Category: blood

Family, easy!

Posted on

exit strategy

GIS for frantic?
Too tired last night to write. Didn’t feel like it either. This month looks pretty sorry in that little calendar over on the right, so many non-blue days… nothing written. But look below, I’m proud of it again. That means that I was happy with every entry I wrote this week – nothing too crappy. That’s good, because that means I’m getting back into the swing of things. I hope this upcoming Taiwan trip doesn’t wreck me. Charge!

Got a brief e-mail from my mom today, saying simply that my brother had finally got his orders to Iraq. They told him he’ll leave for the sands December 15th, and will probably be deployed for about 18 months. To me, it seems awfully early to be informing troops they’ll be leaving in December. Not because of logistics, I can certainly understand a military deployment being planned 6 months in advance. I just guess it seems like a lot can happen within 6 months, but I understand that the military minds most likely have this planned long-term. I mean, we’re talking pretty long-term I guess, if my brother ends up going he won’t be coming home until sometime in 2007 – which tells me we’re planning to maintain a presence there at least that long. I guess only a simpleton would believe that we could realistically get out of the country much sooner. I read the other day that Rumsfeld said we’d be cutting our troops throughout 2006 – which tells me that it’s likely that my bro’s unit will be replacing more soldiers than they themselves number… kind of an unsettling thought. I think the whole thing really gets to my mom. For my part, I actually don’t worry that much. Perhaps it’s naive, but if I were in my brother’s position I’d be more pissed about having to go into the desert for more than a year without my wife than I’d be worried about being blown up by insurgents. Then again, it’s easy to say that from my comfortable couch in my comfortable house.

I can remember when I was younger, this would probably somewhere around 5th or 6th grade, I would do a lot of thinking before I dozed off to sleep. Mostly I thought of strange stuff… like trying to figure out how to pronounce words if they were read backwards. Yeah I really can remember doing that. I’d also imagine all sorts of things. That my bunkbed was a cave I was stranded in. Sometimes, for whatever reason, I’d try and see if I could force myself to genuinely cry. Not fake tears, which can be conjured up quite easily, but real tears for real sadness. I don’t know why. It will sound morbid and perhaps a bit askew, but I had this “exercise” I’d go through to make it happen. I’d clear my mind, and try my best to imagine the real emotions I’d feel if someone had told me one or both of my parents had died. Sure, your brain knows it’s not real, so it doesn’t have much effect. But if you give into the thoughts, and really try and put yourself in that place… the tears will come. And so, just to see if I could cry, I’d imagine what it would be like to learn of my parents’ demise. Now, as a semi-adult (am I one yet?), I know one day I’ll really have to deal with that emotion. Hey moms and pops, stick around a while, will ya? I’ve got stuff yet to show you.

In gradeschool, we had a trash incinerator near the edge of the playground, at least, that’s what I always thought it was. It was a squat, square brick building with a rusted brown-red roof angled in towards a small metal chimney thing. There was large metal door facing the street, where I guess you put the garbage in and burned it or something. I used to fantasize about taking girls behind it.

Goodnight.

Posted on

el dorado

An industrious people.
It’s 11:50pm and I’m just writing the first words of this entry. This evening was a busy one for me. Dinner with the boss, and then a few post-5pm work-related tasks I had to get done before bedtime. On top of all that, ended up on the phone with a coworker until midnightish, talking more shop. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, I feel like writing… don’t really feel like going to bed – although I know I’ll regret the lack of sleep come morning.

A few weeks ago, I think we were at lunch, Wes mentioned something about some “old Chinese mines” around the area. Intrigued, I asked what he was talking about. Seems that he’d been out Geocaching on his lunchbreak one day, and had stumbled across some tailings and trenches left over from the long-gone Northern California gold-mining days. I don’t know if he’d heard about them before, or if he did some research later – but he went on to explain that the area was a series of old Chinese diggings. Back in the gold-rush days of the 1850s, Chinese immigrants came in droves to Northern California to mine gold. They often lived and worked in commune-like camps. And, since I live minutes away from gold-central, California, there are remains of these Chinese camps all around the place I now call home. Turns out that the tailings and trenches that are minutes from my house are actually the 150 year old remains of a Chinese mining effort, and have remained pretty much untouched all this time.

I told Wes we had to go. I love stuff like this. Do you guys remember the movie “The Gold Bug?” I dunno about you, but we saw it in school. It’s an Edgar Allen Poe story that’s since been made into a TV-movie thing, and I can remember seeing it at least twice during my middle school literary education. From what I remember, it’s a story about a boy and a treasure hunt – and has something to do with a golden scarab. From a young age, I’ve been fascinated with treasure hunting and secret, concealed, magic, or otherwise “awesome rad” stuff of that ilk (I blame the Hardy Boys). This is why things like our middle-school Astro adventure were the apex of cool to me, and is still so memorable to me. But, I digress. The image of rotten wooden doors with rusted hinges and primitive locks sprang into my mind. I envisioned a dark crisscross of abandoned shafts, bottomless pools of endless black water, and all other Scooby Doo-esque mine-cliches. Alas, I had to leave for Taiwan and we were out of free days to go exploring. Then, this Monday rolled around and Wes, Ben and I decided to forsake our lunch hour for an adventure.

Wes led the way. There was a chest-level iron fence around the area, but a gate hung open on one side so we didn’t have to climb. You can actually see the piles of round rocks heaped in the grass from the highway, the whole thing is so close to civilization. Inside the fenced in area there are series of man-wide trenches that cut deep into the rocky earth, some as deep as thirty feet. We walked around on the piled-rocks up top, peering into the trenches for a while – then we found a way to get down in them. Just about wide enough to a man to walk through, the floor of the trenches pitched up and down in little hills, and at their deepest point you could look up and see a ribbon of sun and sky above. There were no rotted doors or dank shafts, but it was still a really fun place to explore. While there, we found evidence that the “ancient Chinese mines” may be being unofficially used for some not-so-ancient activities. We saw beer cans, hobo-hovels, spent condoms, and evidence of campfires. Hey, if less people knew about it, you could totally live at the bottom of one of those trenches and effectively disappear from the world of the surface-dwellers. Anyway, here are some pictures of the outing (Wes’ flash card ran out of space near the end of the expedition, so I had to switch to my cellphone for the last of these).




Looking down the longest and deepest of the trenches.


Ben and Wes, in the trenches.



Looking up.


Someone left us a rope to assist in this steep ascent.

With all the gold-related stuff going on in this entry, I got some more. Today I had lunch over at Pat’s place, where we discussed a new enzyme-filter (or some kinda filter at least) implementation for his large saltwater fish tank. All the talk of siphons and filtering and pumping reminded me that I have my grandfather‘s old (but working) gold sluicing equipment. It’s a little gas-powered dredge/pump attached to a fire hose, that sucks water and sediment from the river and spits it back out down a long sluice box. The constant flow of water and sand/gravel over the sluice box riffles pushes the heavy sediment to the bottom, where it collects on the textured black rubber mats. In gold-miner talk, these contraptions are often called “High Bankers” or motorized/powered sluices. Talking to Pat about the equipment, I think we both got a little bit of the gold fever. When I mentioned that I also had three of my grandpa’s old gold pans, we started talking about actually going out and using the stuff. The little gas pump worked like a charm as recently as last year, and I think I only need to make some minor repairs to the sluice box and motor mount to have a fully functioning highbanker. On top of all this, the very-close-to-me Auburn State Recreation Area allows panning and highbanking year-round without permit and several people in online gold forums mention pulling decent nuggets from the American River there.

Armed with this information, I really want to try and get a recreational highbanking/panning trip together with some friends. This would involve beer and a picnic lunch of course. Sadly, a lot of the places my grandfather used to go for public prospecting are now closed. Convict Flat, Ramshorm, Indian River, China Flat… all closed to the public as of 1996. I think it would have been cool to use his stuff in some of the very same places he used it. Owell.

2am on the nose. Goodnight.

Posted on

can’t put brown down

Wisemen... not wiseguys.
Merry Chrimma all! It’s that time of year for family and wrapping paper and ham and making the universal mistake of buying sweet potatoes for the sweet potato casserole instead of the required yams. Actually, the term “sweet potato” in the casserole’s name is most accurate. If you do your research, the things that stores commonly sell as “yams” are really a type of sweet potato (there are two varieties, the whiter-fleshed kind which the stores accurately call “sweet potatoes,” and the orange-fleshed kind which stores wrongly label as “yams”). In fact, true yams aren’t potatoes at all, they’re roots. I think because so many people refer to the orange sweet potatoes as yams, the stores must do it too. Either way, Sharaun makes this awesome casserole every year – so we’ve learned the difference the hard way. However, since mom and dad did the shopping this year before we got here – we ended up with the wrong thing again. Damn you, you confusing sweet poyamoes, yamatoes, potams… Wait, can I say “damn” on Christmas?

The non-sweet potato part of Christmas went swimmingly though, the gifts were a’plenty, a’thoughtful, and pretty a’awesome. I got some clothes, new shoes, and even a laser-guided parking system so I can accurately park my truck in the garage to within inches. Not to mention a two-year subscription to Maxim, a razor, socks, underwear (yes, with iron-ons), and some of the little things I always enjoy: silly putty, a Duncan yo-yo (butterfly style, bitch), and a Wacky Wall Walker. Can I say “bitch” on Christmas? Damn. Sharaun seems to like her gifts a lot, I think I did a better-than-usual job of buying this year (thanks Kristi) – and the list she gave me was only part of the reason. Even mom and dad made out pretty well I think. We all had a fine time tearing into gifts and posing for pictures with the cast-aside bows on our heads. As a plus, my folks really seem to dig the copy of Brian Wilson’s SMiLE I got ’em… good music.

Around noon yesterday, while sitting on the couch at my folks house having just finished Christmasing up the blog, I spied a copy of The Da Vinci Code on my parents’ bookcase. Over the years, so many people have told me I would like this book – based on my existing interest in theology, alchemy, Masonry, Illuminati, and countless other things that end in the “ee” sound. With nothing much to do on Christmas eve, I decided to give it a go. Before I knew it, it was dinner time and I was already halfway through the book. Already being familiar with some of the history featured in the book (the Templars, the canonization of the Bible, the Gnostic gospels, etc.), I found it fascinating. Eventually, it was 11pm and I had under a 100 pages to go. I made the call to finish the book that night, and turned the last page around 12:30am. It was a good book, the religious history and theory and code-crap talk right to the guy in me who voraciously read The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.

With the passing of Christmas day, our short vacation in Oregon is over – and we hit the road again tomorrow to head back down into sunny, and almost inconceivably less-liberal than here, California. Whereas the Gods smiled on our journey north and did not hamper us with snow, it seems we must have angered them over our short stay, and they plan to blanket the mountain passes with white stuff. I’m totally cool, I got the snow chains (never used ’em, and only the slightest idea how to put ’em on), and I’ve been practicing driving on ice. Not really, I’ve never driven in real snow or anything. Either way, I know tomorrow means another ten hours on the road… and perhaps even another buffet and embarrassingly-awful cabaret show, who knows.

Well folks, I think that’s my entry for the day – time to Christmarelax instead of writing. Suzy’s Christmas entries were particularly good today, I’d recommend them if you’re hard up for more blog-reading on this, the day of Christ’s birth. Since I don’t normally write on the weekend, I think I’ll take tomorrow off (convenient, since we’ll be on the road all day long). Until Monday, safe and back at home…

Merry Christmas!

Posted on

santa’s coming

I don't care what you celebrate.
Christmas Eve morning, I read President Bush’s Christmas message in the paper today… full of hope and the Lord and whatnot. I’m fresh and clean out of the shower, in some dark jeans that fit well but are of course too long in the leg and a brown sweater in response to the cold, gloomy Oregon weather. We’re waiting on some of my family’s Oregonian kin to roll by for some Christmas drinks and holiday cheer (around Christmas, we drink a drink called Tom ‘n’ Jerry in our family, have as long as I can remember). It should be fun, one of those family get-together things with stories and a few awkward silences. Ahhh… holidays.

I started out writing, but decided to do a Christmas-themed template for the blog instead… which took most of my time (holiday logo courtesy of the GIMP2.2). I wanted to add some snow-caps to the text boxes, but gave up because I suck at art. Owell, at least the red and green thing seem somewhat in the spirit. It’s the blog’s way of saying Merry Christmas to you, all its readers (even the closet readers).

Today we decided to do nothing. The main motivation, other than kinda just wanting to do nothing, was to stay out of the holiday traffic. The last thing I want to do right now is go out, the streets were bad enough yesterday. And besides, it’s nice and warm and quiet in here and I can see the grey skies from the windows, so I’m not missing much in the way of people and horns and cold air. Mom’s in the kitchen cooking, dad’s reading a book, and Sharaun went out to pick up some last-minute stocking stuffers. It’s nice because it smells like cooking in here, and I’m comfy on the couch drinking a beer.

I think I’m done writing for today… I mean, if I do write more, I’ll just make it tomorrow’s post. Until then, then.

Posted on

the deep south

As the Lord sayeth, so shall my moms doeth. Hopefully...
On the road to Orlando, spent the entire hour-plus drive doing that nasty bit of outstanding work I mentioned yesterday. That’s fine really, made me feel all Jetsons, driving down the highway on a laptop; got several perplexed stares from bearded rednecks in old trucks spraypainted camo for hunting. Not really, but they probably really do think I’m from the future… or “fancy” or something. Working at Sharaun’s folks’ place was a nightmare, dialup isn’t even internet, as far as I’m concerned. I managed to check some e-mail, and decided I’d had enough. I surfed the web to look for a wireless hotspot, free or not – just needed something close. Turns out I was out of luck though, as the wireless internet apparently hasn’t come to my old home town yet. Not a hotspot for 20mi. If they passed a law to affix transmit antennas to all rebel flag back-window decals, trailer homes, and shotgun racks- they’d have the best coverage in the US. And again, I kid y’allz… Florida is rad.

Now it’s midnight and we’re driving back from Orlando, all the stoplights are late-night blinky. I’m even more dead tired than I was earlier, and just want to crawl into bed. Got my work-work done on the drive over here before dinner, and now I figured I’d get the blog done on the way back. I’ve got this tiny headache in the front of my head, I’ve had it ever since the flight out – and I’m pretty sure it’s just my brain telling me I need some sleep. 57% battery on the laptop, so this isn’t going to be a particularly long one. I will, however, spice it up with some photos to pad it out. Speaking of, here they are:




Florida beach through scrub.


Tyler commanding the expidition.



Launching before the sun.


How much better than an alarm clock?



Not a computer to be found.


The morning’s only catch.

I’m thinking tomorrow I may try and head down to snap some pictures of old haunts, which is something I really wanna do while I’m here. I also want to cruise by the old house and check it out.

My dad called me early this morning, California time, while I was trying to take a post-fishing nap on the couch. He started out with the same chat, then all of the sudden asked me if I remembered when my mom’s birthday was. “I know it’s in November,” I said. I’m bad with remembering things, dates especially. For some reason, my folks’ birthdays are something I never managed to store in non-volatile memory. Knowing that, I have “reminders” set on all my computers, and my cell phone. The reminders pop up and tell me who’s birthday it is, and that I should send them a card (they give me about a week’s lead time). The cell phone reminder goes off on the day-of, as a “last chance” reminder so I can call if I somehow missed the two computer reminders.

Well, this year, I switched e-mail clients, and the portion of Outlook that used give the reminders has been eclipsed by Thunderbird, which I hadn’t setup reminders on yet. So, I missed the computer reminders. Then, Sharaun accidentally took my cellphone instead of hers one day, and it happened to be my mom’s birthday. The reminder popped up, but she forgot to tell me about it. And, that brings me to today… where my dad tells me that both my brother and I forgot to send my mom a card for her birthday. Ugh. How crappy must that be? A card from everyone but your two sons. I even called her a few days afterward, and talked to her like any other day… making it painfully obvious I had completely forgotten.

Well mom, I’m sorry. Sorry that I have to set reminders instead of knowing, sorry that I missed the reminders, and sorry that I forgot. I love you though, even if I am bad at dates. Forgive me this once, and I promise I’ll do better next time, OK?

Dave out.

Posted on

what’s the number for green beans?

Snooooooore....
Don’t tell anyone, but I skipped out on an afternoon “teambuilding” event for work today and came home instead, to “yardbuild” alone. I needed to mow, and wanted to try and give the empire-building crabgrass a little bit of the business. I went mad, a little bit, I think. I mean, I just got so frustrated I started ripping up crabgrass, uprooting the stubborn creeping weed with a trowel, and leaving massive bare spots in my yard in the process. It’s OK, the grass was already dead there. My yard has gone from what was arguably one of the best-looking on the block, to one of the worst-looking. If I were just a tad more vain I’d consider paying to have the whole thing uprooted and re-sodded. But, in the end, it’s just grass… and I realized today that there’s no way to beat the crabs… I pull up a whole colony only to find that it’s sprung to life in another corner of the yard. So, I had a moment of realization, standing there in my patchwork yard, and decided that I can be happy even if I have an ugly lawn. Even if it’s all crabs, it’s still green.

Today when I came home from work (at noon, bwahaha!), I was kinda hungry and I started rummaging through the house for food. Well, the kitchen at least. Threw away a loaf of moldy bread that had been out since before this weekend’s Oregon trip, looked at the bleak offerings from the fridge, and moved onto the pantry. Upon opening the pantry, I was greeted with the strangest site:

Stymied.

A wall of labeless cans glaring out at me. What the heck is this? I picked up a can or two to see what in the world was going on, but was even more dumbfounded when I noticed that each can seemed to be hand-numbered in permanent marker. I checked a few more, and they all had numbers written on the bottom in marker. Now, under normal circumstances I would’ve found this whole thing to be extremely odd. However, living with a teacher, you get used to strange things being left around. I figured that it must be some project Sharaun was working on for her class, maybe some kind of recognition or memory thing… I dunno. The thought of a “list” somwhere that matched each numbered can to a description of its contents made me laugh a little – but I soon forgot about the cans after a nice tuna sandwhich (tuna from a pouch, no can needed) and half an hour of Cops.

Match 'em up.

Later, Sharaun called on her way home from school and asked me to check some ingredients for our planned dinner. When I went to the pantry, the cans reminded me to ask her about what kind of “project” they were for. Turns out, she had no idea what I was talking about. In quick order, I deduced that we had been hoodwinked. Someone practical-joked us, and now all our cans were labeless and their contents a mystery. What’s worse, Sharaun needed some chicken broth and green beans for dinner. Luckily, she’s familiar enough with the chicken broth cans to pick them out – but our jokester had even thought of that. Any can with identifying info on the top or bottom had been blacked out with marker… ingenious.

Oh, whodunnit? Well, if the engineer-sevens (y’know, those Euro-techy sevens with a little horizontal line in them?) weren’t enough of a tipoff – the fact that I loaned my housekey to Pat this weekend while we were in Oregon sealed the deal. Really, you think you’re doing a nice thing by letting friends mooch off your ESPN GamePlan… sheesh.

Tonight I got a mail from my pops, in response to my entry yesterday – or more correctly, in response to my thoughts on Ollie North’s letter to Kerry. Here’s what he had to say:

Hi David, I read your blog today and I would like to offer you my view as a Viet Nam veteran of what I think of the war as I look back after 30 years. Thirty years ago I was on the flight deck of the USS Coral Sea helping my ordinance buddies load napalm and 500lbs bombs. We lost many fine young men (two of them were my squadron’s commanding officers) who flew off the flight deck and never returned. These were men who I worked with, talked to, and met their wives and children on R&R. David if the war had not started when I was on the Coral Sea I would have went to Canada or Sweden after I found out what the United States was doing in Viet Nam.

I read Oliver North’s letter and I can’t understand his position. He says, ” Worst of all, John, you then accused me — and all of us who served in Vietnam — of committing terrible crimes and atrocities.” This statement is blatantly false, a lie if you will. John Kerry never accused everyone who served in Viet Nam of committing terrible crimes and atrocities. He stated the facts and some who wanted the war to continue don’t like the fact that atrocities were committed by US troops. Take a look at this and make up your own mind, http://quivis.com/tigerf.html.

If you, like Ollie North, can support this method of fighting a war, and justify it, then vote for Bush. If you don’t believe, as I don’t, that there is any justification for My-Lai or the murder of innocent civilians, vote for Kerry. Love you, your Paw.

And then, followed up 15min later with this:

Hi David, I was just looking at this letter I wrote you and I noticed it was 40 years ago, not 30, that I was in the Gulf of Tonkin helping give the people of South Viet Nam freedom and democracy. I was 24 years old, the same age as your brother John who is probably going to be going to Iraq to fight another war to give the people of Iraq freedom and democracy. I have never contributed to a political campaign before David, but I have sent a contribution to the Kerry campaign as I feel this is probably the most important election in my life. Love you, your Paw.

Hmm… I don’t even really have much to add or comment. I respect my dad’s opinion a lot, even if he can’t remember how many years ago he was in Vietnam… I mean, he is getting old and all. Thanks for the notes pop.

Lastly, I finally got a Gmail invite… so I now have an account. Yeah, so, I wasn’t really on the bleeding edge this time – but that’s cool. Now I just need to figure out who gets my invites.

Dave out.

Posted on

44 gallon jug of chili

D-size baby, 'cause we don't play around with that C shit.
I can make my entries this week if I make sure I write at night, y’allz. All I gots to do is get my discipline on and come up with something funny and/or interesting each night around midnight, write it down, find a semi-related picture to accompany it, and post that junk. All for what, again? Oh right? because I have this website where I try to write something every day, I forgot for a minute.

I interviewed a guy for work the other day, and was surprised to find myself ultimately confident sitting on the other side of what I know to be a fairly daunting situation. The guy did great, knew what he should know and made good efforts at the stuff he didn’t. While I was talking to him, he asked me how long I’d been working at my current job. Man guys, you know I’ve been working here for four years? Despite a close brush with the FBI, it’s been pretty much smooth sailing. No, really? the FBI.

My brother and I had a good time this weekend reminiscing about stuff from the old days. We were watching something on TV when the channel did whatever it is channels do when they all of the sudden trump programming audio with a series of what sound like telephone key presses. Have you ever heard this? You’ll be watching TV, or, it used to happen a lot at the very beginning of VHS tapes – and out of nowhere it sounds like someone hit speed-dial on a phone. Beep-boop-beep-beep-beep-boop-boop. Anyway, he asked me if I remembered what I used to tell him about those beeps – and I had to laugh. I told him that it was the president’s phone number, and if you slowed it down enough you could make it out and dial up the president himself. He also remembered being scared to death whenever we had to take an “offramp” when on the freeway, because I’d apparently told him they were real “ramps” like from the Dukes of Hazard – and we’d have to launch into the air if we took one. Oh man, where did I get this stuff?

You know we actually skipped the last period of school one day so we could beat my brother home by a half hour or so. Just enough time to get a length of PVC pipe, some D-size model rocket engines, and the ignition switch for those engines. We took the aforementioned supplies, climbed on the roof, and fashioned a makeshift rocket-engine bazooka. We then lay in wait for Frank to come home from school, having removed the front door key from it’s regular hiding place under a log in the flower bed. As he walked up, we let loose – shooting engines as fast as we could load them into the pipe. Nevermind that they went every which way but straight after coming out of the pipe, it was the look on his face that made it worth it. No wonder he hated me.

The crown jewel of brotherly abuse though, would have to be 1994’s “Frank Day.” I was a senior in high school, and Frank was a freshman. My friends and I had been planning what Frank’s “freshman day” would be like for nigh on three years. For those who don’t know, “freshman day” is that day in high school where all the upperclassmen pick on and beat up the new blood. This particular year, freshman day fell on a Friday which also happened to be a football game Friday. Usually on football game Fridays, the “pep squad” would get together after school and make up a bunch of huge “Go Team!”-ish banners to hang around campus (y’know, to inspire the athletes and all). Some of my buddies and I got the great idea to sneak into this pep squad banner-making party and use their materials for our benefit. The result? We created a huge banner which read “Frank Day,” instead of “frehsman day.” I think there was some extra text at the bottom, but basically we wanted to hang it up so my brother would have the fear of God in him for what was coming.

Imagine Frank coming to school Friday morning and, amidst the “Rock ’em Raiders” fanfare, seeing his name plastered across a 20ft banner hanging from one of the 2nd story walkways for all to see. The banner did way more than we had intended, for it stirred the interest of a lot of kids in the senior class. Word got out that we planned to inflict Frank’s punishment on him as he walked home from the bus after school. The banner helped to whip everyone into a frenzy, and things got a little out of hand. I knew this when me and four buddies turned the corner onto my street after school let out? and saw what must have been fifteen cars, lining the streets near my house. There were people there I hardly knew, who had just come along for the festivities. As I saw the massive motorcade, I got a small idea of the fear my brother would feel as he would turn that same corner minutes later. The shaving cream and egg toting crowd erupted into cheers as little bro Frank and his bespectacled friend Isaac turned that corner – and as any sane persons would have, they both immediately turned tail and ran the opposite direction.

Yeah, we eventually caught up with ’em, egged ’em, creamed ’em, and even attempted to hogtie ’em before I, ever the sympathetic big brother, intervened and sounded the “he’s had enough” clarion. It was good, even if it only did serve to deepen the resentment Frank harbored towards me. As one senior put it in our “last will and testaments,”: “To Frank, I leave Frank Day of 1994, you could run, but you could not hide.”

Speaking of senior year “Last Will and Testament” stuff, reading these is cracking me up, we must have had some conspiracy to rip on my brother until the very end. Seems that quite a few of the seniors bequeathed strange items to one Frank. An orchestrated plan?, judge for yourself:

“To Frank a dozen jelly donuts.” -Mike K.
“To Frank: 44 gallon jug of chili, and meat too!” -Andy W.
“To FRANK, a life-long membership to Jenny Kraig (sic)” -Tracy R.
“To Frank a girdle.” -Dan R.
“To Frank: Keg of butter.” – Shawn O.
“To Frank, I leave Frank Day of 1994, you could run, but you could not hide.” – Jeremy D.
“To Frank, my legacy and my school.” -Dave

Man, we were awful. That’s all the guilt I can stand for one night guys, and it is nearly 1:30 in the AM for crap’s sake. What the heck am I doing? G’nite all, Dave out.