Earth Day celebrations began early for Kjel.org. On Saturday morning the CFO was reading the paper and saw a story about an overdose and the drug deal leading up to it. It included this paragraph:

The eight-month painstaking state and federal investigation revealed how the drug deal was set up within a 24-hour period through cell phone calls and text messages. Transactions took place in the parking lot of the Skyline Restaurant, a popular burger joint on Northwest Skyline Boulevard, and outside Bridlemile Elementary, considered a popular hangout for pot-smoking high school students.

Let’s have lunch at the Skyline! the CFO exclaimed after reading the above. We proceeded to pick up the Chiefs Educator and Bride and then headed on up to the Skyline Restaurant. It was packed: any publicity is good publicity I guess. We were lucky to get a table that held the five of us.

The CEO is rarely closer to death than I was during the five or ten minutes directly following my destruction of the Skyline’s Swiss and Mushroom Steakburger (#13 on the menu if I recall). I believe that the caffeine in the beverage I enjoyed with my burger is the only thing that kept my heart from stopping during that perilous period. That burger was simply unconscionable: at least three cows and god knows how many acres of rain forest gave their lives so that I could enjoy that burger. When it arrived at the table the CFO thought it was a joke of some sort. No joke, baby. I’m gonna eat that thing. It was about the size of your average frozen pizza, but also six inches tall. Even cut in half it took two hands to lift. The Chief Educator had a similar challenge in front of him and he was showing no weakness so I too attacked with vigor. The eating process was quite nice, but after the last bite the enormity of what I’d just done started to sink in. I pondered it while eating a couple of onion rings. Suffice to say I went forth from the Skyline and ate no more.

The CEO passed the remainder of Saturday in a beef related coma; I don’t remember a bit of it. On Sunday the lad was good enough to sleep in so Mommy and Daddy followed suit. When we all finally awoke and were ready to face the day we pondered what to do. The boy made our decision for us when it turned out he was stir-crazy and needed to get out of the house. So a grand Earth Day tradition was started: the Earth Day Drive. We loaded up the Subaru and tooled around for a while. We stopped at a gas station to fill up a few propane canisters for the new grill (for when I am again ready for meat), and finally found our way to Gabriel Park. The lad got to run around and play on the big toy and slides. He was in such a hurry to get down the slide that he would launch himself at it instead of sitting down first; he went down the curvy slide, er, fancy-style a few times. He shook off the resulting head wounds pretty quickly. Here’s the lad being spotted by a newly very-pregnant-looking CFO as he climbs toward the slide:

Jr. would get super-staticky when he went down the slide; check out the crazy hair:

We finally went home and Jr. crashed hard; when he was asleep I fired up the lawnmower and gave our “yard” it’s inaugural 2007 mowing, and then poisoned some weeds out on the HQ’s perimeter. All in all, a fine Earth Day for Kjel.org.