New things are good.

New things are good, right?

New shirts, especially when the sleeves are long enough and they don't choke your neck, are good.

New pants, especially when they actually reach your ankles and don't cut you in half when you sit down, are good.

New cars, well, gosh, there's 'nuff said in 2 words.

New friends are good (but keep the old, one is silver and the other is gold! Thanks very much Girl Scout Camp!)

But my favorite new thing of all is new places. Man, I love to go places I've never been to before.

That bend in the road that curves over the horizon? I want to know who's waiting there. That far mountain with the glitter of cabin lights? I'd love to go knock on their door to find out who calls that place home. That backroad that leads to a tiny hamlet where everyone seems to have the same last name? I'd like to know who their grandmas were and what they put in their mac and cheese.

So strange to go someplace new and realize that for the people who live there it's their backyard, their corner store, their fields or woods or school, their everyday reality. I love to drive in random directions and gawp at the things other people take for granted. I love to rubberneck at strangers' gardens and peep into their houses at night while driving past, looking to see if they have the tevee on or if they're having dinner or maybe if they're out on the porch swing drinking iced tea and talking quietly about the new baby and if it will be a boy or a girl.

Oddly, I think this love of new places might be genetic, because both my parents had a degree of wanderlust, and I see the same awareness in our children. While out running errands with them the other day we were driving on a new road right near our house, and the younger said "You know, Mom, I don't think I've ever been here before," to which I felt it appropriate to respond "Well, you can now cross this off the list of places you've never been."

The great thing, as I see it, is that I don't think I'll run out of "places I've never been." I'm satisfied merely in going along a new block in a town I've been to a million times before. It doesn't have to be Paris or Morocco or Prague or Mexico; just a trip to Zebulon will do.

Oh wait, I've already been there.

Maybe Wendell instead.


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Holy jumping jiminy, y'all! The sky just turned black as night and it's crashing about with thunder out there! Lightning and scary wind and RAIN like crazy! Yikes!

There was a huge band of storms that came through early this morning, causing a bit of panic in the canine portion of the household, and I thought that was going to be it. The drive to work was all puffy clouds and glistening roads; the storm had passed and things were looking up.

But here we are not an hour later, and Mama Nature is right pissed off again and is smiting us with magnificent anger, or so it seems. I'm thinking I need to go to the first floor of this building and find someplace to cower. Wish me luck!