Do you think you’re a lucky person or an unlucky person? Well, it’s a good question. I have a friend who I feel like is a very lucky person. She just, she seems to have — things seem to go her way. She’s won the lottery. She’s been on — She was chosen to be on a TV game show. She — I mean she just kind of like big things that you just sort of think of. “Oh my gosh, like, that was pretty lucky that you, y’know, that you won that or that you got to do that,” or, y’know, something like that. And I kind of have always felt that about her, that she kind of has this luck about her, and I don’t feel like I necessarily have that. Nothing that anybody would probably ever, really consider lucky has happened to me like that. But I feel extremely lucky in my life or, y’know, I don’t know if maybe lucky is not the right word, but grateful, y’know, I feel like — I feel like I’ve kind of, y’know, lived, y’know, the best life that I could, y’know, I don’t know. And I don’t know if that’s luck or if that’s or what that is, but I do feel — I do feel like that’s, y’know, maybe a little bit lucky.

I see some orange on the spine of a book on our shelf called — the book’s called the Wonder Trail, which is about a writer from The Office. I think Steve Hely. I’m trying to read his name. About a writer’s journey from California. He drove his car all the way to, I think, the tip of Argentina and it was a fascinating look. I’ve always wondered what would happen if you did just keep going in your car. My girlfriend and I have driven to the Mexico border, but we’ve never driven across the border. We drove to the border and then crossed it in a rowboat at Big Bend National Park, and then we experienced Mexico that way. But I did always kinda wonder when we left Southwest Texas and you could look down, I think, around El Paso you can see — is it? I think, it’s Juarez. I remember looking down at Juarez and feelings so intimidated from afar. It’s this massive metropolis over there, and I’ve always kind of been curious, what happens if you — if you cross that border and you just go. Not for any particular reason, not to go vacation in Cabo, but to just drive until you can’t.

My brother, he went on a trip across the country back near Thanksgiving. He was out from Thanksgiving to Christmas, traveling across the country. And he went in his van and he was by himself and he was starting to feel very lonely and very sad and — and kind of homesick and then he got to a place in… it was either Nevada or Arizona. I think it was Nevada, but he was at a gas station in Nevada, just outside of a Native American reservation, and there was a dog at this gas station, who was, y’know, sniffing through trash, trying to beg for people to give her food, stuff like that. So he scooped her up. Gave her a bath, took her to the vet, y’know, got her treated for fleas, brushed her, took care of her, and he gave her a name. He called her Coco, which in Navajo means night, because he found her at night in a gas station outside of a Navajo reservation. And, he brought her home, and for the first couple of weeks or even months she didn’t really know how to be a dog, y’know? Like she kinda just stood there in the middle of the room and didn’t really understand. Like she didn’t bark, she didn’t play, being pet wasn’t really a priority. She just existed. I mean, she was a great companion for my brother while he was on this trip, but outside of that she didn’t know how to be a dog. And so, y’know, after a few months of my brother trying to train her and care for her, he taught her the command speak eventually, and I think that was when it really turned around, because he taught her the command to speak and suddenly she understood that barking was something that she could do, and it was something that she was encouraged to do sometimes. So it was like, all of a sudden, she became a dog and she started barking. Not in an annoying way, but just how dogs do. She barks, she plays, she knows all these commands. She’s very loving, she’s wiggly and excited and her tail wags all the time, and it’s like, every time I see her, she’s increased her dogness by like eighty percent. And it’s such a joyous thing to see that this dog that my brother…

What do you think red smells like… What do you think red smells like? Michigan Diaries. What does red smell like? What does red smell like? I’ve been eating a lot of sriracha hot sauce lately, maybe red smells like sriracha. Could smell like strawberries, raspberries. What does red smell like? This is so hard. What does red smell like? Too funny, too funny. Yeah, I’m just thinking food things. In flag design, red often stands for like like blood or violence or anger. It’s not a smell. Yeah, I would—I would just, I’m just going to say red smells like sriracha.

I met with my piano teacher who lives in Lansing on Tuesday afternoon. It was the first time that I had had a lesson with my piano teacher in twenty months because I had been pinned down at my home in Georgia by the great pandemic. And it warms my heart that my piano teacher told me that he has seen a tremendous amount of growth in my musicianship in the past twenty months. I played a composition for him by Handel and he praised it. And he said that as far as he was concerned that I had passed that piece and could check it off.