Jasper Jones

This probably sound silly but I have a little case of homesickness today. I’ve been back at school only 6 days and I’m thrilled to be rooming with my buddy Alex again. We have a dorm room filled with guy stuff and “boy toys” like my mom says. It’s got a comfortable bed, food, a wall of electronics and room to study. But you know, like they say in the Wizard of Oz movie, “There’s no place like home.”

One of the things I really miss is the quiet of my parents’ house. We live on a nice piece of property, back from the road, and at night all you hear is crickets, frogs, and this year, the desperate mating songs of the locusts. And every fifteen minutes, there is the reassuring chime of my mom’s grandfather clock. I never knew how much I would miss that chime until I got here at school and don’t hear it anymore.

I think everyone in my mom’s family owns grandfather clocks. It was a standard “must have” for each of her sisters back in the day when they first got married and bought their first homes. The tradition started when my mom’s grandmother came over from England and hand carried her own mantel clock. She still has it and it still chimes faithfully throughout the day.

My mom’s grandfather clock was made by one of the most famous clock makers in the world, Howard Miller. There are a couple of other famous clock makers, like Seth Thomas and Bulova, but my mom loves the Howard Miller clocks. She often tells me that my generation doesn’t appreciate the finer things in life and that when I get married that I need to have a grandfather clock in my home, too. she’s shown me the newer, contemporary styles that you can buy, and I think she’s right. That is one family tradition that I’d like to carry one, with my own sense of style, of course.

If you are madly in love with a woman and you want to find a very special gift for her, I can point you in the right direction. I happened to overhear a conversation at the TGI Fridays with a couple of hot - I do mean HOT - chicks talking about a bachelorette party they had attended and their thoughts on the gifts for the bride-to-be and some great girl gossip.

Well, the most important thing I took away from that eavesdropping was that hot women really love expensive, unique lingerie. And these women know the good stuff - so don’t even try to get away with something cheap and trashy. Evidently, there are some particular brands or makers of fine Lingerie that most guys can’t even name off the top of their head but trust me on this, the girls know.

So clever guy that I am, that night I surfed the night for the names I had overheard and I found some great pieces. I bookmarked them and even sent myself an email with the info, so that I will always be able to find this again. In fact, these web sites are a great source for all kinds of great items plus they are all about discounts and saving money. So you might want to bookmark Shopping.com and Dealtime.co.uk, too.

One of my personal heroes is Mark Twain. I remember reading all his books as a kid and really enjoying both his storytelling and his writing style. It inspired me to even read his biography in a book that I checked out of the school library. That shocked both my teacher and my parents! A library book? Me? LOL

So I learned a little about Mark Twain. For the times he lived in he was a very different character. He had some eccentric views about politics, race and all kinds of things that were just too forward thinking for most people who lived in his era. Strangely enough, when I was at the drug store tonight I noticed that on the cover of TIME Magazine they are featuring Mark Twain and the cover story is about his forward thinking. I might go back and buy that magazine tomorrow just to read what they have to say about my hero. Too bad I didn’t know they wee interested in a story about Mark Twain - I could have written that myself and it would have been sweet to get paid for my writing.

One of my buddies has been working this summer as a security guard for Sonic. It’s not one in a bad part of town, but all the Sonics have beefed up security since a couple weeks ago there was a shooting at one. The Sonic was full of customers on a busy night and three guys with guns drove up and went inside where they cook and tried to rob the place. But the manager pulled out his own gun and shot two of the guys as they tried to run off. So now all the Sonics are required to have a security guard on duty from dark until closing. It worked out good for my buddy - he hadn’t found anything to do yet and he loves cop stuff. He even has me interested in cops and I went to the gun range with him last weekend for a couple hours.

One of the thing he really likes is all the tactical gear. It’s all about pockets. His pants have pockets everywhere. He wears a belt with holsters and holders all around it. And he has a vest with tons of pockets. He buys most of the gear online from a web site called lapolicegear.com and I checked it out tonight. I saw a lot of tactical equipment on their site that was reasonably priced, and a lot of the items qualify for free shipping or a free extra gift like a cap or coffee mug. I think I’ll order some of the mil-spec BDU pants and try them out for hunting and yard work. Who knows? I might pick up a part time job doing security work when I get back to school, too.

You may have noticed that I don’t go into a lot of details about my love life here on my blog. That’s on purpose, as I want a little privacy there and I’m sure that the person I am dating wants her privacy, too. So to everyone who’s been wondering, I’m fine, OK.

Would really like to go to the beach for a few days. It seems like all my friends are going to either Destin or Cancun and here I am at work instead of sitting on the sand watching the bikinis go by. It’s making me chafe a little, I have to admit. However, I have responsibilities and one more year of college before I can have all my finances in order and afford to take time off for fun and games.

Instead of driving 8 hours down and back to have a few hours in the sun, I’ve been making the most of the fun things that are around here. We have tons of parks and there is always the lakes and rivers. Lake beaches are not the same as ocean beaches, but they are sand and water and sun, with a few bikinis worth watching, too.