Travis' Peculiarities

So I've finally done it; I've actually created a blog of my very own. For the past month or so I have become increasingly fascinated with blogs. I find myself navigating through the web of different peoples' blogs and enjoy reading the endless rants of different people. Only, I couldn't help but feel a little voyeuristic about it....sorta like I was snooping around in the lives of other people, knowing good and well that if it was on the Internet it was free for everyone to read. Nonetheless I still felt guilty, until now that is. For some reason I feel like I can justify my desire to peer into the blogger worlds of others if I have my very own blog to be peered into. Weird? Of course it is, but if you stick around long enough to read very many of my posts, you may indeed become overwhelmed with my peculiarities..... Which reminds me of this story from when I was in the fifth grade... My teacher, Mrs. Lane, was teaching us about the wonders of brainstorming before writing an essay (you know, the lesson where the teacher writes a word in the center of a bubble then has all these "stems" off of the center bubble forming a whole web of bubbles). Well anyway, we were supposed to choose a topic for our essay and she was asking for several different suggestions for the topics. At first my classmates were raising their hands and saying things like "Basketball" and then Mrs. Lane would write basketball in a bubble with all the stems and so forth and so on..... We had a few topics on the board when this one girl, Jaime Butler, raised her hand and said, "How about the topic of how Travis always pulls his eyelashes out?" (I admit I was a nervous kid with weird habits), then someone else said, "Or how about the weird way Travis holds his pencil"...... Suddenly there were hands raised all over the class with fifth graders dying to suggest something weird about me. Finally Mrs. Lane just said "Okay, I've got it". She drew her huge bubble and inside it wrote "Travis' Peculiarities". I must admit, as a fifth grade little boy I loved the idea of my name being on the chalkboard, but at the same time I didn't know what was so "peculiar" about who I was. Looking back I guess things haven't really changed to much. I've always been a pretty quirky guy and have come to accept that I may really indeed be "weird". The fact of the matter is, I like who I am--for the most part any way.
But like I was saying, I'm very happy to have my very own place to rant. I used to try to journal but I'm terrible with consistency. I have about 4 different journals on my bookshelf with only about 20 pages written on in each one of them. I think things will flow more natural for me at a keyboard rather than trying to push some ink across a page. We'll see.
Oh, I just finished "The Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger tonight. I had never read it before and picked it up earlier this week at good ole Barnes and Noble. I was there looking for a children's book called "The Wide Mouth Frog" for my baby that's on the way when I spotted it on a table. It was only six bucks so I said what the heck. It was interesting to say the least. I really had no idea what to expect when I started reading it. Come to find out its just about this 3 day chaotic adventure of this troubled sixteen year old boy. I've read it was quite controversial when it was published in 1951 because of JD Salinger's use of profanity and less-than-classy chapters. Boy if those boycotters could read some of the junk that's written today, psshht, they'd think ole JD was a saint. Anywho, I'm trying to decide what I'll read next. I was thinking "The Grapes of Wrath" or something from Hemingway...any suggestions? Whatever it is, I'll need to be a quick reader with the baby coming and all. Less than two weeks till the due date and after that I'm sure I'll have no time for a quiet read with a hot cup of sexy tea! Oh well...there's always audio books...