This is the blog of Randy Hayes and family. It exists because I wanted a means to share media that I've created and my thoughts on the things that touch my life. Regarding the former, perhaps I'll actually become motivated to create media worth sharing, and regarding the latter, perhaps I'll actually become convinced that my thoughts are worth sharing.
A) You are either looking for information about collectible shoe merchandise connected with the now-defunct Red Goose Shoes brand, or
B) You saw an email address for
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or someone else in my family and your curiosity got the best of you.
Let me explain. I registered this domain name so I could have a personal blog and email address with a unique name. I gave everyone in my family an email address at this domain -- maybe kind of lame, hindsight being 20/20, but we're pretty much stuck with them now. The blog part was conceived in 2004, and was supposed to just be my sandbox -- a place to post stuff that I had on my mind or songs, videos, images that I created. At that time, you would have come to this site because . . .
A) See above, or
B) You were one of my friends who thought I was a very rad dude.
The site went through a few changes punctuated by massive vacuums of space and time. That, I attribute to simple busyness and apathy. But I tried to revive the blog again in 2007 or 2008, just when facebook was rising from prominence to dominance. As far as I'm now concerned, that kind of sucked the life right out of the web and reinjected it as pseudo-life into one homogeneous blob at its own domain. In any event, "interacting" with my "network" at "facebook" gave me little to no reason to blog here. Then I closed my account at facebook altogether in March of 2010. Such a maverick. But now I was totally cut off from the web. Besides coming to my house and standing there and just looking at me (which I highly recommend), how else would people know how awesome I am?
Well, until I loosen up a little, or maybe actually start being awesome, I think this site will stay just like it has been since our "Aluminum Anniversary" (oh boy, that was over three years ago). Until then, I have email @redgooseshoes.com, and I will keep this domain.
For those of you looking for collectible shoe merchandise, keeeeep googling.
Here's to the happy couple! The traditional gift for the tenth wedding anniversary is aluminum or tin. This left me (as usual) scratching my head for ideas, but I decided we could go rent an aluminum boat at Lake Benson in Garner. You just can't go wrong with all the nature you would possibly want for $3.00 an hour. We saw a mother goose sitting on her giant nest, a big pile of beaver-chewed sticks, and some turtles. But the real reason we were out there was so I could snap a photo of us on our tenth anniversary to go in the aluminum frame I was lucky enough to find at Target.
Here are some pics of the garden in its current state. I got it all walled-in finally. We've been gone the past two weekends, so it's nice to come home and see how things change in a few days. You know, a watched pot never boils. This morning, I thinned my dill and cilantro, so I'm drying out the dill I pulled, and we'll have the cilantro in salads. In fact, I also pulled two lettuce plants to make room for tomatoes at that end of the bed, and went ahead and transplanted the tomatoes to their final destination.
I have Marty Balin's Hearts stuck in my head, and that's a good thing. I'm considering learning a set of songs from that era of popular music (circa 1980-1984, which is when I first started to have favorite songs on the radio), and play a coffee house with them and maybe some original material. My dad has always worked in radio, so I kind of keep track of everything that's happened in my life by which songs were popular at the time. My dad does it too. Both of us really have a knack for remembering years and dates like that. Definitely some Alan Parsons and Hall and Oates will be on the set list.
The theme of the latest podcast offering from Phil Keaggy (March 2008) is death. (By the way, no comments from Phil for disappearing off the podcast radar for halves of years at a time, but whatevs.) Seriously though, that is the theme, and in particular, the deaths of musicians that Phil was close to, and it was a very good one. Lots of great music, lots of laughs (with Larry Norman particularly), and lots to meditate on. It seems to fall in line with the book I've been reading by my friend Matt Rogers about the fallen state of the world, and how we need to be prepared to deal with grief, not to mention our own expiration.
I finally got to go out this morning and harvest a bunch of lettuce. It looks, feels, and smells very good, but we'll find out for sure this evening when we have grilled chicken salads. Also in the harvest was spinach. This is my fourth time picking the spinach, and it's growing prolifically now, and the leaves are getting quite large. I also planted a row of both lettuce and spinach about a month after the first planting, so pretty soon, I'll cut the old plants down and let the new ones finish out the cool season.
Here's a few photos of Awanas Grand Prix cars from today and yesteryear. Maybe you've seen these things before. As a kid, I had them for RA's in the Baptist church, as well as Cub Scouts. Since Samuel has been in Awanas Sparks, we've had one each year. The first year, we (okay, I generally do all the work, but don't tell anyone!) did a general race car body shape, but painted it with a special chalkboard paint and stuck two pieces of chalk in two drilled holes in the tail for exhaust pipes. Called it the "Chalky Racer" (say it out loud, you'll get it) and got first place for design. It was pretty fast too getting second place overall for speed.
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