizzle in the forecast, and the weather channels were pouring fear into viewers like it was cheap gas. navigating a trip to marengo was like saying we choose to go to the moon! there was bad weather in oklahoma, missouri, and illinois… but we had dry roads there and back. holding family members, and sharing memories is something we shouldn’t be afraid to do because of a scary weather forecast… especially one that got weaker with each passing hour.

this morning i did a facebook search for mighty melt sandwich and spud shops, and found out they are still in sedalia, MO. jenny & i are definitely headed there on our next sunday drive. mighty melt was the first job i where i was paid to talk into a microphone. the extent of what i said back then was “number 5 your order is ready,” but i still managed to impress the ladies.