A selection from my outbox.

I just spent a lot of energy crafting this email to a friend, so I thought it prudent to preserve it here in the weblog. Interestingly, the friend to whom this email was sent is mostly the only person who ever reads this blog, unless I force my wife or my brother to read it, which I have been known to do, with varying results. So here you go, friend, here's that same email one more time:

Thanks for the great update. Yeah, you take your math class, friend. Just do it! You're so close!

I had to make so many posts because I was watching a movie that needed to be posted about, at parts. It was very important. I've heard of Northern Exposure, I think my parents used to watch it with much enjoyment. I'll have to put it in my mental queue. Monique seems pretty cool, and I haven't seen UberJew in three days (that doesn't necessarily mean she hasn't been here, but if she has, she's been uncharacteristically quiet) so it's good. Getting lots of goofing off done here in Utah.

Get this! Our assignment for photography this week is portraits, and as soon as I found that out, I thought, "I have to find a way to get a picture of Roland my crazy neighbor." I assumed I would have to sneak the picture, because he seems like a guy who would flip out if you tried to take his picture. He tore down all the fences (oh damn, the UberJew just walked in, proclaiming, "SHE LIVES!") separating our yards, which I think is against the law. Luckily he's hired some steely-eyed Polynesians to build new ones. So I started trying to sneak pictures, and it didn't work. There's nowhere I can hide to get close to him in our shared driveway, which is where he spends about 70% of his life. So finally I strapped on a pair and approached him, asking, "Roland, can I take your picture?" Surprisingly, he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, "I'll take your picture!" This threw me off, and I stuttered, "Okay, we'll trade pictures of each other. I'll go first." Then he started walking away. "Wait, Roland, can I take your picture?" "Yeah!" Still walking away. "Wait, Roland, stand right there for a second while I take your picture!" I finally got him to stop and look at me, and I got some cool shots, as you can see. I was pretty excited. I've been riding that excitement all week. Also from my PoliSci class, because I got my grade back and I totally got an A! So it's pretty much 10 out of 10 over here.

Max figured out how to crawl, which has opened a whole new chapter of terror in our home. Little dude just loves to pull stuff down/out/around, all the time, and now he is mobile. So look out cats. And shoes in the shoe basket. And flowers in pots. And everything. I just talked to PJ on the phone, she says to say hi to you. That yarn bombing looks AWESOME. Send me pictures of every single thing you bomb. Or put them on your blog. I look at that. You guys should yarn bomb something in town in the middle of the night. If I was there I would help. But I'll send Reggie as my proxy. So just imagine that it's me sitting in the middle of your lettuce. Keep up the good WArk! That was a terrible attempt at a Washington joke

Carl

I would feel much better if I very quickly set the record straight on something. The person we have lovingly dubbed "the UberJew" is a very friendly, good-hearted lady. We are not anti-Semites. I am not a witch. The only reason we feel comfortable referring to her that way is because she has repeatedly made it clear that she wants to be identified primarily as a Jewish person. The first three things we ever found out about her were that she is "originally from Israel" (we don't know exactly what that means yet), that she has a tattoo that means _______ in Hebrew on her neck (again, lacking exact details), and that she owns a set of Israeli commando knives that are illegal for her to possess in this country. She has bandied this fact about loudly a number of times, usually as a deterrent to a perceived threat: "Well, if they do that, I'll just come back with my Israeli commando knives..." So, out of respect to her, we call her the UberJew. And now to the pictures. Below you will find one of the (very flat, unedited) photographs of my neighbor Roland that I referenced in the email, and the result of my Google search of "Israeli commando knives":

Dang, look at that thing! Okay, UberJew, we're cool. No need to bring your knives in to work. It's all good.