Some Things I Love

I love God. I love the way [They] decorate this land every spring and then make it barren every winter. The older I get, the more I appreciate the beauty of this land. I want to capture every single beautiful thing and share it with others. Every morning when it’s light out on my way to teach school, I stop and take a picture of these two trees. This morning was particularly wonderful.
A few sunspots, but a beautiful sky.
I love my partner. Even when I am grumpy and don’t want to hear her singing in the morning before 9AM, she can still make me smile by making fun of my grumpy, pouty face. She’s beautiful, and I am so blessed. The past few weeks, since she finished school, have been a blessing. We’ve been able to reconnect in very meaningful ways. Walking at the Mounds every Sunday is one thing we love and one thing we share. Those walks have reconnected our souls.
Aren't we cute?
I love my family. We are pretty zany, and sometimes we are a little out of touch with the rest of the world, but we rock nonetheless. My parents are getting older, but they still want to do fun stuff with my brother and me. This summer we are going to the minor league home run derby and all-star game in Buffalo, to Gettysburg, and to Hershey, Pennsylvania. My little brother is one of my best friends, and he takes me to eat oysters, which are also some things I now love.
My little bro.
I love art, every type of fine art: drawing, painting, writing, 3-d design, graphic design, photography, theater, music, and all those I haven’t listed. Sometimes I even love bad art, because I think about it as someone trying to say something about this human condition. Good art just makes my heart sing. Good art makes the viewer feel more beautiful, more conflicted, more empowered, more enlightened, more spiritual, more angry, more depressed, more loved simply by being in proximity to it. Sometimes I feel as if I can reach through the art (in whatever form) and touch or feel what the artist was feeling.
Sculpture in Front of Minnetrista
I love coffee and tea, but coffee more.
Greek Coffee at The Artist Cafe in Chicago
I love my bicycle. I actually love any sports equipment that allows me to move my body. I love my Vibram Five Fingers, my kayak, my basketball, my disc golf discs, my bathing suit, and all of the other things that help me play outside during any season. This is the one of two areas of my life in which I am a little self-indulgent. I own way too much sports equipment.
Zbornak the Bicycle
The other area of self-indulgence in my life is food. I love food: the way it looks, the way it smells, the ways it tastes, the way it feels in my mouth. I love experimenting with tried and true recipes, making up my own recipes, and just eating food in its natural state. Really, two things make my heart sing: food and exercise.
Bison Steaks
For the purposes of this post, the last thing I love hearkens back to my childhood when I’d sit in my little red wagon on the way to the library watching the trains and waving to the caboosers and engineers. I love trains, and all things railroad. Watching trains roll by fantasizing about hopping on and riding until they stop, walking on the tracks or rails, lying on the ties on the trestle over the river looking down between them smelling the river water roll by. I look down the tracks and think about how blessed I am and how my life is coming into what I’ve always wanted it to be.