It's my partner's birthday this Friday. She is turning 25. I check my bank account: $61.06 until the 15th. I think I can stretch it into flowers and a dinner out, hopefully.

We are low on cash because we recently took a vacation we couldn't afford- not that it was lavish, but our time off was unpaid. Actually, vacation is a bit of a stretch for Arizona in June, but it was time off, back home. The first night we were there we shared a cigarette. It was well after dark, but the air was 90+ degrees F, and still- the smoke hung as if suspended. But it felt nice.

Across the street from us was an "undeveloped" lot, overgrown with plants indigenous to the Sonoran Desert: Mesquite, Creosote, Palo Verde, and plenty of Cacti. We heard a rustling in the brush, and I could make out the silhouette of a curved back on all fours.

"Is that a Coyote?" my partner asks. We've seen them before.

"Nah," I reply, "it's a Javelina. I can tell by its shape."

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^{Shyness is nice, but Shyness can stop you}

^{From doing all the things in life}

^{that you'd like to.}

When I met her, she asked me what I was looking at:     

          "Oh, not much,  just the distance"  

It was a true statement, but later she told me she thought I made it up.  I made up a lot of stories back

American lawyer, politician, racist, and the second-worst Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1777-1864). Taney was born in Calvert County, Maryland to a wealthy family of slavers running a tobacco plantation. His older brother was going to inherit the family plantation, and his father encouraged him to study law. He was sent to Dickinson College at the age of 15; after graduating in 1796, he studied law under Judge Jeremiah Townley Chase in