The Cabin, Part Deux

Immediately after my last post, I received the following email:

Russ,
I really wanted to post these pics as a comment -but alas- I couldn't figure out how to do it. Would you be so kind as to post these follow-ups of your beautiful mother & the three [edited for content]? Please!
Love, Dad

Since he was so good-natured about the picture I posted of him, I had to comply. Here goes:

My flower-child Momma. She was 17.

In and out the window. My mom again, considerably older than 17 (just kidding!)

Marshall, and my sister, Kiernan, and me. As you can see, our parents fed us dirt.

The Cabin

This is a picture of pretty much my favorite place on this planet (with the possible exception of the local Wendy's). My great-grandfather (Grampapa) bought the cabin back in Mesozoic Era and it has been an Andrew's Family Historical Site ever since. Grampapa was a high school teacher like me, and he and my great-grandmother would spend every summer up there after school got out. My parents were married right outside the cabin, using log rounds for the pews and the pulpit. (These were their hippy days--check out my dad's Willie Wonka wedding attire below. Nice hair, Pop!) Growing up my grammie would make wheat waffles for us, which we would eat until we were full and then feed to the squirrels on the back porch. The cabin reminds me of reading old books, playing Risk and poker, doing crosswords, and splitting wood Abraham Lincoln-style. And really, what more is there to life?

Why I Love St. Patrick's Day

When I was in kindergarten, leprechauns visited my classroom. I know this because when we came back from lunch on St. Patrick's Day, all the desks were turned over, the books were on the floor, and the room was a complete mess. Also, there was a trail of green glitter that went in loops around our classroom, out the door, and all the way to the edge of the forest that bordered our school yard (sort of like Family Circus meets Tinkerbell). Our teacher smilingly told us that the leprechauns must have played a trick on us, but that there were golden coins hidden around the classroom. We didn't want the gold though (which was just turned out to be chocolate anyway)-- we wanted to catch one of the Little People. So we followed the glitter-track loops around the classroom, out the door, and all the way into the forest (there were no fences, mind you). Twenty kindergartners, little people in our own right, running full bore into a leprechaun-filled forest, our poor teacher trailing behind, frantically reminding us that the gold was INSIDE the classroom.

Man, school just ain't what it used to be.

Lazy Sunday

Quite possibly the greatest hard-core rap about the Chronicles of Narnia ever.

Watch it here.

A Rare Glimpse Into My Brother's Psyche

Marshall came over today for the usual afternoon activites: darts, chess, Smash Brothers, and fighting. The first words out of his mouth were these:

"So, I was thinking on the way over... what if Bigfoot was actually a woman, and she/it mated with Dracula? Because I really don't think that the world's economy is ready for hairy vampires."

Uhhh... thanks Marsh. I really hadn't considered the implications.

A Tale of Two Tests

It was the best of tests. It was the worst of tests. I had two tests today, and they didn't exactly go as planned. For the first test, I prepared really hard, knew my stuff, and actually felt quite good going into it. Let's just say I got rocked. We're talking mid-to-low single digits rocked. And yes, those are percentages. If a race horse performed like I did on that test, it would be a one-way trip to the ol' glue factory. No kidding.

These are the worst type of failures--the ones you didn't see coming. You're just walking along, humming a little to yourself, and then WHAM!!! Flattened by the F-Train. I walked out of class in a semi-daze, still wondering what had gone so horribly, horribly wrong. (I didn't have to brood on it for too long though, because I had bowling class next. Sweet, sweet strikes, you make everything all better...)

Anyway, after getting Tanya Harding'ed on my first test, I wasn't all too eager to take another one. I had spent most of my time studying for the first one, which I had expected to nail, and very little on the second, which I expected to nail me. So as I trudged along to my History of Scandinavia final (once you're past the Vikings, Scandinavian history is about as entertaining as chinese water torture) I could distinctly hear the cry go out: "Dead man walking! Dead man walking!" To my exceeding astonishment, I knew almost everything on the second test. I still have no idea how that worked out, but I'm not complaining.

If unexpected failure is one of the worst sensations, then unanticipated success has to be one of the best.

Like any good story, there is a moral to this one- a bit of advice that I hope you all will take to heart: the less you study, the better you will do in school.

Can I get a witness?