It’s not your usual gathering of entities.

Keithville, Louisiana has the distinction of being home to the Eddie D. Jones Memorial Nature Park with some of the most beautiful running/biking/hiking trails anywhere.  Adjacent to the trails, is Chimp Haven, a 200-acre chimpanzee sanctuary, the Northwest Louisiana Veterans Cemetery and Forcht Wade Correctional Center. 

It’s how close these properties are to one another that gives the area a serene, pride-instilling, beautiful, mysterious and sometimes eerie feeling.

From the church graveyard, the sight of prisoners farming peas, the sounds of chimps screaming to occasionally remembering that the park ranger once saw what he thought was a cougar in the woods, this is a fascinating place.

Have you noticed how many waiters/waitpersons/waitrons at area restaurants are now using the same verbage to describe what’s on the menu?  At least four times recently, at different eateries, they’ve used the words, “It’s gonna be…” to tell me about the special.  

It goes like this:

“It’s gonna be served with an organic spinach risotto or a nice rice pilaf.” 

“The scallops are gonna be seared to perfection and served with a lemon, butter ginger sauce.”

Is there some central waitron dictionary of descriptions?  Do all of the waitstaff from competing restaurants gather after hours behind closed doors and craft their wait-speak?  Is there some insider book with secrets to how to describe specials?  Is it trendy and hip and will probably go away soon? 

“Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.”  –Optimus Prime

Here’s the controversial video of what happened yesterday at the Louisiana House of Representatives.  Want the floor?

It starts as a simple question.  Sometimes, without the intent of getting a real answer.  “What are you doing this weekend?”  It’s meant to make conversation…kind of like, “How are you?”

How easy it is to fall into one-upmanship mode.  This is sort of how it goes: 

Me:  “Well, so far this morning, I’ve run, biked, lifted weights, assembled a vacuum cleaner and cleaned and exterminated the house.”  

Friend:  “Oh, I see.  Well, I painted a bathroom and saved the lives of a puppy and a child.”

Me:  “Really?  Well, in addition to what I already mentioned, I restored faith in humanity and found Jimmy Hoffa.”     

You can do better than that!  What have you done this weekend?

Mine:

Become a marine biologist

Forgiven more

Worked as a waitress

Planned vacations better

Spent more time seeking to understand

I never thought I would be one of those people who stood in line outside a store before the crack of dawn for a new product. 

Now I’m that person.

To my surprise, I liked the experience.  I wasn’t pre-pared for that.

Since I turned into a functioning techno freak about a year ago, I’ve been waiting for the Palm Pre to come out.  The launch date kept getting pushed back, which just made my heart grow fonder of this elusive gadget that was supposed to rival the iPhone and cure cancer.

There were six of us willing to sacrifice sleep to wait in line on a Saturday morning to get our palms on the latest Palm, and we bonded. 

All of us knew there was something comically geeky about our obsession with this gadget, but there’s something to be said for having a common interest, spending hours trading stories on the latest technology and sharing in each other’s excitement as we finally, literally bought into the hype, then went our separate ways.

Lawmakers are weighing whether they should be allowed to meddle in the dates set each year for hunting seasons in Louisiana.

In a 9-3 vote, the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee backed a measure that would let lawmakers review — and possibly reject — the season dates set each year for everything from ducks and deer to quail and turkey.

Currently, the authority to set seasons rests solely with the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission.

House committee members say the commission doesn’t reflect the interests of hunters around the state and instead skews toward south Louisiana.

Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Robert Barham says the current system works well and keeps the state from political management of the state’s natural resources.

The bill by Democratic Rep. James Armes heads next to the full House.

From the Associated Press