Timothy found a new nature preserve, so we went to check it out yesterday afternoon. Snake hunting, of course. Pics from my little camera phone, ’cause this is lovely even in 2 megapixels.

I don’t know how people can not like the midwest. It’s gorgeous. Mountains are nice, but I’d rather be able to sit and stare off at the horizon. How much day dreaming can you really do staring at an obstacle like a mountain range? And I like the ocean, but I sat on one of those rocks and the sunshine was just the same, and every time the wind sang through that tall, emerald grass, it whispered back and waved in ways the ocean cannot. I love it.

Huge garter snake. It startled him when it moved around his foot.

I found a club. John and Jen will understand. I know, I’m the toughest ginger in pigtails you’ve ever seen.

The find of the day. These shots aren’t very good (or in focus), but that snake was pretty. And very docile. Smooth green grass snake. Timothy’s been looking for one since last summer. He was excited. He plopped it in his shirt pocket for a while, but let him go before we left the area.

There you go. Saturday afternoon adventures with Tim and Lex.

“Imagine you met God, and you knew it was God Himself. Suppose He held out a book in His hand and told you to take it. This book contained great and precious promises of all you needed to resist temptation, overcome sin, become perfectly holy, and fit yourself for heaven. Then He told you whenever you need anything, you only have to take the appropriate promise and present it to Him, and He will do it.

“Now, if you were to receive such a book directly from the hand of God, and you knew that God had written it for you, would you believe it? Would you read it a great deal more than you now read the Bible? How eager you would be to know all that was in it. How ready to apply the promises in time of need! You would want to know it by heart! You would keep your mind familiar with its contents and be ready to apply the promises you read.”

You know where this is going. I won’t insult you by drawing conclusions for you.

Over the past couple of days I’ve watched an old friend (via Facebook updates and Twitter – which I’m fairly sure he’s linked) become Twitter‘s newest raving fan. His short posts literally went from “Why does anyone think they’re important enough to tell everyone what they’re doing?” to “Why do I succumb to this?” to “I. love. it.”

And the comments revealed the Twitter fans, and the Twitter resistors. The Twitter resistors sang the same, tired song about narcissism and ego (from their Facebook profiles – irony?).

I don’t even think I was thinking about it when I had this thought:

Twitter fans and Twitter resistors alike poke fun at the idea of broadcasting the minute details of our boring, every-day lives to the world. But if that were really all there was, it wouldn’t have survived so long. If Twitter – or any social networking medium that’s been similarly accused in recent memory – was just about a bunch of individuals trying to push their blog or their book or themselves, if it was just about the pointless details of our boring lives, it would have died long ago.

Because (most) people don’t talk to walls, and in an age where our attention spans are being assaulted, we don’t put up with anything that’s very boring for very long.

Conversation is a big factor, obviously. But maybe there’s something else.

Maybe our horribly mundane lives aren’t horribly mundane at all. Maybe we’re just … normal. And maybe normal people dig other normal people. Maybe we’re finally tired of the perpetually dramatized and hyped lives of the people we’ve followed for decades, and we’re down for a little normality. Maybe we were created for community, for relationship, for each other, and if that’s the case then yes, I am interested in how your flight was and yes, I do want to tell you about the funny bumper sticker I just saw.

There are egotists on Twitter, but I think most of us are just normal. And it’s okay. It’s okay to be normal.

Right? Are you on Twitter? Are you normal? Pimp your Twitter in the comments so we can find you.