Ye Olde Nutshell

You're so delicious,
You're so
Soft
Sweet on the tip of my tongue
You taste like
Sunlight
And strawberry bubblegum
You bite my lip
You spike my blood
You make my heart
beat
faster.
--Matt Nathanson, "Faster"

And so it begins...again.

This past week was full of adventure. I made a new friend and we shared a lot of firsts together. Hopefully we'll share many more firsts in the coming...hours, days, weeks...Listen to me, I'm so optimistic. Where does it come from, this optimism, this confidence?

It must be from the inordinate amount of fast food I've been eating lately. It can't be from working out, because I've only hit the gym twice this month, and I've only run three times. And I finally got on my road bike for the first time this week. So, no, it must be my diet, because it's definitely not my exercise.

I watched the sunrise this week. There's something incredibly therapeutic, cathartic, symbolic, and romantic about arising early in the morning, finding yourself in the dark, and watching the light creep over the mountains to the east, illuminating the world around you. And honestly, I can't think of anyone better than the person who was with me. She had all the right answers to all my questions/comments. So, thank you mystery woman from the sunrise memory, and may the monkeys from the movie ever be out of your dreams.

Some of you may know I was in Utah last weekend. Well, I have surpassed the 14,000 mile mark on my Harley-Davidson. That may not seem like a lot of miles to some of you, but consider that earlier this week my buddy, Green, rode his 1990 Katana over to my house, and it has fewer than 13,000 miles on it. So, in 21 years, he has put almost as many miles on his bike as I have in the past 3.5 years.

Some might consider the big news of this week to be the fact that I paid someone to sedate me, lay me on a table, apply great pressure to my eyeballs, cut my corneas open with a laser and send me home with clear plastic shields over my eyes, and steroids to drop in my eyes every few hours. (Fun factoid: the steroids I drop in my eyes leak through to my sinuses, and down into my oral cavity. Translation: I can TASTE the steroids a few minutes after I put them in my eyes.)

Now, I have two favorite memories to share with you from this week. One of them involves my army buddies. We went out to dinner together on Thursday and over the course of our conversation, Green brought up this young woman from his apartment complex who was "Jewish" and a "Jesus Freak". The conversation stalled for a second as we all considered this. Jews don't typically identify with Christians, at least not the "Jesus Freaks". While he was talking about her, she sent him a text message, making some statement about religion. Since I have the reputation among my peers of being the strait-and-narrow-let's-talk-religion-and-stay-on-the-right-path guy I told Green to give me her number. I texted her, which resulted in her calling me, which resulted in me inviting her to church on Sunday.

The second memory, forgive me, is a bit juvenile--I'm still young at heart. We're driving in the car, she and I, and I look over and ask sweetly, "Can I hold your hand?" Her reply: "That depends...can you multi-task?" Ah, the wit. The flirtation. It makes my heart beat faster.

And that's my week in a Nutshell,
Hop