My Truest Fortune Ever

.....as long as you count six months away as "long absent."

Pros and Cons of Life

Good things

1. Christmas
2. New things
3. Generosity
4. Family
5. The reason for Christmas

Bad things

1. Trying to figure out rebates over the internet when the page won't load and the labels on the various fields are ambiguous
2. Being dead tired because, despite vacation, you keep going to bed really late
3. Not having any idea what to post about

How lovely! I thought of more good things than bad!! Now I'm going to try to remedy the second bad thing and get some sleep.

Carols

I love Christmas carols. That is probably the main reason I have music symbols on my background now (although don't be surprised if I change it again). I went to get Bria from Fairwood today, and on the way back she felt like carolling so we--she, Elizabeth H. (who's going to the airport from our house tomorrow), and I--did. We stopped at Evan and Jill's (Lindsay, Jill, and Mrs. F.-from-on-the-hill were there) and Uncle Alden and Aunt Lorraine's. We sang "Angels We Have Heard on High" in parts, and it was so much fun that we'll just HAVE to do it again. Fun, fun, fun.....fun..........(long yawn).... yzswde yu67hg.


(That was my head hitting the keyboard when I fell asleep. I simply must try to do my blogging earlier.)

Guess what I did today!

I actually, factually skated!!! That's right, our pond is open and ready for business!!! Daddy got out the snowblower late this afternoon and now as much of the pond as possible is cleared off. (Parts around the edges couldn't be done because water seeped up from under the ice into the snow creating a slushy mess that is too much for the ol' snowblower to handle.)

I also went sledding down the hill onto the pond. Unfortunately, I found out on my second trip that I have gotten to big to ride my sled on my stomach. It's a short little thing and when I went over either my chest would bump the front painfully or I would wrench my back trying to prevent my chest from bumping painfully. The wrenching was just about as painful. Oh, well, too bad. I am a bit sad about it because my sled is very fast, but we have plenty of sleds that are big enough. I guess I'll just ride those now.

Next I skied down the slopes behind our house, where the seemingly endless array of pine and hemlock trees necessitated a dodging motion not unlike that used in the slalom. I almost hit a tree a couple times, but my cat-like reflexes prevented any serious accident. The closest call came when I was going to fast to stop at the bottom and, dodging the house, sped right down the sledding hill and across the pond. I lay flat on my back on the other side for several minutes before I was able to catch my breath and walk back to the warmth of the house.

After a few minutes of recovery over a steaming mug of hot cocoa, I was once again ready for adventure. The cocoa had made me quite warm, so I felt like swimming. Since our pool is covered (obviously!) and our pond is frozen, I decided to just practice my jumps on the diving board so I would be ready in the spring. I managed a quadruple flip--a personal record! I would estimate that I was nine feet in the air, but that may be an exaggeration. After all, I can't really see how high I am when I am turning so fast in the air!

As you may imagine, I was quite cold after being out in the cold in my swim suit, even though I wore a turtleneck with it. I decided the best way to warm up would be by exercise. Naturally, the best way to get exercise in New Hampshire this time of year is from shovelling. Daddy had already blown all the snow off both the driveway and the pond, so I shovelled the hill that leads to the pond since it and the yard were the only snowy places I could immediately think of. It was only afterward that I realized I had ruined our sledding path. Cara practically exploded when I told her what I had done, and I didn't even dare tell Ryan after that. The poor boy had been so looking forward to sledding, and now I'm the only one who had the opportunity. I guess both he and Cara will have to wait for the next snow.

I was so upset after being yelled at that I had to take my frustration out on something, so I decided to try snowball baseball. I rigged up a system for throwing snowballs that I consider quite ingenious, but which is too complicated to describe here. Unfortunately, the effort in building it was primarily wasted, as the snowballs never failed to explode upon colliding with the bat. I gave up after about twenty-five tries.

Then I woke up. I was back on the pond and had just finished sledding and had been knocked out by a sudden bump or wrench--which one I am not sure. Actually that's not true either. THE WHOLE THING IS A LIE!! That includes that last sentence as well, because the first two paragraphs ARE true. But that's not a lie, and I said the whole thing was a lie. Okay, I think I'd better stop now before I confuse myself!

Christmas is coming!

So sorry about the dreadful irregularity of my blogging. I tend to spend most of my time free from school doing other things, and what time I DO spend blogging I usually spend on either my template or reading other people's blogs. Nevertheless, here I am again to thrill you all.

Speaking of my template, what does the color of my background look like to you? On my computer it looks gold, but on my mom's it looks a bit peachy. Say what you like, peach is not a color that goes with Christmas in MY humble opinion. So if more than, say, one third of the commenters (and there will be many, WON'T THERE!?!?!) are seeing peach instead of gold, I'll change my background.

Last night, when I was putting up some Christmas lights, I had to get a couple extension cords in order to reach from the lights to the plug. I plugged one in and then picked up the rather tangled mess of cords on the floor. As I did so, I stuck my finger in between the prongs of the second extension cord. My heart jumped as I realized that I was just about to be electrocuted! Fortunately the logical remainder of my brain reminded me pretty quickly that, "No, if you were going to be electrocuted it would already have happened." And then: "Besides, the prongs go into the electric socket, not the other way around." Which all shows just how tired I must have been. (It was pretty late.) The whole episode led me to think: life would be incredible dangerous if the people who started the current electrical system did make the prongs come out of the wall with the electric current. And did the first guy to try to start an electrical system do it that way? If he did, it's no wonder I've never heard of him.

A little Christmas season update (mostly for Bria's benefit): The ice on our pond is frozen solid, although we haven't skated yet. We have our icicle lights up on the porch as well as regular lights on our circular stairway. We have our 9-foot tree up and trimmed with the lights on it, as well as a small tree from the backyard that Ryan and I cut down last Friday. We have wrapping paper all over the holiday table (the table in our dining room that we bring up for Sandford holiday meals) and our nativity set on the bookcase. In short, the whole house is looking pretty festive. I've got a little over half my shopping done, and I know what I'm getting for most of the little under half that I have to do. In fact, the only thing missing is Bria herself, and that problem will soon be remedied.....

"It's Christmas time in the city..."

Governor Lynch of the good ol' Granite State may not be the greatest governor, but he sure can conduct. Well, OK, he can't really, but he sure knows how to try! Yes, I have seen John Lynch try his hand at conducting a full orchestra. Those of you who don't believe me can read Bria's blog and those of you that have already read her blog already do believe me, so I guess I'm pretty well covered. The fact is, Gov. John Lynch was invited by the New Hampshire Philharmonic to try his hand at conducting "Jingle Bells Forever" in front of a large audience: a nicely packed Palace Theatre-full of people. (By the way, did you know that John Lynch and his wife have attended the Palace Theatre since 1975?!?!?! Why, that's before I was born! It's before Bria was born! It's before Lisa was born! It's before Derrick, Chad, Lindsay....) Our illustrious governor agreed, and sure enough, he tried. But he did little more than that. He kept the beat almost perfectly, I must admit, but he occassionally seemed to get tired and would hardly move his hands until a sudden crash of a symbol would send his body back into convulsions (well, ok, that's a gross exaggeration).

On the whole, I enjoyed the whole concert quite thoroughly. The evening started off with a merry .... actually, I can never remember the name but it's the one that goes, "Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling, 'Yoohoo!' Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you!" After a couple pieces featuring the winner of the NH Philharmonic's youth competition as a soloist, the first half ended with some of Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite." The second half started with something like "Brazilian Sleigh Bells" then went into a medley of American Christmas songs ("White Christmas", "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town", etc.) I think my favorite part of the night was either the American medley or the carol sing-along that came after it. The sing-along was at least one of the top two best parts of the night, although some of the orchestra's intros were a bit hard to follow, and some people came in in the wrong place. It was especially enjoyable to hear so many people singing "Joy to the world! The Savior reigns!" and going right through the first verses of four or five other Christmas songs that contain such obviously Christian lyrics.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the songs played on the radio. Bria scanned throught the FM channels on the way home, hoping to find some good Christmas music to listen to. We listened to -- and enjoyed-- a fifties-ish rendition of "Here Comes Santa Claus." Then that station turned to rock, so we tried another channel. That channel was playing "Here Comes Santa Claus." It was fairly near the end, but we turned the radion off anyway because of the obnoxious voices of the singers. That radio station was playing songs by request, and apparently someone had requested "Here Comes Santa Claus", because the exact same rendition of that song was just starting when we turned the radio back on. We scanned again, and what should the next Christmas channel be playing but...."Here Comes Santa Claus!" Aaaaarrrrrrgh! We finally found a couple other songs, but the total count of songs we had listened to when we got home was still something like this: "Jingle Bells": 1; "White Christmas": 1; "Here Comes Santa Claus": 5.


P.s. In case anyone doesn't check the comments below, and would like to know who wrote "The Melancholy Pig", the answer is Lewis Carroll.

Poetry

It's interesting to note that, although I would not consider myself a fan of poetry, I have plenty of poems I like: "The Raven", "The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven", "Barbara Fritchie", "Paul Revere's Ride", "The Hunt"....the list goes on and includes a very wide range.

On the other hand I have a list of poems I don't like too, especially such sad ones--although beautifully written--as "The Wreck of the Hesperus" and "The Highwayman."

Here's one that I do like: "The Melancholy Pig."

There was a Pig that sat alone,
Beside a ruined Pump.
By day and night he made his moan:
It would have stirred a heart of stone
To see him wring his hoofs and groan
Because he could not jump.

Purely out of curiosity, I would like to know how many of my readers know who wrote this little beauty. If you don't know--and ONLY if you don't know--try guessing at it and see if you can get it.

P.s. I looked around online for a couple minutes to try to find a clever quotation to use as the title for my post, and although I didn't find a quotation that would fit, I came across this one:

If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.— Ashleigh Brilliant

Very good advice, especially for people like me who tend to get depressed after playing any sports (except Ping-pong and Badminton) for long with their closest friend who lives in New York and NEVER posts.

Straight out of Uncley Aar'n's

I'm loving it. Oh, wait, that would be McAronald's......

A Public Poll

Welcome to the grand opening of The Blog of Aaron's newest template: Alluring Autumn. Please hold all applause, cheers, and exclamations of disbelief until the end of the post. Thank you.

As a quick poll, who thinks the Vivaldi headlines are too hard to read (that is if you can see them; if you don't have the Vivaldi font in your computer you should be seeing Verdana)? I can't decide, but I'll leave it for now and open the door for complaints.

I got the leaf picture off the web, but I took the logs myself! I lined about six up on the lawn and took a picture with a digital camera. Then I twisted, cropped, and tweaked the resulting photo as necessary to create a seamless image. So if YOU want logs for YOUR background, too, just ask.....

(NOW you may applaud, cheer, etc.)

Not Your Ordinary Sunday

Church was good in every way today, with about thirty-five exceptions. Well, OK, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but we had so many difficulties today that it was funny! Allow me to explain. The first disaster came about in the congregational music, for which I was responsible. Someone had requested that I do All in All for one of the songs, and I rather ambitiously decided to do it as a round. I divided it up into parts and put it on powerpoint, and had Daddy and Ryan lead. Unfortunately, we didn't have much time to practice, and the song kind of fell apart. Nevertheless, it was hardly much better than I had expected.

Next we did the song Saved, Saved! which went almost without a hitch (I made a small mistake in the second chorus). The third and final song that we put together was Thank You, Lord which went fine on my part; however, after the second of the three verses, Daddy's laptop decided it was tired of changing slides and refused to respond to any keys at all, with the exception of the Ctrl-Alt-Del combination. I was slightly startled when I started the third verse and nobody sang. I have counted the verses wrong once or twice before and either stopped or continued at the wrong times, so I just kind of finished the verse off right in the middle. I felt rather embarassed until someone explained that the slide hadn't changed. We skipped the last verse and finished off with a final chorus, and I was all done with the leading. Whew!

The service was then turned over to a lady from Bedford named Meme Stephens, who shared a number of songs she had written and recently had put on CD. She sang a couple songs with guitar, and then started to sing one with a track from her new CD. About halfway through the song, the CD stopped. Just plain stopped. We could find no explanation for why it stopped, but it did. She played it with her guitar instead, but the sound wasn't working very well, once again without explanation. The volume was coming across very quiet, but every time the volume was turned up, the sound was distorted. The crowning touch came immediately after the congregation watched a DVD put out by the Christian organization World Vision. When the five-minute clip finished, Uncle Alden opened the player to take the DVD out--and it slipped down into the machine. After church we got out a screwdriver and took half the sound system apart to get it out.

The last glitch in the service was when the pastor asked for a hymn. I went up to play since Lindsay wasn't there today, and found that the song was one I had sung perhaps once or twice in my life and had certainly never played. It was fairly easy, though, and I managed to make successively fewer mistakes with each verse. Then church was over for the week. The end.


P.s. Happy birthday, Cherilyn and Duncan!

P.p.s. I recently read an article online that began something like, "Police said the murderer escaped from prison last Thursday and began a thorough investigation of his escape as soon as his absence was discovered." Hahaha.

P.p.p.s. I was listening to Sean Hannity as I was about to drive out of a parking lot today, and some ad came on with a loud honking noise that really startled me because I thought someone was honking at ME. Then, on my way out of a gas station getting onto 101, it happened again, and I was just as startled and not a little annoyed. Grrrr. (Sean Hannity was great, though!)

Buon Compleanno!

(Happy Birthday!)

Speaking of birthdays (see post below), Bria's was yesterday. She is eighteen!!! We celebrated her birthday with her here on the weekend, but it wasn't until yesterday that she actually became eighteen. Now she is an adult! She is no longer eligible for cheaper tickets for a myriad of events, but hey! now she can legally get married without parental permission! Woohoo!

Just in case you're wondering, Bria (if you're reading this, which is not all that unlikely, folks, because my posts are automatically e-mailed to her), I didn't forget to send you a present. I put it in the mail today. Happy anticipation! And may you have 363 happy un-birthdays for the remaining 99.45% of your nineteenth year!

Un Posto Corto

(A Short Post)

Well, here I am again, after about two weeks of being too busy to blog. Truth is, I'm still to busy to blog, but I'm blogging anyway, which shows you how straight I have my priorities.

In case anyone is wondering WHY I'm too busy to blog, the two main reasons are school and birthdays. I (obviously) have to do schoolwork every day, and I often don't get enough done in the week to be able to take the whole weekend off. Birthdays are, fortunately, only here for the next four days, and after my parents' 19th anniversary on Nov. 8th, all our family holidays will be over for the year! Of course, there are still plenty of national holidays to come....

Here's a little story that happened recently at my house: Mama was talking at the dinner table about a woman she overheard in the store saying something like "I can't STAND that 'Life is Good' stuff." Mama went on to talk a bit about how we as Christians can truly enjoy life, and someone said in a joking manner that she should have just given the lady the gospel right then and there. "Yeah!" one of my younger siblings exclaimed. " 'Where are you going when you die tonight?' "

What I Learned Recently:

That I am the only person who reads my blog who likes to solve cryptograms.

Very well, have it your own way. Anyone want to try some trivia? Read one question at a time and see how many questions it takes you to guess the correct answer (who "Miami Flower" is).

1. He is male.



2. He is an actor.



3. He dropped out of high school when he was my age.



4. He is exactly ten months and one day older than Lisa A.



5. He's broken his back, his ribs, his nose, both his legs, his arm, his wrist, a finger and a toe, and cracked his skull three times.



6. His favorite "football" team is Manchester United.



7. His newest movie was recently mentioned on one of the blogs in Derrick's list.



8. He has four initials, and the last three are JBB.



9. In his first major movie, his hair color was light blonde instead of its natural brown.



10. He has acted as the Trojan prince of Greek literature to whom Aphrodite gave the (already married) most beautiful woman in the world (I think her name was Helen, but I haven't read the Iliad in a couple years) as a wife.



11. His most-repeated line at my house is probably, "A diversion."



12. He has acted in LOTR, POTC, and KOH.



13. The "Flower" part of his "codename" is meant to be considered a verb.



14. His costars include Viggo Mortenson, Elijah Wood, Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, and Kirsten Dunst.



15. He is excellent at archery.



16. He likes to snowboard, and in his movies he also shield-boards and trunk-boards.



15. He is.....(comment and leave the answer if you know)!!

More on Miami Flower

For all you devoted fans who have been positively dying to know the answer to my little name game in a previous post, I will give you one more chance to try to figure it out. The coded name is "Miami Flower." I thought about just giving the answer outright, but I decided to put it in cryptogram format instead. If nobody gets it in a few days, I'll give a couple easy trivia questions.

OLX WXDVKR PR IJXVOPKR, KDQTRSK AQKKC, VOTDDXS TV QXUKQTV PR OLX QKDS KY OLX DPRUV ODPQKUM.

I won't be terribly surprised if nobody tries to figure this out, but cryptograms are my favorite kind of puzzle to solve, and probably the easiest to create as well. So, even if nobody else does anything with this, I had fun anyway.

If anybody has never played a cryptogram and wants to give it a try, here are some instructions with a couple tips.

From Sickness to Doctors' Offices to Money to Games to Movies to Stupidity

In case you were wondering why I haven't posted in so long, it's because I've been sick with a cold. Actually, that's a lousy excuse because I have used the internet a good amount anyway. On the other hand, I've had less energy and I've gone to bed a wee bit earlier on average. So the excuse is good enough.

A couple interesting things have happened to me this week. One was on Wednesday, I think. Mama took Ryan to the doctor for a physical, and while she was there she realized she had forgotten his insurance card. She called me up and told me to bring it, so I did. I followed her directions to the doctor's office. I think the office was new or something because it wasn't marked, but Mama's car was there so I went in anyway. I walked in and found two nurses there working on unloading some cardboard boxes. I told them I was looking for Dr. T., and one of the nurses smiled knowingly.

"Are you looking for your brother? He's here in the back with your mom. Here, follow me." I followed her into the waiting room and into the back. As we were walking through, the nurse waved her hand in the direction of a young girl who was sitting on one of the chairs. "There's Elektra."

I was a bit startled. Who in the world was Elektra? Why did the nurse think I would know any such person? I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing and just followed.

The nurse led me through a series of halls until she came to a certain examination room. She knocked on the door and opened it. I had never seen the people in there before in my life, and apparently they had never seen me. The bewilderment on all of our faces must have convinced the nurse of her mistake, for she closed the door without anyone speaking a word and asked me apologetically whom I was looking for. I told her, and the whole affair was settled in a matter of seconds, but it was pretty funny in the meantime.

The second thing that happened to me was of a bit of a different nature. I was looking at an small book of poetry I had gotten for Christmas from my grandfather, and after reading it for about ten minutes, I decided I wanted to find out when it had been written. I opened up to the beginning of the book to find the copyright date. Lo and behold, what should fall out but $20.00 in cash and a coupon book to Dunkin Donuts from the Brights! Needless to say, my afternoon was made.

I have been feeling better over the past day and a half than I had been for most of the week (which is good because I am doing music in church tomorrow morning). This is very fortunate considering I stayed up to midnight last night (that is why I said earlier "going to bed earlier on average" instead of making a universal statement; although, last night might have made the average the same as before. But I don't feel like doing math on my free time, so I'll just leave it at that.) Why did I stay up until midnight? Playing.....CRANIUM TURBO!!! I had so much fun despite losing by half a turn. Ryan, Kayla (who is here for the weekend) and I made one team, and Daddy, Mama, and Cara made the other. One of the best parts for me was trying to act out "Winter Olympics" in chirades and hearing Kayla and Ryan shouting, "Luge! No, figure skating! Speed skating! Skiing! Oh what's it called...the skiing where you turn fast... Oh, now it's snowboarding!" They got it, but now until after the timer ran out. We WOULD have won otherwise. Actually, there are more than a dozen things that would have made the outcome different, but I don't really care. It's the fun and the resulting memories that really count.

I watched The Truman Show for the first time today. I really enjoyed it for the most part. It was interesting to think over the movie when it was over and put together the pieces that didn't really make sense during the course of the film. I liked Jim Carrey's acting in it a lot. The Truman Show is definitely one of my top three movies with that actor in them. This is a joke because I have only seen three movies with him in them. Haha. Very funny, huh? I think I'm getting tired.

OK, I admit it....

Fairwood is pretty nice too.....

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

In case you were wondering, that title describes the weather we have been having here, the way the trees are starting to look, and the way the air smells (if it is possible to "smell beautiful"). It's beautiful (beautiful, beautiful...) days like this that make me say, "Who would NOT want to live on Chestnut Hill?"

And who wouldn't? Probably people who don't think the beautiful, beautiful autumn, end-of-summer, and end-of spring days don't make up for the middle-of-summer humidity or the middle-of-winter snow. But those people need to rearrange their priorities, because Chestnut Hill at this time of year is perfect bliss. Of what other place can that be said? (Please regard that question as rhetorical.)

Think of Me

This evening, I thought of a post I could do if no one had commented. I was all excited about it, and then I got on and there were two comments. Disheartened and heartened at the same time, I decided I would post this anyway.

"This" is my own personal edition of the song "Think of Me" from Phantom of the Opera. Cara got that CD out of the library a week or so ago, and the song has been in our heads pretty near constantly since then. At least it's a song I like. Here's "Think of Me" from Phantom of the Blog:

Think of me, think of me fondly
When to blogs you've said, "Goodbye!"
Remember me once in a while;
Please promise me you'll try.
And if you find
That, once again, you long
To have some more of blogs to read,
If you ever find a moment
Leave a note for me!

[Dramatic music]

My blog has never
Needed sympathy
Or been as changing as could be,
But, if you can find a moment,
Visit it for me!!!

Of course it's a lot more interesting if you know the song. One cannot easily write crescendos and climaxes into mere text. And even if you do know the music, you have to kind of scrunch the "to blogs" in between notes. Nevertheless, it sounds good if one sings it just right. Plus, it's just about the first clever thing I've ever done on my blog! Yay!

New colors, new name, new everything!

Ha! YOU probably thought I was neglecting my blog when I didn't post for so long, didn't you? Well, well, well. NOW what do you think?!?!?!?! I've been working on this for a day or two, and I would have published it sooner if I could have thought of a good name more quickly. But finally I decided it was taking too long so I just plastered any old boring title across the top and labeled it as subject to change. And here I am! It's good to be back.

One Girl Goes, Another Comes

Surprise!

What is the surprise, you may ask? Well, it's that, well, it was just too lonely having one girl fewer around here, so we got another. (Not the frog; THAT was caught in the pool and soon sent to the pond, after a brief photo op.) No, the new girl in our family is named Kate. She has brown eyes and black hair, weighs about fifty pounds by my estimate, and likes to exercise.

Kate is a dog.

She came with the name; if she hadn't, we wouldn't have named her that (not because we don't like the name, but because we DO.) We got her from some friends of ours from the church who live about ten minutes away from our house. They had had Kate the Dog for about three quarters of a year (she's a year old) when they found that a member of their family was allergic to her. So now we have a free dog with free kennel service. Is that nice or is that nice!?!?!!?!

The best thing about Kate the Dog is that she is very VERY good with kids. If she wasn't we probably wouldn't have accepted her. Duncan actually enjoys holding the leash while the dog trots around our long wrap-around porch.

Here is a picture of her for your benefit:

Kate the Dog

My Blog Takes an Upward Turn

Having given up on becoming a popular blogger of my OWN abilities, I shall now do the obvious: copy his excellency king of blogs (or prime minister or at LEAST parliament member), my cousin....Craig!!!!! Of course, this will not be as well-written, or long, as his generally are, but I shall strive -- just for this one post-- to be a Craig, King of Blogs, jr.

In my first attempt to emulate my dear cousin's blog, I shall now post a picture of the day:

(My photo of choice may possibly be quite different than the kind Craig would use, but forunately this adds a bit of a personal touch, shall we say, to my blog.)

Here is my second attempt at imitation: I must say that I had great fun with the name interpreting thing Lisa put on her blog, and I decided I would do some myself:

Miami Flower

Third attempt: I am curious to know who reads my blog. Therefore COMMENT!!

Fourth: It is my opinion that Derrick should curtail all feelings of Schadenfreude. (this was my first opportunity to use this word since it entered my vocaulary!)

Fifth: I have very interesting coworkers (e.g., Derrick....). I could tell you stories that would blow your mind. (Just kidding!)

Well, now it's too late to keep going, but I hope I was at least partially successful in my efforts. (By the way, nothing in parentheses is meant to be Craig-like; it's all straight from me.)

A Question For My Readers

They say a picture is worth, a thousand words. In that case, where are the many comments I should be expecting for having written well over eight thousand words in the last three posts? THAT is what I would like to know.

Nothing Much

I have been a very infrequent blogger recently. It's not that I don't have anything to say; on the contrary, I have much to write about. However, very little of it is actually particularly clever. In fact, I can't think of anything clever to say at all right now. I'm just happy the Red Sox won. That's pretty much all I can think about right now because it's so late. Yes, I realize that this note is probably very boring, but it lets those few who check my blog know that I still exist, anyway.

Pictures of Nature

I decided to post some of the pictures that I got from the roll of film I recently developed. Some of them came out really well. I spent an afternoon last week taking pictures around the house, mostly at the pond. All of the pictures were taken with Daddy's Pentax K1000 SLR camera, and most of the pictures in this post were taken last Monday.

The two exceptions are the baby robin and the black duck. I took the picture of the duck a couple days before when there were six or seven of the birds swimming in the pond. I managed to get pretty close to them to take the pictures, and I zoomed in on the computer afterward as well. The robin's picture was taken a while ago when someone found the dear little creature sitting on our porch. Either it landed there on its first, and only partially successful, flight, or one of our cats carried it there. If we knew how it got there, I can't remember. Anyway, we moved it (gently and without touching it) off the porch and onto the flower garden in front of our house, from where it hobbled to our driveway, which is where I took this picture. I'm not sure what happened to it in the end, but we kept the cats inside and both of the robin's parents were flitting anxiously about in the trees immediately overhead, so I'm guessing it was all right.

As for the spider, isn't it a beauty? As Charlotte reminds Wilbur, in the movie Charlotte's Web (and probably the book, although I haven't read it), all spiders are beautiful; however, I think this one takes the cake. It's still there, sitting in its lovely web by the pond (safely distant from the house) in case you want to see it in person. Or maybe the picture is enough.....

My Amazing Feat

I listened to the same CD for almost twelve hours today. Twelve. XII. Dodici. Dodici ore. Not only that, but I was not once bored of the music I heard. How, you may ask, is that possible? Well, I wasn't bored because I never--or almost never--heard the same song twice in a row. And THAT was possible because I just bought a new CD player that takes MP3 CDs. (The silver one in the picture on the right. This was the best picture I could find quickly on the web.) I burned an MP3 CD (actually an "Atrac3plus CD") yesterday with all my classical music on it, and now I have 224 songs (from about sixteen CDs) on one CD. Sometimes technology is just so amazing. (Other times I want to throw technology out the window of my fourth-story bedroom; fortunately, I haven't had that urge yet with my new CD player.) I probably won't listen to the whole CD again tomorrow: I'll just listen to the remaining five hours on the disc.

I almost wrote about Sunday's awesome thunderstorm at Fairwood, but then I remembered that most of the people most likely to read my blog were there! For those who were not, I will briefly summarize the storm. Brilliant! Spectacular! and most of all Ear-splittingly LOUD! I enjoyed every second of it. I could see lightning bolts striking all over Mt. Monadnock, and one came noisily close to Fairwood. I feel sorry for people who are afraid of thunder. It can be so much fun to listen to!

I used up a roll of film in a camera today. I opened up the back after rewinding, and.....there it was in all its green and gold glory! I gave a long sigh of relief.

Busy happy weekend

Mama and Daddy went sailing on Saturday. They had a wonderful time, and so did we at home. They had such a nice time, in fact, that today Mama insisted we go again, this time as a whole family. We left shortly after church and had a wonderful time. Then we came home and now we are tired. The end.

Boy, I don't know if I'll ever write. Here I proclaimed myself a "weekend blogger" and this is all I can come up with for the entire week!

Oh, one more thing: I took thirteen beautiful pictures, then looked and my camera. It said I had just taken the 29th picture. Yes, I had done it again. THERE WAS NO FILM IN THE CAMERA!!!!!!!!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......

Oh, and here's something else: I went to a Fisher Cats game with Sandford Surveying (I took Derrick's ticket, he having excused himself, according to his coworkers, as "not into baseball." If only Kristi's baseball discussion was still going...) I had a fun time, and the Fisher Cats won 5-2. I got a picture of the game from our perspective off the web, but it's on a different pc so I'll post it later. Our view was kind of far, but I watched the last couple innings from some seats near one of Daddy's friend's seat: right behind home plate.

Oh, and JUST one more thing...never mind. This is getting too long.

In case you haven't guessed what this means, we've started school. Yes, the rest of the year I will probably be primarily a weekend blogger. We haven't started off very quickly--some of our books haven't even arrived yet--but we've started all the same, and therefore I have posted little. I've been procrastinating on math, and haven't started it yet. There's something about the name "Advanced Math" that just puts a lump in one's throat and a resolution in one's mind to never, ever touch that book. But I shall strive to overcome. (I think) In the meantime, I've been studying how not to write sentences like "The furry mammal of a canine variety that had mixed ancestry displaced the soil in order to achieve its purpose of inhuming the calcium-containing osseous artifact it possessed." (Translation: "The mutt dug up the dirt to bury its bone.") As if I ever intended to write that way! I am a giant in the world of writing; I am Shakespeare in modern times; the flowers of the field would bow to me if they knew the extent of my knowledge; I am like a breath of fresh wind on a hot and humid day. (These are not expressions of vanity; on the contrary, they are examples of how to--according to my composition book--write interesting sentences: using similes, metaphors, personification, and hyperbole.)

BIG NEWS, BIG NEWS!!!
Daddy's Mazda 626 is going to the junk yard! Yes sir, that trip halfway to the Holschers was its last trip it ever took or ever will take. I shall never again drive that, the first car I ever drove. I think I might have even driven it farther than I've driven any other car, but that is debatable. (I drove the Toyota to RI and back and halfway to NY and all the way back, as well as many to-town-and-back trips in the past couple weeks; I only drove the Mazda to the start of Cape Cod, to Portsmouth twice, and on many, many to-town-and-back trips. But anyway....) I may miss that car dreadfully (sniff, sniff) but because of its demise, we'll probably get...a new car!!! Of course, it'll be Daddy's office car and not like a Sandford family runabout or anything, but I will probably get to drive it somewhat anyway. Because of Sandford Surveying's GM credit card points, the two top choices we are currently considering are the Chevy Cobalt and the Pontiac Vibe. (I'm still hoping for a Cadillac)....

Hmmm...Which car will it be?

The Return Trip

Coming back was a bit stressful to start with. Some of us wanted to get home ASAP, and the rest of us wanted to get home ALAP. We finally got off around 12:45, forty five minutes after our planned departure time. The person I came closest to getting in an argument was with Bria: she wanted to go home the usual way, and I wanted to go by the Mass Pike to avoid city traffic in Troy and Bennington (Calling it "city traffic almost caused an argument itself: Bria thinks "city traffic" is traffic coming from the city, and I think it's traffic in a city; to that Bria says Bennington isn't a city, but I say it's close enough; what else do you call stoplight after stoplight in rapid succession surrounded by buildings!?!?! Bria says the main street of a town, but I disagreed heartily; when I did, she decided I was too angry to drive safely and kept telling Mama so on the phone, which eased the atmosphere tremendously.). I gave in, however, and we zoomed off toward the Green Mountain State.

We zoomed all the way to Bennington were we got stuck in--by MY definition--city traffic! In fact, when we came to the first intersection in that lovely city, I got stuck in the middle of the intersection. The traffic in front of me was moving until I was in the intersection, and then it stopped short and I was left in the middle. I always hate it when others do that, so it was particularly mortifying for me to be the one I usually would have sighed and shook my head at. Fortunately, the drivers coming from the other ways were quite congenial about the whole thing, but I was still humiliated. The light finally changed ahead, but the cars ahead moved only enough to let me through; the cars behind me couldn't move for a whole light change! That should give you an idea of how bad the traffic was.

We crept along for the next half hour to forty-five minutes slooooooowwwwwly. Like, a car length at a time. The worst part was that we were on a hill, and the car I was driving has a manual transmission. I stalled twice, but I was in perpetual fear of rolling into the car behind me. He kept creeping up on me every time we stopped, but somehow I managed to get through the day bump-free. After about 1.5 miles and 0.75 hours, we came to the end of the line of traffic where a traffic director told us to turn around: a car accident ahead was going to block the road for two hours. Two hours!!!! @#$%&! I turned around and headed back the way we came. It was almost a bit relieving, because we could at last go at least 3o mph! I stopped at a full-serve gas station and got gas and directions. The pump attendant told us he heard that a car full of live ammo was on fire. He also gave us directions to get back home.

We set off on the hour-long detour the man at the gas station had outlined to us, but stopped at a Dunkin Donuts and got bagels and a donut and a bunch of other stuff and stopped at a park and ate them and so on.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, but I was quite tired by the time we got home. This time the trip took at least seven hours (Bria is pretty sure that it was six and a quarter hours; but I say that's impossible: the regular time is five hours, and we spent an hour in Bennington at least, the detour took an hour, and we spent fifteen minutes at Fairwood; Bria says I am so exaggerating, but I'm not. Trust me.). We were going to time that trip too, but like the first one, it took a lot longer than expected. At least we came close to setting a record for a trip time going to or from The Hill! (The record was made this March, when Daddy tried to go to NY a new way with the GPS and took over eight hours with no car trouble.)

Inspiration Arrives in Droves

...or, more specifically, in drives. I'll start from the beginning:

Finally, events in my life have attained the slight absurdity that is so necessary for a successful "events" post. To start with, Bria, Cara, Ryan, and I went to the Holschers’ house in NY for the weekend. We had a wonderful time, and I’ll write more about that later. We had an interesting trip back, and I'll write about that later, too. For now I’ll just write about the trip going TO The Hills. Those of you who have been reading my blog for a long time may remember my post in late May or early June about the Mazda breaking down on the way to Cape Cod. To ensure that a breakdown of the same type did not recur, Daddy sent the Mazda to a transmission repair shop. There the car was worked on for a period of about one week, and came out good as new!

Or so we hoped. With great faith and hope, we set out early Friday afternoon for the long journey out. We decided we would time and see how quickly we could make it to the Holschers’. Bria drove. The car drove fairly well, although it felt very under-powered and was shifting a little late. Still, its performance was adequate....until we were about halfway between Bennington and Brattleboro. We were roaring along Rte. 9 (the car was having trouble on the hills; the RPMs came quite close to redlining multiple times.) when suddenly Bria said something like, "Is that smoke coming out from under the hood?" We realized that it was, and began quickly looking for a place to stop. After about a mile, we finally found a place. It was called something like "The Spiral Shop" and was a nice little isolated shop that sold such things as garden signs, sun catchers, and chimes. Bria pulled into the small parking lot and shut of the car.

As soon as we stopped, Bria popped the hood, and I jumped out to open it. This proved to be easier said than done. The smoke was pouring out so fast that I was not able to see the latch. After about five minutes I finally found it by feel and propped the hood open. The smoke continued to pour out.

In the meantime, the man who was tending the shop came over to see what was going on. "What have we here? Fair damsels in distress?" (He hadn’t seen me or Ryan yet apparently) Upon receiving an affirmative answer from Cara, he immediately removed his shirt and sat down to wax glass sunflower petals. He let us use his phone, and was quite nice if a bit strange.

After about one hour of waiting for the engine to cool down (the apparent problem was that the radiator had overheated; the root of the problem we later found to be a broken belt that was supposed to run the pump for the radiator coolant), we set off up the road again hoping for the best. The best never came. For the next mile or so we watched the temperature gauge steadily move from left to right until it was past the "H." We pulled to the side of the road again, and were glad to find that we had cell phone service. (We didn’t at the Spiral Shop.) We called home to find that Daddy had already left with our Toyota Camry and was approximately 1.75 hours away. We settled down for a long and stressful wait.

Fortunately, however, the wait was nowhere near as stressful as we had anticipated. We actually had a rather fun time. The first twenty minutes were a bit tense, but after that I actually enjoyed myself. Cara and I played Catch Phrase while Bria and Ryan read books. Ryan joined in, too, after a while. We tried playing alphabet, but the only sign we could see said "Marlboro ® 1" and that only gave you two letters to start with. The rest of the time was passed just watching cars and their license plates and their passengers. One man stopped and asked if we were all right, and we told him we were, thank you, and he left. About an hour later, Cara cried, "Oh great, another car is sto—" and we all looked to see that Daddy had arrived. I didn’t even feel like he had taken a long time.

So off we drove—this time with me at the wheel ‘cause Bria can’t yet drive a standard—into the wild blue yonder. I stalled once while trying to get onto the road, but after that we were fine until Stamford, NY (where I drove over the curb at a gas station). From there we were fine the rest of the way. The entire trip took only seven and a half hours!!!!!

Just letting you know..

Nothing to write about today. That's just the worst, when you're up long hours--or just at the computer screen for long hours--just trying to think of something interesting to entertain the world with. I love it when during the course of my day something happens and I think, "What an awesome thing to blog about!!" But that hasn't happened in the last three days or so. I guess you'll just have to be long-suffering (I realize it causes suffering when I don't write... ;) and wait for the time when my inspiration is renewed.

What people drive in New Boston these days

I saw one of these today driving on Chestnut Hill Road. Less than a mile from my house! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to gape because I was driving and this car was going quite speedily in the opposite direction. In case you don't know, it's a Bentley Continental GT. Powered by a 12 cylinder engine, it has a base price of around $160,000. I didn't have enough time to check up on performance stats, but the info above should give a pretty basic idea.

My life (and near death)

As a side note: We had a Sandford gathering today. I had a really fun time. There's almost nothing better than a close-knit extended family.

I had an exciting little incident the other day. I was helping Daddy move his boat out for the road (for sale: 25' US Yacht; interested, call us) and I was driving the tractor while Daddy used a rope wrapped around the trailor hitch of the golf cart to keep the boat from rolling down the incline we were descending. I stopped for some reason, put the tractor's brake on, and started to get out of the tractor. Unfortunately, my shorts caught on the accelerator (a lever, not a pedal) and I was left partly hanging from the tractor and halfway hopping as the tractor roared down the drive pulling the boat--and the parked golf cart--behind it. I managed to stop the tractor before any damage was done, but the boat kept coming. I had to go a bit further or be smashed flat as a pancake, so I did, but Daddy got the boat under control pretty quickly once I stopped pulling it. Fun stuff, huh?

Insights on Divers Happenings in My Life

Well, folks, I guess I didn't have as many stories about the past few weeks as I thought I did. Or, if I did, I've forgotten most of them. It's back to good ol' blogging-about-the-present again, I guess. I'm kind of glad, although I don't get exciting stories like those below on a day-to-day basis. However, I needn't worry; if I can't remember the stories, they are sure to happen again: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
[George Santayana (1863 - 1952), The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905]

Today I drove a standard--again. I drove it a lot today, in fact. I went to the bank, the library, the dentist, Daddy's office twice, and to the grocery store. I guess you might say driving with a manual transmission is becoming my standard method of transportation. ;-) By the way, I only stalled four times the whole day (less than once per trip!) : once because I was accidentally starting in third, once because the emergency brake was on (oops), and twice *sigh* because I didn't give the engine enough RPM.

I made an apple crisp today. There's something about apple desserts--apple pie, apple crisp, apple cobbler, apple-cinnamon muffins--that simply cannot be matched by other treats. When I went to the grocery store (see above paragraph) it was to purchase the one treat that most deliciously complements almost any dessert: vanilla ice cream. Mmm, mmm, mmm.

I planted a maple tree the other day. Yes, I know, I'm copycatting Bria with her lemon trees; but I was out weeding our barkmulch and I came to this beautiful little maple shoot, and I said to myself, "Aaron, this tree needs a good home." We get buckets of chlorine tablets all the time for our pool, and I took one of the empty buckets and spray-painted it red. It's just the coolest thing. We'll see how the tree does in it. If it dies, I'll just settle for a spider plant.

You're probably wondering what all the above things have in common. The answer: they all involve me, and they all involve colors. (red bucket, white ice cream, black car, green tree...) That's pretty much all. Please pardon my lack of cohesiveness, and I hope you enjoyed this anyway.

L'Invasione dell'Orso

During the guys’ week, we went camping on a beautiful lake in the White Mountains called Russell Pond. It rained a fair amount while we were there, but this did not in any way spoil the incredible beauty of the spot. The water was warm, there was a nice view, and across the lake there was a rope swing and a large rock that was perfect for swimming from. On one side of it the lake was shallow and sandy, on another side it was a gradual drop-off from the rock, and on another side there was an immediate drop-off. (The fourth and final side was shallow and slimy, but we won’t dwell on that thought.) Only a short path through a stretch of woods divided the campsite from the lake. And it was on this path that we first saw.......the bear.

Dan was the first to spot him. We had just got back from getting our dinner at McDonald’s, and Adam was having a meeting. When he was about halfway through his message, Dan quietly announced, "There’s a bear by the lake." We glanced briefly over at the bear and then quietly turned and listened to the rest of Adam’s meeting. End of story.

Well, actually, that’s not quite what happened. After Dan mentioned the bear, we all—even Adam—were distracted. Gerry went to get the park ranger because he had heard they were trying to scare the bears into being afraid of humans (actually, we had all heard; they had been firing shotguns the better part of the afternoon). While he was gone the bear walked along the edge of the lake a couple times, and we yelled and barked and whistled at him. This didn’t bother him a bit. He began to ever so slowly saunter up the path toward our campsite. Dan, being the oldest and wisest person present, instructed us all to back up the path away from the campsite and the bear, and we complied. It crept nearer, we crept farther. Finally the bear reached the picnic table, and sniffing slowly along it, came to a McDonald’s bag that contained two cheeseburgers belonging to Andrew Bean. It then grabbed this bag in its mouth and ran into the woods with it. After a few minutes of excitement, and then a few minutes after that of repeated gunshots in the woods ("bear scare", the ranger called it), and then a few more minutes of excitement, we settled down by the fire again and Adam tried to finish his meeting. He did succeed, but without the rapt attention he had received in the first half. Talk about a distraction! How many other people do you know who have had their meetings interrupted by a bear?

I drove a standard again today. I’m getting better: I only stalled once, and that was when Daddy was telling me to play with the clutch or something. At any rate, the light in front of me was still red and I got the engine started before the light turned green.

My modem has stopped working again. I think I'll have to buy a new one. Sigh. I wrote out this whole post on my computer on MS Word, and then found that I couldn't connect to the web. Consequently, I had to copy this to CD and go ALL the way down to the kitchen and use that computer. There should be a law against fickle technology.

Mein Knie

On, I think, the Thursday in the guys’ week, Dan Murray was having the 9:00 meeting. He had an object lesson to illustrate one of his points. His point was (if I remember correctly) the values we place on different choices, and the object lesson was as follows: he would pull an item out of a small cardboard box he held in his hand and toss it into the middle of the room. We guys could choose individually whether we valued the item enough to dive for it and try to grab it first. The first item was a blue crayon. I chose not to dive for it, but some of the other guys did. Next was a piece of paper, and then a small stick of pink chalk. As at the first, several people dove for those things, but I refrained. Before Dan pulled out the fourth object, he mentioned that it was the last thing, so I prepared to jump. Seeing a flash of green as Dan pulled the item—a dollar bill—out of his little box, I made a decision to dive, and I did. It was a decision I would later regret. I did get the dollar, but being the first to the floor, I ended up at the bottom of a pile of young men that included Ben Holscher, Justin Lerra, and Andrew Bean, among others. Their collective weight ground me into the carpet in the Fellowship Room of the church, and I came away from the room a dollar richer but possibly scarred for life.

Well, although I was planning on limiting myself to one story per post, I may have to amend that to mean one old story per post. If I didn’t, I would constantly end up being about three weeks behind in what I wrote about. With that in mind, here’s a little update on the news here: The Holschers stayed here for the weekend and Uncle Dave went sailing with Daddy and one of our neighbors. I drove them down to Portsmouth, RI, and then drove back. This is news because the car I drove on this trip has a manual transmission, and it was about the second time I had driven it. It was certainly the first time I had driven it farther than the top of Chestnut Hill. I did fairly well, but this was only because of the lack of traffic. I didn’t have to shift out of fifth from as soon as I got on the highway in RI until I came to the big intersection where Rte. 101 meets Rte. 114 in Bedford! Naturally, starting from there I jerked and bobbed and screeched and felt very conspicuous. However, I went with Daddy on Monday to Portsmouth, NH, and back in the same car, and I did much better—and that time we DID have stop-and-go traffic.

I'M BAAAAAAAAAACK!!!

Well, my faithful readers (or should I say, faithful blog checkers), my title says it all. I am back, back I am. I've been off the web almost as long as Rush Limbaugh was off the air last year. And I have SOOOOO much to write about. Fortunately for you, I will not even try to write it all out in one long long long long long post. This way is good for me too, in that I have many many many many many subjects to write about. So, for story number one.....

As most of you know, one of the first weeks after I stopped posting was the guys' week at Fairwood. It was very hot the first couple of days there. And for some reason, the room Ben and I were sleeping in was the hottest room in the dorm. We tried everything: we opened the window all the way; we turned on a fan in the window; we left the door open to the hall for cross-ventilation; we didn't use any blankets (I didn't, anyway). Yet we were still sweltering. I was perplexed. The next morning I went over to the window to feel what the temperature was like outside. I pressed my hand against the screen and felt.....glass? Then it hit me: the storm window was closed! I slept comfortably for the rest of the week.

Back from the almost-perfect storm

I had an incredibly busy weekend. Incredibly. That’s all there is to it. I bet no one else has ever had a weekend as busy as the one I had. Almost, anyway. I mean, who could? I was busy every second! There was not a moment – hardly a single one!! – where I was idle. And it was an extended weekend too! Have I piqued your curiosity yet?

My incredibly busy weekend started with a bang on Saturday. We had to get out of our Cape Cod cottage by 10 a.m. We got up bright and early and worked and worked and worked. We packed and cleaned and packed and cleaned. Then we cleaned some more. We got out at eleven.
Soon after that we stopped at the Eastham Superette, a nearby general store, for lunch with the Holschers. It was there that I saw the tick on the speedometer, and it was from there that I drove a trailer for the first time. (See Bria’s blog)

All that was well and good. We got home in good time and started to unpack despite the 90 degree heat and oppressive humidity. I was very hot and tired, but I was glad to be home. I planned to spend the rest of the weekend relaxing. Little did I know......

It was around seven that evening, I believe that my plans changed. I found that I was going to go to RI with Daddy that very night. Conveniently, all my clothes were packed, but we still didn’t get out until about nine or nine thirty. (The trip had something to do with sailing, but rather than explain our plans, I’ll just tell you what happened in the end, as it’s almost the same.)

We got to our destination (Uncle Jeff’s house near Newport) around midnight. We spent the night there and left at seven the next morning for Cape Cod with Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Jeff. I got a pretty good sleep in Ben’s bed, but the neighbors across the street woke me up around 5:30 by yelling in Spanish and banging car doors. Oh well.

We got to Wellfleet harbor, where Daddy’s Hunter 30, Eagle Wings, was moored, around 10. I helped unload the stuff from the car and then drove off to Eastham while the older relatives sailed off into the bay. I joined up with the Holschers again at the Donut Hole, and proceeded with them to the Eastham Inn, where they had elected to stay another day. We went swimming there in the pool, and I had an awesome time.

After the swim, we drove in a four-car caravan down the length of Rte. 6 to the Cape Cod Canal. There are two roads that run the length of the canal – one on each side – and we went biking down them. It was quite fun, and there was a stunning view of the canal and the Sagamore Bridge. We got back to the cars after an hour and proceeded to eat lunch/dinner and wait for Eagle Wings to come cruising into Sandwich Harbor (where we were). When it finally did, I went over and joined the crew. After they grabbed something to eat at a nearby seafood restaurant, Aunt Cheryl drove the Mazda (which, by the way, has nothing wrong with it despite breaking down two weeks ago; since then its been driven home, to Newport, back to Cape Cod, back to Newport, and home again) back to her house. I went with Daddy and Uncle Jeff to Newport by a combination of canal, bay, and sound.

Here’s where the "almost-perfect storm" part of the title of this post becomes relevant. One of several reasons that I chose to go on the trip was that the weather was predicted to be very warm. Boy, were they wrong! They weather was, in fact, COLD! In addition, the waves were very steep, and every couple of minutes the bow would crash down into the trough of a particularly tall wave with a sickening mixture of "thud" and "smack." This lasted for about six or seven hours. I was busy for half of it steering and manning GPS units, and for the rest of the time I was VERY busy trying unsuccessfully to sleep.

We reached a small inlet with moorings in it about a mile from Aunt Cheryl’s around 2:20 a.m. We docked on an unoccupied mooring and set about preparing a little inflatable raft we brought for the water. Uncle Jeff and I set out for shore while Daddy stayed on the boat. It turned out to take a lot longer than we expected. In unfamiliar places in the dark on the water, one’s depth perception can be a bit off. Aunt Cheryl got to the boat landing a good ten minutes before we did. It turned out that the boat landing was on a closed beach. Pretty soon a police officer showed up to inform her of that fact. She told him that we had gotten in later than expected and were rowing in. They started chatting, and he kept shining his light over the water. Aunt Cheryl asked him if he could see us, to which he replied, "No." Naturally she started getting a bit nervous. After all, she WAS on a closed beach at 2:30 in the morning. Fortunately, the officer spotted us pretty soon, and left almost immediately.

The next morning, after a good seven hours’ sleep at the Jenkins’, Ben took me on a tour of St. George’s, which is about 1000 feet from his house and where he goes to school and Aunt Cheryl works. It was stately, to say the least. Anyone who hasn’t seen St. George’s hasn’t seen anything beautiful! Well, not really, but the only mar on the school’s beautiful nature is the fact that Howard Dean is an alumnus, and the school is proud of it.

Daddy, Ben, and I sailed some more after that. The sail that day almost made up for the treacherousness of the previous day’s sail (but not quite). The water in the Sakonnet River was smooth, and we were propelled up the river by warm 10 mph breezes at our backs. In fact, we were going as fast as the wind, so it felt as though there was almost no wind at all – not even a zephyr! We reached the mooring we were heading to (it’s owned by the family of one of Daddy’s friends) and Uncle Jeff picked us up. He took us back to his house, where Ben and I played ping pong (more awesome fun) and loaded up the car with our stuff. (By this time it was Monday afternoon, in case you’ve lost track.) After we said our goodbyes, Daddy drove us to the boat again. We closed it up, I hit my head on the boom, we lost an expensive paddle, and then I drove the rest of the way home. It was my second time driving through Boston in only three days!

Well, how was that for busy? I’m glad it’s over, but it’s weekends like that that memories are made of. I had a fun time over all, but I was dead tired when we got home. I might write more, but this post is easily long enough, and possibly too long, and plus I have to go to a birthday party for Alicia Abigail Bright. Arrivederci, my dear readers.

OK, this is NOT a page filler

You may be wondering why none of us Sandford/Holscher bloggers have posted in the last seven days +. The answer? We're all at Cape Cod together. Duh!

We've been having an awesome vacation. It's hard to believe it'll be over in less than two days. It'll be good to get home, but it'll be sad to leave here too.

Caleb has the most incredibly outgoing personality. On Tuesday, he, Ben, and I went to a little general store here in Eastham to buy a treat for a short sail we were going to take in Daddy's 30' boat (not to be confused with the 25' one, the 14' one, the 10' one, the 9' one, the other 9' one, or the 8' one; not to mention the canoe...). I let Caleb pick between ice cream sandwiches and eclair sticks, or something like that. As we took the box he chose (the sandwiches) to the checkout, Caleb declared loudly to the clerk, "I picked those out myself. Know what? He (pointing at me) picked out two boxes and said, 'Caleb, which one should we get.' And I said 'That one.' " He said some other things too, but I can't remember them specifically. I just remember laughing pretty hard.

Another time, he made up a song on the spot about Spiderman. One of the lines in the song went something like, "He can climb walls, he can make spider web. He can kill goo--no, I mean--bad guys. (spoken) No, no, wait; pretend that didn't happen." Of course, everyone who heard him laughed, and for the next few days he would occassionally say something like, "Wasn't I soooo funny when I made that song? Remember how I said 'pretend that didn't happen'?"

We went mini golfing today. I had a really fun time. Ben, Caleb, and I were on one score sheet together the first round, and Daddy joined us the second time (it was a "buy one, get one free" deal). Daddy did REALLY well. Par was 49, and he got 43! For a while he was nine under par. I didn't do as well, but I wasn't too bad. The first time I got 52 and Ben got 51, but the second time I got par and Ben got 52. We got ice cream at Friendly's afterward, and Caleb started talking with a lady and her two kids, a boy and a girl. The lady knew Caleb's name because she and her kids had been playing mini golf one green ahead of us for an entire round of golf. This pleased Caleb immensely. He asked the boy how old he was. The boy replied that he was three. "Ha!" said Caleb. "I'm older than you!" He asked the girl how old she was. She told him she was seven. Caleb responded with mixture of a groan and a wail. It was quite comical.

Well, as usual when I am writing a post on my blog (especially on vacation), it's very late, and I should go. So, tata for now, and probably until I'm back home in the good ol' Granite State.

Page filler

I tried to think of a new post for a long time, but I couldn't think of anything substantial to write. Still, I wanted to write SOMETHING so here it is.

There are a lot of fishermen that come and stand on the beach near our cottage here on the cape. They never catch anything, as far as we can see. Oh, except once. Two days ago, one guy cast his line, which was baited with herring (which practically fill the brook near our cottage, supposedly attracting larger fish that attract fishermen). Someone here noticed him reeling in his line. More than that they noticed what he was reeling in ON his line: a seagull. HAHAHAHA! What a stupid bird.

Tada! My first June post is complete!

Yet Another Unfortunate Event

I have recently been going berserk with Daddy's Pentax K1000 SLR camera. I enjoy using it a lot. It's totally manual, and Daddy has three lenses for it with a variety of zooms. (No, I didn't drop it in the ocean.)

The unfortunate event referred to in the title of this post is this: over yesterday and today I took over twenty pictures that promised to be some of the best I had ever taken in my life. I couldn't wait to use up the film and develop it. The pictures were going to be so great! Such excitement! Such anticipation! Then all of a sudden my hopes were dashed. I rewound my film, opened the back of the camera, and . . . there was nothing there!!! Oh the anguish!!!!

Well, that little incident almost ruined my day. I feel better about it now, but that sure was a disappointment.

Y'know what's really weird? I've been at Cape Cod for almost three whole days and I haven't been to Kingsbury beach, which is where we usually vacation, the whole time! We can see it from our beach, but I haven't gone there at all. Fortunately, I am enjoying this beach here almost as much, and even if I wasn't, I'll probably go to Kingsbury a good amount after Friday, which is when THE HOLSCHERS ARE COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and Kimberly : )

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Well, here I am on vacation. "What," you say, "could happen unfortunate on a vacation?" Well, well, well, let me tell you!!!

First Unfortunate Event:
This one didn't involve any of us exactly, but it was unfortunate nevertheless. Mama, Bria, and the rest of the boys where in the Rialta, and Cara and I were following in the Mazda 626. (Daddy is coming tonight or tomorrow with a boat) As we were zipping along the highway at 65 mph, we -- and all the rest of the cars around us -- zipped around a corner and found ourselves confronted with a traffic jam of massive proportions. Of course, we SLAMMED on the brakes to avoid a collision of equally massive proportions. We succeeded. The end.

Just kidding! I mean, WE succeeded in avoiding a collision, but the four SUVs next to the car I was driving (who were more than "zipping") did not. Cara and Ryan watched from our different vehicles in dismay and awe as the cars crashed into each other one by one. I got a glimpse of the cars crashing, but I was still able to here the loud "thunk.....thunk....thunk." As far as I know, nobody suffered any serious complications (the cars couldn't have been going much faster than each other when they crashed), but Nancy Brown was coming about twenty minutes behind us and she said she heard on the radio that that crash had caused a traffic jam itself.

All right. Now for the second unforunate event. "What," you say (or maybe you don't, but who cares?) "could be more disastrous than witnessing a devastating crash that blocked traffic for three miles (random guess)?" I can tell you in one word: Breakdown. We had barely crossed the Sagamore Bridge onto Cape Cod. We had not yet finished rejoicing in completing the second-to-last leg of our journey when Bria called Cara and me from the car ahead via walkie-talkie.

"Hey, you guys, is the Rialta smoking?"

We replied that it was not.

"Well, then, the Mazda is."

Sigh.

There is absolutely no place to pull to the side of the road on Rte. 6, the road that runs the length of the Cape. So we drove about three miles, took the next exit, and pulled to the side of the road on the highway that we were brought to. By then the Mazda was practically billowing smoke. I called Daddy and tried to describe the problem to him, but we could not figure it out. All we could determine was that the car was leaking some sort of liquid fast whenever the car was off. The engine was not overheating, and the oil level was fine. We were baffled.

After about twenty minutes, the Browns pulled up behind us. To make a long story short, after about half an hour of calling AAA and various garages, we finally got someone to tow us the approx. 35 miles to Eastham, which is where we are vacationing. We passed the forty-five minutes after that playing with Alex's camera and eating chips, which grew old after a while. We're here now safe and sound, but the total time we were stuck there was over two hours.

Unfortunate event number three: I got a new kite for Christmas and I was flying it for the first time today. I was supposed to watch Ian at the cottage, so I was flying it from the deck. Bria came to relieve me, so I started toward the beach -- a little too quickly. The kite dived and landed in a tree on the other side of the house. Using my more clever side, I pulled hard on the string, hoping it wouldn't break, and the kite came out of the tree. Now it was stuck on the roof. I am tired of writing, and you are probably tired of reading, so I'll just give the end away. I got the kite off the roof with a broom.

The rest of our vacation so far has been AWESOME!!!! It has been sunny, if not hot for the entire time. We had a really fun time on the beach with Karen and Alex this evening. The house is really nice, and we have had lots of fun. So it hasn't been all unfortunate; that just made a good title.

Countdown to Bliss

We leave for Cape Cod in just four days!!!!! I am totally excited. Unfortunately, the current forecast looks a bit grim (rain, t-showers, rain, cloudy, rain, rain....) but most of the chances of precipitation are below 50%, so there is hope. Just in case, however, I'll be careful to bring lots of rainy day equipment, such as games, puzzles, and a tape recorder. Two years ago the Holscher kids and us Sandford kids made a "radio play" with my little shoebox recorder that I brought. The story was about a sort of detective named "Tex Gardner" and a criminal that he was tracking all over the country (so that we could use lots of accents). The tape was really funny, and the making of it is one of my favorite memories. Sadly, we lost the tape.

Well, I would write more but it's super late: I had to wait for Bria to get off so I could get on, and she took forEVER! But, anyway, I don't have anything to say off the top of my head, so it's just as well.

As a side note, my Vocabulary book has been recovered. It was not lost after all; merely tucked in some small obscure corner of Daddy's car where it had eluded my searching gaze. So now I have four subjects to finish. Bother.

You may call me Mr. Reflexes

Yesterday, at Doug's graduation party (which went well but was very tiring, especially for a Sabbath), I put a Styrofoam bowl on the coffee table with a fork balanced on it. Doug was sitting on the couch. He put his feet against the coffee table, and the fork fell off the bowl and plummeted toward the floor one foot below. Well, in that split second, a thousand thoughts raced through my head. "Should I catch the fork in midair? Or would it give my identity as a superhero away? Is anyone looking? Does Doug realize that he knocked the fork over in the first place? If the fork hits the ground, everyone will look this way, so would it be more attention-grabbing to let it drop than to catch it?" In the end I decided to catch the fork. I snatched it out of the air after it had fallen about four inches. Douglas was the only one who saw me, and I think he appreciated that—being a superhero—I would want to remain anonymous, so he said nothing.

Superhero though I may be, however, I am still having a hard time catching on to the whole starting thing with our manual transmission Camry. Daddy had me practice a bit today backing up a hill without rolling forward. I did it, but not without jerks and bumps. But then later, after cleaning out and gassing up the vans at the office (rejoice, Derrick!) I had to drive the Camry home—by myself!!!—because there was no other car up there (except, of course, the vans and the pathfinder, which is itself a manual). I am finally starting to get better at shifting smoothly, and the ride down was almost bumpless!

I finished off the first roll of film in Daddy's new SLR camera. I hope the pictures come out, but I'm not sure they will: most of the pics were taken in dim light without a flash, necessitating a slow exposure. I used a tripod, but I have never used a SLR camera before, which doubles the anxiety. The most annoying thing is that the last picture is of....the carpet. Sigh. At least I didn't leave the lens cap on for any pictures....

Hi, it's me again.

Oh my word. It’s been almost a week since I’ve written in my blog. A WEEK! Where are all the comments asking why I haven’t posted? Why is no one begging me to thrill him (nice grammar, huh?) with my adventurous escapades? On the other hand, I might get annoyed with the comments asking me to post if they were TOO incessant. My great-grandmother used to say, "When summer comes, man wants winter; when winter comes, man wants summer. What a foolish creature man is!" or something similar at least. I know a good number of people who would rather it be summer all the time, but that’s beside the point.....

Back to my not posting for a week: I have an excuse! Several in fact. Reason #1: School. Reason #2: Yardwork. Reason #3: Housework. Reason #4: School. Etc., etc., etc. Fortunately reasons #1, #4, #7, etc., are soon to be gone. School is technically over at our house! Technically, but not factually. I still have a good bit of history, composition, and math to do. I’ve finished biology and writing, however, and I lost my vocabulary book in town (oops), so my subject list has at least been cut in half.

Reasons #2, #5, #8, etc., are the biggest reasons at this time. Douglas is graduating from St. Anselm College tomorrow (Saturday) and the party is going to be at our house! Plus, Bria’s graduation is in about a month. We’ve been working feverishly to loam and seed the lawns, mow the lawns that didn’t need seeding, mulch and fertilize the flower gardens, vacuum the pool, put up retaining walls, etc., etc., etc. (Variety check: I have now used "etc." eight times in this post; time to use something else...) The grounds have improved immensely over the past three or four weeks.

Reasons #3, #6, #9 and so on (variety!) are not as significant as the other two, but – have you ever noticed how hard it is to keep a bedroom clean? I certainly have. My room doesn’t stay clean for a minute. It’s like I have a major problem with borrowers, only they’re not borrowers but lenders. It’s either that or a vast household conspiracy...

(Or maybe I’m just a slob, but we won’t consider that possibility at this time.)

Have you ever heard that you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows (fill in the blank with anyone in the world? Well, I recently found a couple examples. (I define "know" to mean having met and conversed with) 1) I know Amy Partin who knows George Bush who knows a LOT of people. 2) I know my Aunt Candy who knows Harrison Ford who knows a LOT of people. 3) I have a neighbor whose uncle is Joe Morgan who used to be the manager of the Red Sox and—needless to say—knows a LOT of people. Here’s one I just found out that really surprised me: I know my cousin Ben who is a close friend of.....Howard Dean’s nephew! Of course, he (the nephew) knows Howard Dean , who knows a LOT of people. (Don't worry, though, Ben is not a fanatical left-wing democrat.)

Just More of the Same

There’s something really nice about being able to modify pictures after they’re taken. For instance, I’ve recently taken to whiting out my ugly annoying much-despised braces off all my digital photos. Of course, I don’t get a lot of pictures of myself because I’m the only one who ever uses the digital camera, it being mine and all, so I don’t get the opportunity that often. It's amazing sometimes the drastic changes one can come up with. People who are REALLY good at photo editing could probably make supermodels out of the ugliest hags.

The dreaded graduation prelude is over and done with. Not very many people were there for the time Bria and I were playing, which was from about twenty to twelve minutes before the ceremony started. Several people later expressed their deepest sorrow (ever-so-slight exaggeration here) that they could not be there in time, which was quite flattering.

Well, once again my post is brief and uninteresting. I’m beginning to develop a pattern here. Sigh. Oh, well. If my blog is really so awful, then why are YOU reading it? (Ha! Good point Aaron.)

Before and After

I can't wait for this picture to be more than just a concept.

Another great picture of Duncan 

Duncan enjoying his first swim of the year. 

Hurray! Another post!

We've finally gone swimming! We heated the pool to 75 degrees, and Bria took Duncan in with her. Later Cara and Ryan went in too. I -- well -- I just sat on the side and read The Pickwick Papers because I had/have a cold. In eighty degree weather! *Sniff* (No pun intended; well, actually, to be completely honest, it was.) : )

Well, it's late, and I should go to bed, but hopefully I'll get a chance to post more on the weekend despite my piano lesson and school (on Friday), the FBI graduation (in the prelude of which I am scheduled to play the piano), Grandpa's birthday and party, Bria's orchestra concert, <pause for breath> church, lawns that need watering, etc., etc......If I want variety I suppose I should stop saying how busy I am. Oh well....

Variety Exemplified

It’s been so long since I wrote on my blog, and I have a multitude of excuses. However, if I listed them all, the post would be quite similar to the one below, so, to preserve variety, I shall write something else.

For instance, we have a new car! Actually we’ve had this car—a Toyota Camry—for months and months (five total), but there was a lot of trouble getting the title transferred to us, and we only got it registered last week. The most exciting part of the car is that it has a manual transmission! I have driven the car about five miles so far, and I have a long way to go before I’m really any good at it. Several mistakes so far:

• Stalling on a steep hill (Grandpa’s driveway)
• Shifting from second gear to fifth
• Backing down the driveway with the parking brake on

Notice none of the mistakes are things that I would be likely/able to do with an automatic!

Daddy got a new camera: a Pentax K1000 SLR from eBay. It came today, and I had fun switching lenses around and focusing and zooming, etc.

But wait! Now I’m talking too much about new things! I need variety! Let’s see.....

Ah, yes! Ben H. spent the night here on Thursday. In the two hours or so he was here awake, we made a little black and white silent movie called "The Phantom." It’s so incredible. It looks like it was straight out of Hollywood. You have to see it to believe it (or to prove the fact that I am wildly exaggerating). The best part is the credits: Phantom: Aaron, Victim: Ben, Producer: Aaron, Director: Ben, Visual effects: Aaron, etc., etc.

Speaking of movies, it seems to me like a lot more movies coming out in the past few years have been really good, or at least not really bad! For instance, LOTR, Spiderman, National Treasure, Sky Captain of the World of tomorrow, Star Wars, The Incredibles, A Series of Unfortunate Events, etc. I can't wait for Narnia......

Busy, busy, busy

I haven’t posted as much recently, the reason being that I’ve been, well, busy. I recently started reading a lot more than I had been, and that has taken up a lot of my online time. I usually have a hard time getting started with books, but once I’m into them they take up most of my free time; I like to go through books as fast as I can, whether or not I enjoy them. Right now I’m about two hundred pages into The Chosen by Chaim Potok (284 pages total), and I read a hundred of those pages tonight (between about 9:00 and 10:15, I think).

Another thing that has taken up time is rowing. I didn’t do any today, but yesterday I rowed around the pond for well over an hour! I listened to a CD I burned that has some of my favorite songs from musicals (e.g. The Music Man), and, to keep from getting just one arm really tired, I changed direction every time a new song came. It’s amazing how music can make the most tedious thing infinitely more interesting. (Well, not quite infinitely, but almost. I had decided earlier that I would row until the end of the CD. I couldn’t remember how many songs there were on the CD, and after the 18th, 19th, and 20th I kept thinking, "Phew, at last it’s over," but it wasn’t. Almost over, but not quite.)

I’ve been driving a good amount, too. Yesterday I went to town to pick up pizza for dinner, and last night I went out with the girls and drove home. Today I drove Chad to the airport. The sum of hours away from home over the past two days comes to between four and five.

Then, considering the hours and hours and hours and hours of school I have to do, is it any wonder that I never can find the time to post? I mean, who does have the time to sit down and write multiple paragraphs about his life or whatever? I mean, come on!

By the way, in case anyone saw my "All about the oil" post and didn’t see the following comments under a different post, there is a joyous ending! I changed the oil in the correct van, and everyone involved is living happily ever after.

Signs of Spring!!

The pool being open--and blue!!!!!

The sun being VERY high in the sky. 

The lilacs budding..... 

....and the lilies sprouting. 

The door being left open and nobody minding. 

This being all the snow that's left at our house. 

The thermometer reading 66.2 degrees. 

The driveway being dry enough to play basketball on. 

I think this photo is pretty self-explanatory.

However, just in case you don't understand it, I will elucidate: those two windows are the windows of my bedroom. Understand now? Good.

Just a quick note on the stupidity of others.....

The other day Bria and I were listening to a talk show on the radio and a caller was loudly proclaiming, "George Bush is an idiot! China proves that Communism works!"

Uh, whatever.

It's all about the oil.....

What a day—and what a week, for that matter!

I’ll start from Wednesday:

Wednesday was the first day of the SATs at Milford Christian Academy (MCA) for Cara and Ryan. Kayla came over and spent the night, since she was going too and her birthday was the next day. I drove the three of them and Mama to Cara’s and Ryan’s music lessons in Manchester, dropped Mama off at a store in Bedford, and went back to the music school just in time to pick them up. We all (minus Mama, who was still in HER store, as she calls it) went to Staples to look for some stuff for Bria’s graduation invitations. Then we went to Walmart, where we browsed a good amount and got a couple of bottles of water.....but then, I’m getting WAY too detailed here......

Thursday: The next day I wentto MCA for testing, too. The English sections where easy—especially Spelling—but I had a hard time on the Social Science test; some of the graphs on the test where really hard to understand, and the questions about them often seemed completely irrelevant.

I stayed up Thursday night really late working on a design for Bria’s graduation card, so I probably shouldn’t be writing this now. Too bad. I will anyway. We came up with several designs, but nothing final.

Friday (today): Here’s the interesting part. After I finished SAT's this morning and my piano lesson this afternoon, I went to work at Daddy’s office. I have a weekly job there now of filling up the gas tanks on the two Chevy Expresses there, and this week one of the vans needed an oil change. I am quite sure I remember Patty (Sandford Surveying’s Accountant and Secretary) saying on Monday that the new van needed an oil change, so I dutifully drove it the eleven or twelve miles to Milford and changed the oil, filled the gas tank, and washed the windows. I drove the eleven or twelve miles back to the office and went in to fill in my time sheet. I glanced casually at the paper with instructions for me that Patty had left, and saw to my horror and astonishment that it was the old Express that needed the oil change! I have to wait until Monday to find out how serious a mistake that was......

I next took the older van out to get gas. I decided not to change its oil because I didn’t want to end up finding out that I had changed the oil in the right car after all and now I had really changed the wrong one. Figuring that I didn’t need to go to the Milford oil changing place, I headed toward Manchester, which is a bit closer. The first gas station I tried was open, but I couldn’t get the gas to pump, and there was a piece of paper taped over the credit card slot. So, I headed down the road to where there was another station—only to find the price there to be drastically (4 cents) higher. I took a big loop through a shopping center to turn around and headed back up the street I’d come from. The next gas station I tried happened to be closed, but I didn’t happen to notice. It was full serve and there was someone in the store part, so I just sat there for about two minutes before I realized nothing was going to happen. I grudgingly started up the motor again and maneuvered my way down the street to where there was one final gas station—one that worked, was cheap, and was open. I zipped back to the office (as well as you can possibly zip in that behemoth), filled in my time sheet, and zipped (or, rather, zoom-zoomed) home in Daddy’s Mazda with him. Thus concludes my thrilling narrative.