Got back a little while ago from the LIVESTRONG Summit Presidential Town Hall on campus, and when I went out back to water the plants something caught the corner of my eye: a fluffy white tail, hopping away from the flowerbed. Little bugger hopped just over the property line - we’re talking a matter of inches - and watched me water what I thought were my plants, but which may more accurately be described as his.

Regarding the Town Hall, it was pretty good. I went to see John McCain and Lance Armstrong in person, and was impressed by both. It’s no wonder Obama doesn’t want to be within a country mile of McCain without a prompter. Sure he’s a stubborn old codger, but he’s also sharp and quick of his feet and brimming with experience. He had my vote before and he certainly has it now, although I could have gone without mentions of McCain-Kennedy and McCain-Feingold.

In the vein of continuity (is that what this is?), continued prayers for the Roeths and Chivingtons. I don’t know how long the page will be accessible, but there’s a good article from the 7/18 edition of the Troy Daily News following Carrie’s passing.

Further continuity still, the book o’ Faces tells me the following:

Griffin House’s performance for The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson is now scheduled for Friday, July 25th.

Tune your TV and watch Griffin performing “The Guy That Says Goodbye To You Is Out Of His Mind” on national TV.

There you have it - a reason to watch Craig Ferguson. Who, apparently, is still on the air? Griffin will be on Conan soon enough, by golly!

Please pray for Carrie Roeth, who loves God and has remained - through a fight with an extremely rare cancer that has gone on for years - one of the most kind and devoted people I know. She is in critical condition and the outlook is bleak.

Pray for Carrie’s family, her husband, and her son. May God bless them in a dark time and may we take refuge in his will.

Since I still get home with a headache 2-3 days a week, I’ve been keeping up a steady regimen of afternoon naps. As a result, I’ve started a bad habit of night-time gardening. See, my Realtor is throwing a housewarming party this Saturday, which has compounded my desire for everything to be exactly the way I want it. The most ambitious project I’ve taken up called for turning the portion of the backyard that’s directly behind the house and adjacent to the deck into a flowerbed. Flower garden? I’m not sure if the designation is determined by size or, if so, what the limit would be.

Even when I don’t feel like laying down for an hour as soon as I get home from work, I also don’t feel like going straight to Lowe’s while it’s still 90. Thus I’ve found myself at Lowe’s a couple of times a week somewhere between dusk and closing time, which remains a fairly narrow window this time of year. By the time I wander a few circuits around the store and get everything I need, it’s well and truly dark, but that hasn’t necessarily stopped me from spreading topsoil or planting a flower or two. Even when I’ve “planned ahead” the fact that I do everything slowly means it’s after 9:00 by the time I decide it’s too dark to accomplish much more.

After about a week on The Flowerbed Project all I need to do is spread mulch, drive rebar to attach the trellis to, and find a glider swing. And then put the glider together, I guess. Tonight upon return from Lowe’s I went to water the flowers and even in the dark noticed that a couple of them looked pretty sorry. I stooped to see why they weren’t doing as well as the other plants, and the problem was that their leaves HAD BEEN EATEN. Bastardos!

And that’s how, roughly a month after purchasing my first home, I turned into Elmer Fudd. Certainly this is one more tick each for the Dog and Fence columns, but sadly the former requires the latter and the latter is crazy expensive.

I got a few things from griffinhousemusic.com in the mail today and remembered that I haven’t mentioned Griffin enough, since I stopped writing my crappy little music reviews way back when. Although he may not have realized it, with a name like Griffin House the man was always destined for fame and/or notoriety. It’s a spectacular name.

Griffin was leaving Miami around the time I was arriving. One of my best friends there had an older brother, who got him listening to Griffin our freshman year when I’d barely started to realize there was good music other than the few bands I liked from what the top-40 schlock stations play. So it took awhile for the southern rock, or alt-country - whatever they’re selling him as - to grow on me. Griffin knows how to write a catchy tune, and his lyrics strike such a good balance between plain and poetic. Again I’ll link griffinhousemusic.com, with the suggestion that if you like “alternative rock” (or any of the samples playing on his website), you’d be hard pressed to do better than Griff.

To establish that I’m not a clueless fanboy, a complaint about Flying Upside Down, Griffin’s latest album. “I Remember (It’s Happening Again)” is a single - I always hate when an artist I like releases a single, and it’s one of the few tracks I skip. I have no place to talk and no expertise in the matter. Further, if it gets people talking and grows Griffin’s audience, all the better. But as a person who cares about lyrics, “I Remember (It’s Happening Again)” is… well, kind of silly. If you’re a person who thinks that war is never justified or that America should defend her interests only within her own borders, you’ll adore the lyrics. If not, you may find yourself digging the tune and shaking your head at most of the words.

There you have it, a complaint. As for the rest of the album, tracks 1, 3-6, 12, and 13 are great songs - some upbeat, some not… some about God, some about “the ladies,” all of them genuine Griffin. There are a handful of dupes from Homecoming or previous releases, but it happens. It wasn’t enough to keep me from ordering the disc, despite having bought a FLAC version of the album last year. I’m not sure whether I like Flying Upside Down as much as Homecoming or Lost + Found, but that’s not much of an issue considering that I love all three. Check out the man’s website!!