When it's cold you can smell the pizza.

I live about a block away from two pizza places on opposite sides of a nearby street. Often on nights where it's cold here, that means it's VERY VERY STILL too. No breeze = cold. On those nights when I step out in the back to let out the dog, I can smell the pizza. But only when it's cold and the breeze isn't diluting the pizza scent.

With the fragrant Papa Johns arouma around me, I got to thinking about pizza memories. There are just so many. Some of the first times I can remember being in the Pizza Ranch in my hometown, in approximately 1987. I can remember going there in high school. And there were pizza parties for the famed State Fair Singers and Jazz band in almost ten years ago. I can remember eating pizza with my dad when I visited Luther for college. Speaking of college, there was a lot of pizza there, too. Lots, I tell you. A staggering amount for a small Iowa town, really.

For me pizza is happy memories,like hanging out with Pete and our friend Adam late at night, eating leftover pizza from Adam's part-time job when we should have been studying music history. If I'd studied, maybe then I wouldn't of had to take the remedial music history class I failed when I started graduate school. Instead I was enjoying Cactus Bread.

Well, I'm far away from the Pizza Ranch and Mabe's now. But I can't help but still lovin' me some pizza. Probably I'll bring some home later this week. Then I'll have the "working at a cool job enoying my late 20s" pizza memories. I'd like that. Just the way I like it when it's cold and you can smell the pizza.

The state of things.

Cryin' out loud. Current events are really something, eh? I can hardly wait to watch Jon Stewart tonight. First you've got the Astro-nut saga. And Pelsoi and the plane. She had to, man. She had to get the bigger plane for the sake of the war on terror. Oh my. And now Anna Nicole Smith? Shit. I love the news. And I always have. When I was a kid I'd of rather watched the news than Saturday morning cartoons. Just as long as I've been saying cryin' out loud.

And North Korea. Heavens, it's dramatic. This day was crazy enough without the nukes.