Over the weekend, in a doomed effort to get our minds off all things criminal, Bridgette and I hosted a number of friends and family in a joint celebration of our 30th birthdays this summer. It was a wonderful testament to the power of friendship and watermelon slices.

Now I will tell you about this party. Read it.

Ted served as our party’s sturdy grillmaster. Manning two propane grills with the deft dexterity of a circus performer on meth, all the meat in the viscinity was filtered through him and rendered unto him. From raw slices of bloody red sloppiness to charred husks of gray loveliness, he served as the sun to our universe of birthday shame.

Here is an illustration that Christine made of him. It captures his vitality and triumph with the skill of Michelangelo and Jackson Pollock combined.

At this time I would also like to note the contribution made by our friend Allen (fiancé to Bridgette’s best friend Tami) to our evite invitation. In his late reply, he wrote:

I’m in. Shall I bring a Piñata dressed in an oversized white t-shirt and black do-rag? Maybe Three? Great Way to: 1) Get out Frustration. 2) Send A Message. 3) Potentially get arrested for a Hate Crime.

If only we had read his message in time, the party might have been an unmitigated success, rather than the sullen, bloated exercise in pointlessness and discomfort it proved to be.

As usual, the aftermath of this gathering was marked with remorse and slurred resentments. This is, of course, the way of things in North Minneapolis, where gun ownership is discussed among my neighbors with increased sincerity.

And by the way, the three kids with oversized white t-shirts and black do-rags rode past the house a few times during the party. We forgot to offer them a burger and soda to go with my iPod.

An actual conversation while getting ready for work this morning…

WIFE: Do you hear that overhead fan? That hum is really annoying.

ME: Yeah, I hear it.

WIFE: Is there a way to fix it?

ME: No, but check this out. *begins to hum a harmony tone along with the fan*

WIFE:…

ME: You should hum the third part. Here, like this. *hums the third part harmony*

WIFE:…

ME: C’mon!

WIFE: It’s too high for me.

ME: Fine, but I’m blogging about this.

You’d think that after everything we’ve been through over the past few days, Bridgette could find it in her heart to sing three part harmony along with me and the kitchen fan, but I guess not. Marriage isn’t like in the movies, folks.

A few updates from the Fun-Time Sugar-Burglary over the weekend:

—

The cops have, in fact, located our Toyota Camry. They found it on 35th and Logan, smack-dab in the middle of the most pleasant neighborhood in Christendom. It is still considered evidence in an ongoing investigation, however, so we aren’t able to go check it out. I’ll just go ahead and assume that it still has a stereo in it and that it doesn’t reek of weed.

—

The police department seems extremely hesitant to give out any information about my case, presumably to avoid citizen-led, Charles Bronson-esque vigilante missions of street justice. I can report, however, that we haven’t seen the three 15-16 year old kids in oversized white t-shirts and black do-rags wandering the streets for a couple days. Hopefully they committed ritual suicide to ease the burden on those of us choosing to live in the civilized world.

—

While our car waits patiently for us at the Minneapolis impound lot, our insurance company has given us a loaner car – a 2008 Hyundai Elantra:

She is a steady steed, and drives as true as the Gospel of Mark (considered the oldest of the Synoptic Gospels, incidentally). Its acceleration is formidable, and the breeze from it’s A/C unit is like a blast from the cheeks of Santor Klaus himself. It is the perhaps finest Japanese export since the Tamagotchi virtual pet.

—

A contractor came out to our house on Tuesday afternoon to give an estimate on the costs to fix our broken sunroom windows. He looked at the old window slats that were probably installed in the late 1950s and just laughed, saying he hadn’t seen parts like that for sale in 20 years. He said we’ll need to install a set of new windows for that room.

The insurance company is probably not going to be happy with this news…

—

A new security system was installed in our home on Monday. Various beeps can be heard at different times in the house, which bring with them a vague sense of satisfaction and security. Also, they startle the cats, which I find pleasing. The yard signage ain’t so bad, either (particularly for stabbing burglars with).

—

Thanks so much to all of you who have left us voice messages or emails over the last couple days checking in on us. They have all been very much appreciated, and I’m sorry if we haven’t gotten back to you yet. Ted’s offer of an evening of compensatory Wii-playing was thus far the most generous, for which he will be rewarded tenfold in heaven.

So my weekend basically sucked. Here are some notable details:

On Saturday afternoon, while we were out, some lovely individuals broke into our house. They shattered the window slats on our sunroom, cut the screen, and wandered through the house. They rummaged through drawers, and took my new 80 gig iPod. Bridgette was working an overnight shift, so I was alone to deal with the mess and call the police. After the cops left, I realized that they had also taken the spare keys to the house and to our Toyota Camry, along with an extra garage door opener. I called the police with this information, but they got annoyed and told me to call back on Monday so they could file it in the report.

Saturday night was an anxious time. Thankfully, Todd and Adam came over to keep me company, and after securing the house as much as I possibly could, I went over to Kevin’s to spend the night. It sucked, but I read the Bible a lot and talked on the phone to my wife pretty regularly. We were both exhausted from stress, crying, and fear.

I spent Sunday morning working on re-programming the garage door opener and calling around to get quotes on security systems. Around noon, as I was on the phone, I peered out my window and noticed that our garage was opened. Running out the door, I saw that the Camry was gone. In a blind panic, I called 911 and saw that two of my neighbors were already outside on the phone with the police, having watched the whole thing happen themselves. They said three 15 or 16 year old kids with oversized white t-shirts and black do-rags managed to get the garage door open and peel out of the driveway achieving heretofore unknown speeds down the alley with my 2001 Toyota. Stunned, I waited for the police to arrive and we all gave our reports.

(Incidentally, that police officer apologized profusely for taking 10 minutes to get there – he said he was working down near Plymouth and got called up to us because of how drastically undermanned they are. Thanks, Mayor Rybak.)

All things considered, the afternoon was actually pretty cool. My parents showed up, along with my brother, and together we put in new locks to the house, put in a new secure door between the kitchen and sunroom, and made a number of other helpful improvements. It seemed like our whole neighborhood was out and about, talking with us about what happened. I had a hugely encouraging phone conversation with Mark, the pastor at the Rock, who seemed to know just what to say.

Sunday evening around 9, just as we were trying to settle in for a routine evening, our doorbell rang. It was Maria, a 10 year old girl from our neighborhood to tell me that she had seen the three boys break into our house on Saturday and she asked them what they were doing, but they yelled at her, so she was too scared to do anything about it. The whole time we were talking, she was nervously looking over her shoulder down the block. Eventually, she told me that the kids with the oversized white t-shirts and black do-rags were playing basketball down the street. We thanked her, and called 911 again. They said they’d send out a squad car, and we figured that was it.

20 minutes later, the doorbell rang again, and this time it was a police officer. He told me that he had ID’d the three kids, but there wasn’t a ton to hold them on (Maria apparently clammed up in front of the police). He told me they’d get taken in for questioning that night, and that I should call the precinct every day to keep bugging them about my case – the squeaky wheel gets the grease. This didn’t seem very encouraging, so I asked him about the car. He said he’d read a report earlier in the evening that it had been recovered after a brief chase, but that the kids inside scattered. He didn’t know if it was trashed or not, but he didn’t seem particularly hopeful.

I went inside and hugged Bridgette, thankful that at least we were each safe and with one another. Also our cats had not been mutilated beyond recognition.

We’re each feeling a million things right now, and I think it will be a long while before we feel really comfortable about the situation. We know that God allowed this to happen, and we know that ultimately, a ton of people (including Mark) are going through much worse than the expenses and emotional craziness we went through over the last 48 hours. We know we’ll be okay, and that God is good.

Let’s just hope that those three punks in the oversized white t-shirts and black do-rags who like to play basketball at 5315 Fremont Avenue see justice. Maybe I’ve been reading Kevin’s blog too much, but I’m not very optimistic.

As many of you know, graduating from college is a special time in a young person’s life.

Take my brother Brian, for instance.

He recently graduated from the University of St. Thomas, with a degree in mechanical engineering or sandwiches or something. My sister Julia and I did our best to encourage and support him, though we wished to do neither. Our brother Patrick wasn’t there. I’m not sure where he was - I haven’t seen him since he wandered into the woods two years ago. That guy was nuts.

At any rate, one of the challenges of this transition period is the fluxuation between worlds. One is no longer a part of the college community they so cherished, yet they are also not fully ingratiated into their professional lives. What is a young person to do?

During times like these, one can only hope to find a true friend to be there for them.

Sometimes these friends come from unlikely places. Sometimes their capacity to lend an open ear and a tender heart causes a young man to hold these people in an entirely new regard.

Together with these new friends, the young college graduate can gaze steadily into the future, confident that their dreams will be slowly whittled down to size, and that their now lithe, nubile bodies will eventually plumpen and swell.

This is the circle of life, my friends. What was will be; what is will be no more. All these lessons and more I have tried to impart not only to my brother, but to all of you, as well.

At the risk of sounding too philosophical, that beautiful tiger captures the distilled essence of what it means to be a friend, nay, what it means to be human.

This morning, I wish you all the same level of inanimate companionship that has so fulfulled my brother.

Last night I stayed up till almost midnight finishing up Victor Davis Hanson’s A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War. This was not a book I was able to cruise through easily - instead I’ve worked hard over the last 11 months to finish it. I didn’t have a ton of background knowledge of the classical world going into it, so I had to spend time cross-referencing names and going back to re-read earlier pages. While parts of the text were a bit dry, large chunks of the book were riveting reading that brought to light the plight of the ancient soldier, along with many interesting parallels between the worlds of classical Greece and 21st Century America.

A few noteworthy items from the text:

-This destructive 27-year war, which brought an end to Greece’s cultural apex, had its roots in Athenian arrogance. Though Athens was undoubtedly the hearth of Greek culture and art, the home of its most famed intellectual heroes, and the most powerful of all the city-states, its domineering attitude toward other Greeks proved to be its downfall. The so-called Delian League of city-states was actually little more than an Athenian Empire that Athens used to (somewhat ironically) enforce its democratic ideals against the will of monarchical or oligarchic city-states. Sparta, sensing that the Athenians were corrupting traditional Greek ideals of autonomy and a balance of power, launched an invasion against the Athenians. This history is a good warning for we as Americans to heed.

-Socrates approved of the modern world of San Dimas, CA.

-The Peloponnesian War was an utterly destructive one for the Greeks. It featured civilian deaths on a scale unseen- in classical history, a terrifying plague that ravaged Athens, scattered civil wars across the countryside, and sea battles that killed tens of thousands in minutes. All in all, about a third of the population of Athens and Sparta was killed – in modern America, the equivalent would be over 100 million people.

-Historians agree that if the ancient Greeks had ever tried a Pop-Ice, they would have shit themselves.

-The Athenian national anthem was actually “Walk of Life” by Dire Straits.

-Athens’ famed democracy played a complex role in the long conflict. While the democratic virtue of civic involvement made all men feel invested in the war and willing to personally take up arms, the people of Athens were also grossly impatient for ultimate victory. All citizens were valued, so the loss of any in a battle was considered a grave offense that Athenian generals were to be held accountable for. In an excellent example of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face, many of their best military leaders or tacticians were banished or executed.

-Bush lied, Athenians died.

-Greek men had cool names like Aristarchus, Xenophon, Demosthenes, and “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase.

-Greek triremes (pictured above) were brutally destructive, yet cumbersome weapons of war. They operated like a javelin on the water, designed to build up great straight-line speed and ram into enemy ships. Over 200 men were crammed into each ship, with three levels of rowers working like clockwork. The men on the bottom rowed in sitting water in excruciating heat below decks with sweat, urine, and worse draining from the men above them. When triremes received a direct hit, they could sink in a matter of moments, which usually meant that nearly all the men aboard would be killed.

-The Greeks, like all ancient societies, had slaves, but slavery isn’t really that bad if you think about it.

-In addition to their innovations of democracy, philosophy, and theater, the Greeks invented kissing with tongue.