Well, well...

Here I was proclaiming throughout the past week, "High-speed is coming on Thursday!" and "Thursday I will REALLY start to post!" and now over four days have passed and I have yet to post. Ah well, such is life.

I have been enjoying the internet. We have a wireless router, and all our computers have wireless, so we have internet throughout the entire house. The router is in the basement and my bedroom is on the fourth floor, so I sometimes get disconnected, but not very often.

This weekend we rearranged four of the seven bedrooms in our house! Ryan's and my rooms have undergone the most drastic changes. We took one of the beds and one of the bureaus out of Ryan's room and put them in Bria's room, giving Ryan enough room for a desk with a computer. The computer part caused a bit of a controversy, since it was the shell of what was once Cara's computer. We put it in there without asking her, and she was quite annoyed. Before you make any judgments, however, consider that her computer hadn't been working for the past couple of weeks, and to fix it I had to literally rebuild it; in fact, it now shares absolutely zero parts with the computer that used to be in Cara's room.

In my room, I took out my bedstead and just put down a boxspring and mattress so I could push my bed closer to the slanted ceiling, and I moved the bureau to the opposite side of the room. That freed up the one vertical wall in my room, giving me a place to put a desk. Not only do I have that extra piece of furniture, but, by using up more of the space under the eaves, I've made the room more spacious-feeling as well.

Our pool is open! It's also clean and sufficiently chlorinated. The temperature, however, is not exactly comfortable. In fact, it's not even close.

I still haven't put up any more pictures, but now I have the capability at least. We'll see how I do at getting to use that capability...

My Weekend

In case you're incredibly distraught, disappointed, or otherwise upset about the fact that I have not posted in FOUR WHOLE DAYS(!!!!), allow me to assure you that the reason is not that I'm lazy; it's not that I have nothing to say or show, and it's not that I hate blogs. It's not even that I'm too busy 100% of the time. It's just that our blankety blank internet connection wouldn't let me upload any pictures! Grrrr. Just wait til Thursday.

Four days is not actually a very long time, but it has been much longer than that since I actually wrote an interesting post with more than pictures or a few quick notes. It's time I actually wrote something interesting for a change.

You may have noticed me lamenting in my last post the fact that I would not be able to go to the youth weekend at Fairwood until the second day. And I lamented rightly, too: I MISSED ULTIMATE FRISBEE!!! ("Let the bitter tears I'm shedding witness my distress...") Nevertheless, Cara and I sacrificed our ritual Sabbath sleep-in so that we could get over to Fairwood by the end of breakfast. None of my close friends were there this time, but I still had a good time. We had a number of relay races and the like in the afternoon, and I enjoyed myself to an unusual extent considering the fact that my team lost all of them. All, that is, except for the Great Fairwood Baking Contest and Scavenger Hunt. We made the best-tasting and nicest-looking brownies in the second shortest amount of time. It was quite a pleasant surprise.

In the afternoon we had three activities to choose from: hiking, watching "Narnia", or playing games in the parlor. I opted for the parlor games since I was too tired to hike and had already seen "Narnia" twice. We played Pictionary and Catchphrase, and I had a fun time.

Cara and I stayed for sports that evening, and I enjoyed them for the most part. We played warball first, and I am SOOO bad at warball. I have a horrible arm, and I can't catch. I can dodge, but who wants to just dodge the whole time? I did manage to get a few people out, but far more people got ME out. Nevertheless, my team managed to pull off the victory most of the times we played.

We played basketball second. I made a grawnd total of one basket out of about five tries, but I wasn't surprised or disappointed because offence isn't my strong point. Besides, my team won the first game without my getting any baskets at all, and my one basket in the second game saved us from defeat. (I'm sure you were very anxious to hear all this.)

I despise kickball. We left early. I was glad.

I went to Craig's senior composition recital in CT on Sunday! We got there just a few minutes early in spite of taking wrong exits and highways a couple times. All the music was wonderful, but I especially enjoyed the choral pieces. I had to keep reminding myself that Craig had written all the music.

Good News, Bad News, Big News, Small News...

First the bad/small news: I don't get to go to the youth weekend until tomorrow! Waaaaaahh. But this isn't as bad as it might have been, since I am dead tired and the men's dorm rarely cures that ailment very well. Still, Friday night is often my favorite time at youth weekends and I'M NOT THERE!!! Waaaah.

OK, Aaron...pull yourself together...

Now the big good news: we're getting high-speed internet! Yessss. The new service will be installed next Thursday. I am pleased. I am also dead tired (as previously mentioned), so I shall bid you all a happy Sabbath and great weekend.

Logic Shmogic

I just got home from my last Stanford Achievement Test (SAT, but not the SAT) ever! It went pretty well, and I finished all the tests in good time. However, on the Otis-Lennon Test (a kind of IQ test), I found a question that really stumped me. I wrote it down and brought it home to see if anyone else could figure it out, and so far nobody has. Why don't you give it a try?

Here it is:

No A's are B's
All B's are C's
Some C's are D's

It follows that:

a) no B's are D's
b) some C's are A's
c) some A's are D's
d) all D's are either B's or C's
e) no A's are C's

If anyone can figure it out, please leave the answer and an explanation in my comments.

Another interesting question that puzzled me a bit was one in the "Bible" section:

Statistics show that which of these is the primary cause of financial instablility among newly married couples?

a) Life insurance
b) Buying a new house
c) Credit cards
d) Multiple bank accounts

The answer can be found in Methuselah 7:29.

(Just kidding about the Methuselah part: at least they weren't THAT bad ; )

PHOTOS!

I finally got a chance to get to the office for some high-speed internet, but I underestimated how long it would actually take. I thought I could do my entire favorites collection, but it took so long just to get Rome done that I stopped there. I also have a few from Venice up.

Although I am publishing my photos to online albums, I'll still continue to publish a few favorite favorites on my blog on occasion (e.g., when I can't think of anything else to write.) These below are of a beautiful area on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. We stopped there on our way down toward Elba from Pisa, and it provided some of the most gorgeous natural scenery I've ever seen...as well as some excellent opportunities for trick shots.

Happy Easter!

Location: Florence, Italy
Photographer: Ben Holscher

In Which I Travel Thousands of Miles

I apologize profusely for the lack of posts over the past week or so. It's not that I haven't had anything to write about; in fact, I have a multitude of stories to tell. The fact is that I have been busy to an extreme since I got home, and have not yet had a real opportunity to sit down and write my heart out.

I have a good amount to say about Italy (and tons of pictures to share; photo website in progress), but the stories on the home front have been building up as well, and I'd better start getting them all down in bytes.

First of all I'll expound on our stay in Amsterdam. We flew into the city only ten minutes late, but the connecting flight to Boston had left early, and was already in the air. We headed to the transfer desk and waited while they sorted out our problem. The people working for the airline were all very friendly (at least the ones we met), and that helped some. Nevertheless, I was tired and wanted to get home.

The airline probably lost money on us. We paid $382 apiece for round trip tickets, but since we missed our flight because of their mistake, they gave us two free rooms at a 4-star hotel near the beach (the picture with the lighthouse and the nighttime picture are from the balcony of one of the rooms; the sunset picture was taken by Ben on a nearby beach), $60 each off future ticket purchases, phone cards for calling home, food vouchers for the airport, and - here's the biggest plus - upgrade to business class. And believe me when I say that business class is NICE! Hot moist towels at the beginning and end of the trip, gourmet meals, fully reclining seats, travel kits, nicer headphones . . . aaaaahh. I looked up how much it would cost to purchase those tickets today, and the cheapest possible price is two thouuuuuuusand dollars!!!! And that's per person. In a way, we earned $5000 dollars and spent it all at once on luxuries.





My first major story from after I got home took place Friday night. After Sabbath meeting and a brief Sabbath treat over here, Ben and I set out for Fairwood. His mother was there for the weekend, and he went home with her the following Sunday, I believe. I decided to take the "back way" (136 to 101 instead of 101 the whole way) as it's shorter and sometimes faster. As we were zipping along (with low beams on because we had just passed another car) about 45 mph, I suddenly saw a few legs in front of me. I slowed to a careful stop and pulled over to the side. Ben pulled our "Caution" sign out of the trunk and ran back to warn other drivers of potential danger, and I pulled out my camera and flashlight to see what beast had the audacity to stand in the middle of a state road.

And what a beast it was! I raised the flashlight higher and higher, until finally the beam rested on the head of. . . .a giraffe!! You can imagine my shock! I whipped out my camera, Ben whipped out his, and we both began to photograph as though there would be no tomorrow! We found out later that it had escaped from the world-famous Greenfield and Peterborough Magnificent Animal Exhibition. What? Never heard of it? Then I guess you're not as gullible as I hoped, but dared not to expect.

No, what I saw was no giraffe. It was a hoofed mammal of relatively diminutive stature, boasting a height of only, oh, seven or eight feet. It was a moose, in fact. I never saw above its chest, although, as previously mentioned, I didn't have my high beams on. Ben said afterward he hadn't see any antlers though, so I didn't miss anything spectacular.

Instead, I missed something large and deadly. (Oooh, I love that line!) I swerved hard to the left, swerved hard to the right, and never saw the deer animal (hahahahaha!) again. It all happened very quickly, and my reaction time felt like it was well under the 3/4 second average reaction time that I learned about in driver's ed. It might have been just my imagination, or it might have been God. Take your pick.

To make a great story better, I saw eight deer that night afterward: three on Rte. 202 only a few minutes after the moose, and the remaining five on Chestnut Hill Road. I saw all of those animals well in advance and had nothing like a close call.

The weather here has been absolutely lovely the past couple days! The temperature right now, 11 pm, is warmer than the average high for days around this time of year! It definitely feels like May, and I'm not complaining.

We've been enjoying a nearly unprecedented amount of wildlife in the area. We have a beaver living in our pond once again, the last time being about six or seven years ago. We've had several mink sightings, and this morning we saw a pair of wood ducks swimming around in the pond. I don't think I had ever even seen any before! We also have the usual mallards, chickadees, nuthatches, frogs, peepers, etc., but no mosquitoes yet, thank goodness!

Stranded

We are in Amsterdam. We have been for nearly 24 hours. Why? Because our first flight landed late and the second flight took off early. We spent the night in a four-star hotel for free, with free dinner and breakfast, and now we're about to head home. I would write more, but the battery of the laptop is quickly dying, and I can't plug it in. We'll be back in the USA in about 12 hours.

Rome