Good Morning Fire Eater.

Today I woke up to the first legitimate snow of the year here in Fort Collins. I left for class early and took my time walking there from my house, smoking my pipe and enjoying the cold air (I’m such a freaking poet…). I walked softly under the barren trees in the oval, thanking God for his goodness and leaving the tread on my Goodwill shoes stamped into the thin layer of snow behind me on the wet sidewalk.  Days like today are great.

Now i’m sitting in my awful history class blogging from my iPod. My fur hooded coat still smells like pipe smoke and I can still taste it in my mouth. Say what you will about health and having responsible habits, pipe smoking is wonderful. Get some this holiday season. Love love love.

“Well then what ARE you smoking?”

This may or may not be the last in my unofficial mini-series on my crazy neighbors.  Tonight I was sitting outside on my porch, enjoying some pipe time with my Calculus book and graphing calculator.  Cassie, the nighbor you’ve all heard so much about recently, yells a friendly hello from her porch to mine.  I had, in faith, let them borrow my old set of poker chips, which they returned this morning.  Cassie had found another chip of mine later in the day, and told me to come over and get it.  I, with my pipe in mouth, stroll down the stairs and over to their very trashed yard to meet her at the bottom of the stairs up to their loft.  We talk for a bit, and then suddenly she says

“Are you smoking weed?”

She said it in a way as if to say “I really didn’t think you smoked weed and I’m kind of disappointed that you do.”

I respond simply, “Nope”  She pauses for a little while.

“Well then what ARE you smoking?” She says.  It was an entirely honest question, like she really couldn’t imagine what else I could possibly be smoking.  To picture better in your mind the situation, imagine a strage puppy looking you square in the eye, cocking its cute little puppy head, and saying “Well then what ARE you smoking?”.  Like “Oh my gosh, what else is there in this world besides weed?”

So I proudly say that I’m only smoking good old American pipe tobacco, and that I don’t smoke weed. Ever.  She says she doesn’t know anyone else who smokes pipe tobacco in a pipe.

 

So no huge moral here, no prayer request.  Just curiosity as to how my generation’s gotten so far away from righteousness.

Pipe time is for you.

Every weekend my roomate Phil comes up to Fort Collins from Parker to play guitar at my church with me.  He is my better half musically, classically trained, tastefully modest, over-the-top bluesy.  Everything I’m…not…yet?  Phil is partially responsible for my love of fine tobacco as well.  Last year we became fast friends over a nice cigar at Edward’s Pipe Tobacco up here in the Fort, and regularly returned to hang out and feed a newborn habit.  Next year we will live in the same room, and I anticipate that somehow through being in proximity to him I will take on a similar 4.0 GPA and a near-perfect musical ear.

 

Last year I declared myself as more of a pipe smoker than a cigar smoker after falling in love with my La Rocca pipe and a blend called Black Raspberry.  Phil smokes CAO Mx2’s almost exclusively, and made it clear that he would never be a pipe guy.  Last night he became a pipe guy.  As did his older brother Luke.  We sat on the roof outside my window and conversed with the neighbors in the window across from us as we went through a couple bowls each.  Time flew, and before we went to see The Dark Night, completing a perfect Sunday, the two Waggoner brothers had fallen in love with pipe smoking.  They each have new pipes now, and Sunday will most likely become a regular time for pipe-smoking enjoyment.