Unexpectedly Unnerving Experiences

I was looking at a picture from a visit to Spring Grove Cemetery back at home, and it reminded me of a rather unsettling experience I had immediately after taking that picture. What follows is an explanation of what happened along with several other things I find oddly unpleasant.

First we have car washes. I hate car washes. Being moved slowly through a dark tunnel with all sorts of bristles and brushes and floppy things attacking my car makes me incredibly nervous. It's even worse if I'm in the front seat. I don't mind Mike's Car Wash, but that's because they make it child-friendly. It's white and well-lit on the inside with stuffed animals chilling around. For practical reasons, it also shoots liquid and soap at you rather than attacking you with large, frightening, apparati.

I also hate having my blood pressure taken. Anything that restricts blood flow makes me queasy, but one would think such a little thing as the blood pressure cuff shouldn't be a problem. The worst was when we did a lab in A.P. Biology involving taking each other's blood pressures. I decided to face my fear and permit my classmate to take my blood pressure. First he pumped it fuller than he needed to. I started panicking, and he fumbled about for a few seconds (it seemed like forever at the time) before finding the release valve. I was not a happy camper.

This next one is probably the only one that has a good chance at being genuinely unsettling to others. If you don't like needles, skip to the next one. My brother once had me try to re-pierce his ear. It was terrible. He gave me a needle or safety pin or something and told me to just make it go through. I have no doubt that he would have withstood whatever pain I might have caused, but after a brief try I just couldn't continue. You see, I felt the pin ripping through layers of skin. Little vibrations or something came through the pin and I felt it. It was terrible.

And now we move on to a surreal, H.G. Wellsian sort of experience. Just north of Purdue on I-65 is the Fowler Ridge wind farm. Hundreds of wind turbines stand in military-like ranks on hundreds of acres flanking the highway. In the daylight, they are impressive and intriguing. I'm sure they might intimidate some, but mostly they just look neat. It's a different story in the dark. Each of these windmills has a red light on top that blinks to warn planes. That wouldn't be too bad all on it's own; I could just pretend they were red fireflies or something. But they all throb on and off in unison in a steady beat. It's eerie. Not the thing you want to drive past at 5:30 on a dark December morning.

Sometimes if you're driving and making a turn, you can't immediately see the lane you're planning to get into. I'm sure we all know of an intersection or two like that. I always have a moment of panic in which I believe I'll somehow end up on the wrong side of the road. I will highlight two such turns: the turn left from going north-west on Northwestern to going west on Stadium, and the turn left on the East Ronald Reagan entrance ramp in Colerain.

I've saved the best for last: being slowly approached by a flock of walking Canadian geese. Josh and I were at Spring Grove Cemetery walking around and taking pictures one fine afternoon. I saw several geese down by a pond and decided to take a picture of them. They even turned to face me, much to my delight. My delight quickly turned to dismay as they stretched out into a line facing me and began to slowly advance. At first I believed they were just going to cross the street or something, so I turned and walked in a different direction. The line shifted to follow me. Josh offered the rational explanation that they were probably just hoping for me to feed them, but that didn't help me out much. I think in the end we ended up semi-leading them to some other people, but I don't remember for sure. I just remember that it was creepy as all get-out. I haven't even seen Alfred Hitchcock's Birds and I was afraid. As far as I was concerned, they were closing in for the kill. Josh didn't seem to be bothered by it, but just ask him and he will verify that I was irrationally terrified of those birds.

Here they are, gathering to scare the living daylights out of me.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

In my opinion, the most wonderful time of the year starts at Thanksgiving and reaches all the way through Christmas. Things changed a little bit since I've gone off to college, but a lot has remained the same.

Tradition starts the day before Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Preparation Day, on which we do most of out cooking and cleaning on that day. As of four years ago, it is tradition that I prepare the turkey. This often involves doing strange things with it to make my mom cringe. It started when I discovered that the liver has a fun consistency. Now in addition to playing with the liver, we investigate the kidneys and heart, wiggle the neck around, massage the turkey's skin, and tickle its armpits.

Thanksgiving Day itself probably has more traditions than any other day in the Gast house. I get up at 7:00 or 8:00 am to start the Thanksgiving puzzle. More people trickle out of bed as the morning goes on. By 9:00 when the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade starts, pretty much everyone is awake. My dad or Rachel starts making cinnamon rolls, and we watch the parade and work on the puzzle. After the parade, sometimes we leave the TV on to make fun of the dog show. Ronda usually arrives around noon to help us finish the cooking. I always take care of the green bean casserole, and usually forget to add seasonings unless my mom reminds me. Uncle Andy along with Abby and Theresa get there sometime in the early afternoon and bring with them cocktail shrimp to snack on alongside Ronda's famous chip dip. At 4:00 we start dinner. Around 4:30 Uncle Mike arrives and we subtly make fun of him until he leaves. Things die down over the evening as friends and relatives leave one-by-one. Once it's dark, the Christmas lights come on for the first night of the season.

The next day is Christmas decoration day. We leave the house sometime in the late morning and head out to a tree farm in Morrow to pick out the perfect Christmas tree. It used to take us hours. Now we're becoming more and more efficient. I think we had our tree in 10 minutes last year. This year it took about 20 if you count cutting it down, but that's still not too shabby. After we've picked the tree we each get a new ornament to put on it. For a while we went to Elder Beerman's, then switched to Delhi Garden Center, and now we just get them at the tree farm. Many of us have gradually drifted from picking ornaments we actually like to picking the strangest ones we can find. The tree is weirder and weirder every year. As we drive home with the tree inside the van, we listen to Christmas music stations. Once we get home, Mom puts in the Oakridge Boys or the Partridge Family Christmas CDs. The day usually ends with watching the first Christmas movie of the season.

Christmas traditions are much more varied and have changed quite a lot over the past decade or so, so I'll just describe what we do now. On and off we participate in Advent, whether it's on our own or with the whole church. The weekend before Christmas my mom's side of the family gets together. We have a four-year location rotation between my mom, her sister in southern Michigan, her brother in Indianapolis, and her parents in northern Michigan. This year we'll be at Aunt Wendy's house. Every year we do something different together and then eat and open gifts. Christmas Eve we go to church, and Rachel and I usually play in an orchestral ensemble.

Christmas day, nobody is allowed to leave their room until 6:00 am. At that time, we can open our stockings. Everyone has to be awake by 8:00 am for official gift opening. When Cathy and Chris Gowen are in town, they join us. After we open gifts, we eat Panera bagels or cinnamon rolls for breakfast and hang out around the house until lunch time. Around 1:00 in the afternoon we head over to my dad's parents' house in Kenwood and repeat the process with his side of the family. When we get back home in the evening, we often watch a Christmas movie together.

I like tradition. I'm no Reb Tevia, but I like knowing that certain things will be roughly the same every year. I don't mind adding new things, but I am not a huge fan of taking away old traditions. I guess it goes along with being a person of habit. I wonder how things will grow and change as our family grows and changes. One day all seven of us kids will be out of the house. Will we live close enough to get together? Will we have our own kids to add to the mix? Will we still get up to do puzzles on Thanksgiving or open Christmas stockings at 6:00 am? Who knows. Only time will tell.

Colombia: The Team

I’m not very good at relating events in chronological order without forgetting countless details, so I’m going to try reporting on Colombia in a different format. I will describe our trip by describing related chunks of people and places interspersed with anecdotes. First I will introduce the team. There were twelve of us in all: six teens and six adults, seven returning members and five new members, eleven NHCC members and one brave friend from another church. They will, of course, be introduced in alphabetical order by last name.

Jim Chandler: Jim joined us in Colombia for the first time this week, but he was by no means new to missionary work. He spent a good portion his adult life on the mission field in Spanish-speaking places. He was therefore fluent in Spanish and did all the sermons for the week in Spanish. Surprisingly, I understood pretty much everything he said, but I think he spoke with a bit of an American accent. He left a day early due to the death of his father. He knew when he came that his dad may very well die while he was in Bogota, but he came anyway. That takes a lot of strength.

Allison Gast: This was Allison’s first time on a plane or in a different country. She is the second of my four younger sisters. Despite the fact that she knew maybe five words in Spanish and has a tendency to be a very picky eater, she did very well. She was active in VBS, tried most of the food, and didn’t complain. She also integrated well into the team, despite my fears that she would fade into the background.

Jonathon Gast: Jonathon is my younger brother (I’m going to pretend that more than one person reads this and that they might possibly not know my family). He was another second-time team member. He returned to the VBS side of things and helped run the outdoor games.

Maria Gast: Hey, it’s me. I was returning for the second time. I was in charge of planning VBS and teaching at the women’s group. All went smoothly, thanks to plenty of prayers and reminders to chill and not stress over little things.


Raqchell Gast: Rachel is the oldest of my younger sisters and is also a returning team member. She once again oversaw the face-painting at VBS with the help of Brooke. She and Valentina were attached at the hip for most of the week.

Tony Gast: Tony is my dad, and he, too, was a returning team member. He ran the outdoor games for VBS and was always present when basketball was played. He helped Bob get all the travel plans coordinated.

Bob Kline: Bob (also a returning team member) was in charge of coordinating travel plans with the help of my dad and was our primary communication link to Mark. He was also the head of the construction team. He worked with the preacher's wife and daughter to improve their English, and in the process he learned a little more Spanish.

Brooke Nichols: Brooke is the NHCC preacher’s daughter, and was yet another team member who was there in 2008. She did face-painting with Rachel during VBS and was a constant source of comic relief throughout the trip. We may never know how much of her cluelessness was genuine and how much of it was calculated, but it brought smiles to our faces in either case.

Luke Nichols: Luke is Brooke’s older brother. He was also a returning team member. He worked at the construction site and made very little effort at all to learn proper Spanish. He liked to pick on other team members in a good-natured way, and got at least as much teasing as he gave. He brought “$w@ggg” to Colombia and left with the nick-name El Caballo.

Brit Royse: Brit was our brave non-NHCC team member. He knows Jim from work and decided to come along with us despite the fact that Jim was the only one of us he had ever seen until a few weeks before we left. He was quickly accepted into the team-family. He worked at the construction site and was one of our better-learned Spanish speakers. He chose the name “Flava-Craze” and may be teaming up with El Caballo to bring $w@gg and jerk dancing to Bogota.

Bill Sporing: Bill wanted to come last time, but that didn’t work out. This time he was determined to join us, and I’m glad he did. I didn’t get to know him all that well since he worked at the construction site, but from what I saw he was a great asset to the team and he thoroughly enjoyed the experience. With the hat he bought at Monserrate, he could have passed as a Colombian native if you looked past the fact that he could scarcely speak a word of Spanish.

Keri Sporing: Keri is Bill’s wife, and I’m so very happy that she got to come this time around. She did crafts with me at VBS, and she was great with the kids. Not everyone who came last time worked well with the cross-cultural aspect of VBS, but Keri was very well suited to the task. She overflowed with compassion for the kids.

Do you want to go look at the double woolly tree?

To my knowledge, there exists no tree known as the double woolly tree, but Amanda was led to believe otherwise.

One day Amanda (my youngest sister) brought home some sort of spiky fruit from a tree and demanded to know the identity of the tree it had come from. My grandpa declared that it was a double woolly. My mom could tell my the look in his eye that he was making it up. Amanda was dubious of that answer, so she led him to the tree to see if his answer changed. It didn't. She still didn't completely believe him until he posted something on Facebook about it. Somehow a post on Facebook makes it official that my grandpa isn't joking. But Amanda still had some reservations about the double woolly. When I got back, the fruit was waiting for me, and I was told that I should go look at it with her sometime to determine its true identity.

Today was that day. My question of the day was the one you read in the title of this post. After Amanda had her snack, we headed out with the tree identification book in hand. Along the way we chatted about all sorts of things. I love hearing about the world from the perspective of an eight-year-old. My discussed everything from possible explanations of the death of a possum in the road to scooter basketball in gym class.

We arrived at the tree in question. I pulled out the dichotomous identification guide and taught Amanda how to use it. Eventually the terminology got too technical so I took over. In the meantime she rambled happily about school. We decided the tree was a bitternut hickory. The walk back home was spent in the same way the walk to the tree was spent. It was a lovely walk on a lovely day with my youngest sister.

Lost, Again

Along with the question theme (see the short post down the page from this one), relating my misadventures in navigation will likely continue to pop up in my blog now and again. I think almost every driving fail story I have is on here at this point. If not, I'll add the rest in the future. I'm sure new adventures will show up as long as I drive new places.

The adventure I will relate today takes us to the land of Price Hill. It is a rather peculiar story for the fact that it is not my fault that we got lost. Nonetheless, we were lost, and I was one of the drivers. The tale begins at Finneytown High School where several of us young female types met to ride down to Imago Nature Reserve in Price Hill for an afternoon of helping children with art. The minivan filled up with Beth as its driver and five freshmen and sophomores (my sister was among them) as passengers, and Marcy filled up with the three '09 girls who had been to Imago dozens of times. Contrary to reason, the minivan led the way. Beth had printed directions, so we assumed we'd be fine following her. To be safe, Courtney, my level-headed navigator got out Janet the GPS and we had Janet map the way in case we got lost.

In an effort to avoid highways as much as possible, we took a route we were less familiar with. Before the real craziness began, we had already turned around once and gone under a super creepy bridge. I made sure the windows were rolled up and the doors locked before anything got weird. Just when I recognized where we were and was sure of how to complete the journey, Beth switched out of the left turn lane and went straight. Not wanting a van full of high school girls to be lost alone in Price Hill and hoping that Beth just had a new set of directions, we switched lanes and followed them. I would like to note that due to the low levels of traffic, this was done without danger of collision.

Anna, my communications coordinator, borrowed my phone to call Raqchell and set up a connection between the two vehicles. It was determined that Beth did not know where we were. Neither did anyone in my car. All we knew was that this wasn't the most pleasant part of town. After much talking (far too much talking, in my opinion), Beth finally turned down a relatively innocuous side street. We took the lead with Courtney navigating via Janet. We learned Beth's phone also had GPS capabilities, so even if we were to lose them they would be able to get directions. It was well that this was the case.

Almost immediately upon returning to the main road, things got confuzzled once more. Beth was not directly behind me. I tried switching lanes to let the irritated driver behind me pass, but evidently he had already switched lanes to pass me. I narrowly avoided collision. Once he had passed me, I switched lanes. This time I checked for other cars rather thoroughly. Unfortunately, the lane I switched to doubled as parking. I signaled to get back into the other lane, but Beth accidentally passed me. Anna immediately got Raqchell back on the phone. We decided both cars would follow their navigation devices and that we would meet up at Imago.

Janet told Courtney to tell me to turn right on White Street. I did just that. As I turned the corner, I was confronted by the steepest road I had ever seen. Bogota roads had nothing on this hill. Considering the fact that Bogota roads climb up mountains, you can get an idea of how steep of a downhill grade greeted us on White Street. Courtney gasped, I shouted "oh dear" (or something like that), and profanities began to stream from Anna's mouth. To make matters more terrifying, all that I could see at the bottom of the hill when I turned was a huge abandoned building that had clearly been a grandiose school back in the day. I am not ashamed to admit that I was scared. I am not often scared, but I was definitely frightened turning onto White Street. Fortunately the hill was short. A little bit of street looped around in front of the former school, so I pulled onto that to collect myself. A more thorough look at my surroundings revealed that White Street was a residential street. Once you managed to pass the uber creepy super massive building I was stopped in front of. My calm restored, I mentally prayed, determined that my best bet was to follow Janet's directions, and continued down White Street. It was a very hilly street, but it never got nearly as bad as it had been where I turned off of the main road.

The next few turns took us into increasingly unpleasant parts of Price Hill, but that didn't last long. A turn or two brought us into the slightly better parts of Price Hill that we recognized as the route to Imago. Anna's memory eventually disagreed with Janet. After a moment of deliberation I circled the block and trusted Anna. She got us there just fine.

We called Raqchell to see how the van was faring and discovered that they were safely into recognized territory. The following hour of crafts on the forest trails provided much-needed relief from the tension of the drive. I got back to Finneytown without incident. I knew the way, but I kept Janet out just to be safe. It was not until several hours later that I fully calmed down. I considered asking for a big hug when I reached the church. I probably should have, but I was afraid I might have a meltdown. I think what really unnerved me on this misadventure was the fact that I was also trying to keep a van full of dearly beloved high school girls safe in addition to getting myself to the destination. The terrifying turn onto White Street didn't help any, but that alone would not have been enough to leave me shaken for hours after the fact.

Cheerful Childhood Delusions Dissolved

Once upon a time in a little place in southwestern Ohio, there lived a five-year-old girl. She and her family went on a vacation to Washington, DC, and she brought her baby doll along. It's name was Ria Baby. While in Washington, DC, Ria Baby was lost on the subway. The little girl was absolutely devastated. She got a cat (whom she named Ria Kitty and who would one day become her closest animal friend), but her excitement about her new companion could not efface her grief over the loss of Ria Baby.

Several months later, a package came in the mail for the little girl. Inside was her Ria Baby! Oh, the joy! Her mother told her that someone must have found it in Washington, DC, and known to send it back to her. The girl believed this wholeheartedly.

For years, the girl believed what her mother had told her. As she grew older, she began to wonder how on earth it could possibly have happened, but she retained a shred of her belief in the old story until one day when she was seventeen. On that fateful day, the conversation somehow turned to Ria Baby. The girl's mother was shocked to find that her daughter had not gotten to the bottom of the fantastic story. In reality, the mother had written to one of her cousins and asked them to send a Ria Baby. Ria Baby had merely been a McDonald's Happy Meal toy and had been replaced by an impostor for years.

Concert Week

Concert week technically started on Thursday the 4th and won't end until Thursday the 18th, but seven of the ten concerts fit between Monday the 8th and Friday the 12th, so I'm considering that week to be concert week.

The first concert was the elementary instrumental concert. Heather played in the fourth grade orchestra (the first group), and Allison played in the sixth grade band (the last group), so we got the joy of staying for the entire concert. Before the concert, I got to help tune the seventy-some stringed instruments in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade orchestras. I'll admit, I wasn't all that concerned with absolute perfection. Their instruments go out of tune quickly, and they can't play in tune to begin with, so I figured I wouldn't be adding a whole lot of pain to the listening experience by letting a few of the instruments remain slightly out of tune. The fourth-graders weren't supposed to get to use their bows, but my sister brought hers out anyway and had to be sent back to put it away. The fourth and fifth grade orchestras performed at the expected skill level, but the 9-member sixth grade orchestra should have been much better. The fifth grade band played as expected, but the sixth grade band played exceptionally well. They were actually pleasant to listen to for the most part.

On the Monday of the main concert week, we got to hear the fifth and sixth grade voices of Whitaker along with the Whitaker percussion ensemble. The songs were surprisingly un-hokey, considering the director. He's really quite a character. I don't know how else to describe him. You should see how high he crosses his lowercase t's (I'm not sure if I wrote that properly, but I'm sure that you all get the idea). As usual, the percussion ensemble played painfully repetitive songs that lasted somewhere between five and ten minutes each.

I guess it's typical for local churches and other groups to ask the high school's audition choir (Chorale) to come and sing around Christmastime. This year we're singing at two or three churches and an assisted living home, along with our annual concerts for the senior citizens of the community and the middle and high school students. Our first in a long series of concerts came on Tuesday during school. We drove over to St. Paul's Church of Christ in North College Hill to play for a group of elderly women. I called them the Widow Brigade in my head. Our first song didn't go so well, but the others went just fine. Our last song was a version of the "Ave Maria" that is evidently sung at many funerals. It actually caused several of the old women to cry. In the last song, my friend Eddie and I sing a tenor solo as a duet. He never wanted to sing it in the first place, but I think our conductor felt bad about giving both tenor solos to girls, so he had Eddie and I sing the lower one together. Since he had never intended to try out for the solo, he didn't know the words until today. The fact that he had no idea what he was singing would always make me a nervous wreck during rehearsals, so I'm glad he fixed it in time for our first concert. I felt that we did well, and several of the Chorale members told us that our balance and blend was excellent. Hurrah! I have one last thing to mention about the kind old ladies: one of them looked a little spacey and was wearing a pair of reindeer antlers tied on top of her head with a large bow under her chin. We had a hard time looking in her direction with a straight face.

Tuesday night was the high school and middle school instrumental concert. Before the concert, we did some last minute practicing. A week before, we had started looking at a variation of Greensleeves, and it wasn't coming together well at all. She told us to pull out the song, and I raised my hand and politely asked if she really thought we were prepared to perform the song. She completely blew up and yelled something about how we never listen to her or do anything she says. So we played through the last section of the song. The ending part is just the traditional Greensleeves. When we were done, she told us that we would just be playing the ending since that was the only part we could play even moderately well. I know that she's been under a lot of stress these past few weeks, but I don't still don't feel that she was justified in biting my head off. The concert started out with the jazz band, and they were excellent (as usual). They were followed by the middle school orchestra. They were not excellent. Between the middle and high school orchestras, I played a piece in a quintet with two violins, a cello, and a harp. It went pretty well...except for the fact that the first violin can't count to save her life. She came in a beat late on one of her entrances and bungled things up. She always misses that part. You'd think that she would hear that something wasn't fitting together correctly, but she never seems to notice. Until this year, she's been a soloist taking private lessons. She can't play with groups very well, but she doesn't seem to notice that. The high school orchestra did okay. We always do a lot better during actual performances than we do during practices. The high school band was wonderful like they always are. For the finale, we had the high school orchestra cram on stage with the full high school band to play a song together. The orchestra has 27 people, and the band has 70-something. And we were behind them. The cellos had a mic, but that was it. Evidently, it sounded fantastic, but I have to wonder if the strings were heard.


Wednesday evening we went to the third and fourth grade chorus concert at my old elementary school. The director has been rotating through the same set of songs since Dan was in third grade. This year she actually added a new one. We were shocked.


The final official concert was Thursday night's high school choir concert. Between choirs, we have solos or ensembles. For this concert, almost all of them were fantastic. The first one was horrible, but it just made the others look even better. Adam Weber sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," and he has the perfect voice and attitude for that song. It may have been my favorite of the solos. Chorale went last, and all of our songs went pretty well. The audience about died laughing during "Fruitcake," and we got a standing ovation after "Ave Maria." Both Sean and Dan (the opening soloists) and Eddie and I (the second set of soloists) blended better than we had for any previous rehearsal, and Victoria finally fixed the pronunciation on her solo. I love singing that song. I love singing in Latin in general. It fits my tone very well. If I sing a senior solo, it will probably be something in Latin.

On Friday during the day, the high school choruses sang a condensed version of Thursday's concert in the morning for the middle school and our community's senior citizens. We had to cut one of our songs, we never felt as comfortable with that one as we did with the others. In the afternoon, we sang for the high school, but the principal took away ten minutes of our concert time, so we had to skip "Ave Maria." It's somewhere between seven and eight minutes long, and our conductor didn't think that very many of the students would have the attention span to sit through it. He may have been right, but I still really wish that we could have sung it for everyone.

I have two more chorale concerts this week, but they aren't likely to be very eventful. If something exciting happens, I'll make a comment.

How It Really Went

As I've already said I would, I'm now posting what really happened during and after the windstorm. Also, as I said before, I'm actually typing this first so I don't confuse reality with fantasy.

As I drove home from church, the wind had already begun to blow steadily. The car didn't steer as well as it normally did (for all its issues, the red car does steer fairly well), trees and signs swayed in the wind, branches dropped to the ground, and some traffic lights were blinking while others had stopped working entirely. I narrowly avoided getting hit by a locust branch, and a moderately hefty oak stick thwocked my windshield, but it wasn't big enough to cause any damage.

And then came the glorious event I thought would never come to pass so long as I lived in my parents' house. I was permitted (along with the oldest two of my younger sisters) to climb up into the large white pine in front of my house. I'm not sure why. It probably wasn't exactly the safest thing we could have done. But it was fun. Rachel and I went somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the way up the tree. It was AWESOME! The wind caused the tree to sway and the branches to tremble. My time in the tree definitely ranks among my favorite experiences.

An hour or so later, as the wind continued to wail, the power went out. We weren't overly concerned. We had expected it. Eventually, we found out that it would be a while before the power came back on. At some point (it may have been Sunday night or Monday morning; I can't remember for sure), we learned that would could be electricity-less for up to a week. I was kind of hoping for a few days at least, but in the end we only went for just over 24 hours without it. Several of my friends still don't have it, and where the power lines or transformers are actually damaged or missing they aren't expecting to have electricity back until Friday at the earliest.

The Nichols and some of our other neighbors came over to our house. On our way to find other people to join us in a game of kick the can, I caught a squirrel. He was a frightened little fellow, so he didn't really try to run from me. When I picked him up, he curled into a little ball and put his paws over his head. I let him go after a moment. I couldn't bear to keep him captive any longer.

I liked the idea of living without electricity for a bit. It was nice in many ways. Maybe I'll try going Amish for a little bit. As night fell, I read by candle-light and wrote a letter to Sean McHone about Cincinnati happenings from a druid's perspective. I had already put a letter in the big package Ben sent to him, but it was a short and uninteresting letter. Plus, he wouldn't have to do any extra push-ups to get it.

Finneytown Schools announced that school would be canceled for the next day, so I stayed up late to finish an excellent book by the light of some scented candles. Contrary to my expectations, cinnamon roll and pear made a great smell combination.

Monday morning we packed necessary perishable food and drug items into coolers before they went bad in the powerless fridge. My mom's opinions on what had to be saved were unorthodox. Miracle Whip, ranch dressing, and Coke were at the top of her list, followed by her medications, with the more ordinary items trailing far behind.

After that we began to clean up our yard and our neighbor's yard. I got several scratches from some stubborn branches, but none of them were deep enough to bleed. My brother, Allison, and I created a stash of sticks that had high potential for becoming dueling weapons. Later, my mom found them and got rid of them before they were used. I was given the assignment of trying to dislodge a dead branch trapped up in a tree with no low-growing branches. I tried climbing the fence next to the tree, hanging onto the dead branch, and jumping, but all I managed to do was break off part of the branch. Most of it was still stuck. After several unsuccessful attempts, I was forced to give up. I could have just climbed the rough trunk, but I wasn't allowed to take off my shoes and there wasn't a safe path back out of the tree. Well, not a safe path for a shod person anyway. Toes can cling in ways that shoes cannot.

Jonathon and Rachel alerted me to the approach of a pair of our neighborhood LARPers and their captive. They agreed to let us take pictures of them. Please note that although we had collected branch weapons, we still have more dignity than LARPers. We were going to be duelers. Dueling is honorable and dignified. As we took some action shots, Alex/Stephanie Herbers, Logan Herbers, Daniel Wilson, Lauren Gifreda, and David Gifreda came up the street. Bruegger's Bagels still had power, so Jonathon and I joined them in a march to Bruegger's. Along the way, we found some plastic letters that had blown off of a sign, so I stuck them into my purse. You never know when you might need such things.

As we continued down Winton Road, we came upon two scenes that literally brought me to the verge of tears. My two favorite trees had been brought down by the storm. A majestic blue spruce had been uprooted, and the trunk of an ancient, giant black oak had snapped. It was devastating.

When we had almost reached Bruegger's, we were joined by Maddie Fessler, JP Muñoz, Alejandro something-or-another, and two people whose names I didn't know. McCall Dillon met us there. I had some of Bruegger's delicious chai tea. It was delicious, but I had forgotten how remarkably sugary it was. Too sugary.

From Brugger's we walked to Maddie's house. From there we drove to her great-grandma's house to help her clear her yard. We left JP, Alejandro, and their two friends behind. They aren't bright enough to be trusted with rakes. There wasn't much to do, so we drove to Maddie's grandma's house on Winton Road.

We had to take two carfuls to get there (Maddie's mom had helped us get from her mom's house to her great-grandma's house). Dan, Lauren, David, Jonathon, and I were dropped off first. We knocked on the door, but nobody answered. We remembered Maddie saying her grandparents actually owned the house next door as well, so we ventured to the next house. It was rather dilapidated, so we didn't even bother to knock. We called Maddie, and she told us that the door would be unlocked and we could just walk in. None of us were comfortable with that, so we sat on the hill facing their house. People gave us odd looks when they stopped at the stop light next to their house. I suppose they were justified. All of us except for Lauren and I were wearing all black, David looks emo, and Dan looks mildly goth at first glance. Even though Lauren and I weren’t wearing black, I was wearing a pirate shirt and Lauren’s hair looked emo.

Eventually the others arrived and told us that Maddie’s grandparents weren’t home. That would have been nice to know. They had a huge yard covered in debris. It took a while to clear. I got to be the official branch stomper. Whenever a trash can was full, I got to climb into it and compact its contents.

At then end of the day, we returned to our homes. We lit a fire in our backyard to cook hot dogs even though we had power back by that point.

An Epic Tale

Preface:
On Sunday, the tri-state area experienced a vicious wind-storm brought to us by hurricane Ike. The strength of the wind took down powerlines all over the place. This is the story of what happened during and after the winds blew.*

I started out for home as the wind began to pick up. I looked at my mode of transportation. It had seen better days. It hadn't completely failed on me yet, but a feeling of doom hung over me as I clambered into the red monstrosity I was forced to rely on.** With great trepidation, I swung out onto Winton Road into the wind's power. With the windows rolled down, I reveled in the rushing air and fought minor skirmishes with my not-so-streamlined vehicle as I made my way towards home. The traffic lights swayed eerily, blinking on and off, some dead altogether. I reached the traffic-light-free zone of the spiral I must follow to reach my humble abode. While I had escaped the dangers of unregulated traffic, I now faced a new trouble: falling tree limbs. The great giants of my neighborhood swayed and groaned and dropped their branches. I swerved wildly to escape certain death as a massive locust limb crashed to the ground mere inches from where I had been moments before. I was not so lucky only moments later when an oak branch swung from the skies to smack the windshield of the dilapidated red "car".


As I pulled into the driveway, I saw two intrepid adventurers making their way up through the treacherous branches of the monolithic white pine in front of my home. Despite the fact that the tree was a wounded war veteran who had survived an ice storm and was thus missing all limbs on one side of its massive trunk, my two oldest sisters clambered up into it to enjoy the wind's fury from a higher perch. After depositing my bag of holding and my unwanted foot-wear in my bedchamber, I rushed to join them in their adventure.

We crept to the highest reaches of the tree, far above the rooftops of our fiefdom. The branches swayed and creaked dangerously, but we had no fear. Stalwart adventurers never have fear. Instead we had breath-taking exhilaration. It was fantastic.

We had barely entered our home once more when a startling discovery was made: we had no power! How on earth was I to begin my music theory quest to transpose by ear the first 16 measures of Beethoven's 5th Symphony for all the instruments*** if I did not have that song on my ipod? Worse yet, my ipod had barely any battery left. How could I hope to survive without tunes? The power-restoring mages could only hope that we would have power again within a week. A week is too long for any hero to go without her tunes. Being the hardy fellow that I am, I readied myself for the ordeal to come.

Other adventurers from our local guild traveled many yards over asphalt and grass to reach our home and suggest that we go in search of other brave souls to join us in outdoors games not designed for those who are faint of heart. On the way, I saw a creature skitter through the fallen branches to my right (I think it was to my right. I'll just say it was to the east of me. I can be much more certain about that). I turned quickly and beheld a truly fearsome sight. A squirrel-beast of rare stature reared up on its powerfully muscled legs and prepared to attack my friends and me. I faced the monster fearlessly. It didn't take me long to send him away cowering.

Night was upon us earlier than usual. With ominous clouds filling the sky, the sun's weakened rays gave up on trying to reach us. I continued to study books of ancient lore far into the night and even sent a letter written in secret code to an agent in the army.

We received a call informing us that my Academy was also powerless. Powerless Academies are no Academies at all. Filled with shame, they informed their students that their presence would not be required the next day.

As dawn broke the next day, we still had no power. We stored only the most vitally important of out perishable victuals in insulated boxes of coldness and began to clear the wreckage of the storm from the lawn of our estate. The branches ripped and tore at our flesh and clothing, but we persevered despite these hardships. A few of my kin joined me in stock-piling weapons in the event that we would have to keep vicious villains away from our family. I made a daring attempt to save a faithful tree from the shame of a dead branch hanging limply from the tree's proud form, but I failed. The failure stung far more deeply than any wounds I had received, but I bore the emotional burden stoically.


It seemed as though my siblings and I had not stored up weapons in vain. Armed travellers approached our backyard near midday. We realized to our relief that these good people meant us no harm. They were true heroes and had fought many a brutal battle to rise to positions of fame amongst our people. As we basked in the aura of such accomplished champions of good, a motley crew of our friends approached us and invited us to join them on a long trek to the other side of the Hamlet of Finneytown. They had heard the the good baker Bruegger still had power, and they were on their way to seek fresh food from his ovens.


As we crossed bustling highways and climbed treacherous slopes, our ranks swelled as more comrades joined us in our quest. Although our group was light-hearted and hopeful, there were a few gruesome scenes that brought tears to the eyes of even the most reserved of our number. Several of our forest friends had fallen in the overpowering winds, including my two best dryad friends. May their pure souls rest in peace.


Once we had eaten our fill of goodly Bruegger's fine fare, we headed out in search of good deeds that needed doing. There were more than enough elderly citizens in need of our assistance to occupy us into the evening hours. As night drew nigh once more, we climbed into transport vehicles and returned to our homes. At my house, we lit a massive bonfire and satiated the hunger of the pagan gods. We cooked the entrails of our sacrifices over the flames and filled our stomachs once more.

By this time, power had returned to my estate. It is by this power that I now relate to you this tale. And yet possessing this power is bittersweet. How long must we wait ere we are presented with such grand adventures as we have faced these past two days?



*Before I wrote this, I wrote down what really happened over the past few days. I will post the true story in a few days.

**Soon and very soon I will no longer be driving the red car! I will be driving a little green car instead. Huzzah!

***That assignment is the only part of the story that has no hint of exaggeration. I really do have to transpose by ear the first 16 measures of Beethoven's 5th Symphony for all the instruments by Friday.

from the whole a part

i am from farmers and mechanics and boilermakers
loss of hearing and digits
carrot tops and ginger kids and little reds

i am from tea parties and tree climbing
nail polish and grass stains
barbies and legos
flower fairies and star wars

i am from michigan ice cream and indiana pizza
tchaikovsky and rich mullins
john dog and ria kitty
lewis and jacques and tolkein
our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name and you are my sunshine my only sunshine

i am quietly shouting my independence
identifying with those before
facing my future unafraid




In every year of high school thus far, one of the first english class assignments has been some sort of creative writing piece describing ourselves. This year we were to write poems about how our past has influenced who we are now. Mine opened up this post. I explained it and shared it with my english class, and so now I share it with and explain it to you, my readers. I believe there are four of you now. Hurrah!

The most obvious thing about my poem is probably the rejection of capital letters and punctuation. I really don't like capital letters all that much, and I generally skimp on punctuation in my poems, so Ms. Miller said I could just omit both altogether. She said it reminded her of e.e. cummings, so I decided to take after another one of his stylistic techniques. The title is purposefully ambiguous, especially when heard rather than seen. It says that I'm both a part of the whole and apart from the whole. While I love being a part of my family, I also seek to be something apart from them.

In the first stanza I talk about my parents and other older relatives. The first two parts of the first line are just as they appear (the farmer and mechanic parts), but the third (the boilermaker part) is not. Purdue's mascot is the boilermaker, and a lot of my family members have gone there. On my dad's side, my dad, his brother, both his parents, and his dad's dad all went there. On my mom's side, my mom, her dad, his brother (I think), and several of her first, second, and third cousins went to Purdue. If I go there as I'm planning to, I'll be the fourth generation there in a direct line on my dad's side and the third generation in a direct line on my mom's side. The second line refers to the fact that members of my dad's side of the family are prone to hearing loss and many members of my mom's side of the family are missing fingers or toes from various accidents. The third line is a reference to the fact that I've got red-heads sprinkled all over both sides of my family (including my parents, who both used to have red hair). That would explain why myself and four of my six other siblings have undeniably red hair.

The entire second stanza not only tells about things that I enjoyed as a younger child, but it also shows that I had a wide range of interests. While I liked girly things, I also loved getting dirty and doing some tom-boy-ish things. The third stanza is about memories and old traditions. Whenever we visited my mom's parents in Michigan, we used to go to the same ice cream parlor. They had all sorts of fun flavors. My mom's grandparents live in Indiana, and whenever we visit them we eat Pizza King pizza (it's delicious). For several years, my mom, my sisters, and I used to go see the Cincinnati Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker every winter. That tradition kindled within me a love for Tchaikovsky's music that continues to this day. My dad has several Rich Mullins tapes that we used to listen to on road trips. I can probably sing every single song by now. John Dog was the name of the dog that my older brother got for his fifth birthday. He died just two winters ago at the age of thirteen. We all miss him. Ria Kitty is a stuffed cat I got in Washington, D.C. when I was five. I had lost my Ria Baby and Oatmeal Bear on the subway, so I got Ria Kitty. C.S. Lewis, Brian Jacques, and J.R.R. Tolkein were three authors whose works I read often as I grew up. The last line of the third stanza got chopped in half, but it's still meant to be one line. The first half refers to a family tradition established longer ago than I can remember. Every night we all say the Lord's Prayer together. The second half is a line from a song that my dad and I sang every night when I was little. It had within it a line that we argued about every night as part of the tradition.

The final stanza is just some stuff about appreciating where I've come from, yet wanting to be something a little different that those before me. I pretty much already explained that part when I explained the title.

Adventures in Driving II

It's the second adventure I've typed anyway. Driving mishaps happen pretty much whenever I go somewhere new.

This one actually came to pass on Monday, and I started writing about it on Monday, but then I forgot about it. I was trying to reach the not-so-distant land of Colerain, where Chuck E. Cheese, Half Price Books, and Ihop live so I could visit Home Depot to find some lovely flowers to plant in Ronda, Michael, and Kate Corbin's yard. I knew I had to get on Ronald Reagan, but for some reason it never occurred to me to ask my mom which direction I should be going. I chose east Ronald Reagan. I chose incorrectly. We had passed Blue Ash, narrowly (and an eensy bit illegally) escaped an entrance ramp onto the dreaded valley of horrors know as I-71 (or something-else-71), and come to the end of the Ronald Reagan freeway by the time we were positive that we weren't in the right place. A phone call verified that we had gone the wrong direction. Fortunately, the exit we took landed us in Montgomery, the least shady place you could ask for when trying to turn around in an unfamiliar place.

Eventually, we reached the Colerain Home Depot. We left that place to seek out Ronda's Fairfield home. The directions I wrote from what my mom dictated to me told me to turn on "Reysor". We drove all the way through Fairfield (crossing my old enemy, Dixie Highway, in the process) before realizing that we were once again lost. I turned around. Again. As we headed back, a song began to play on my iPod. This same song played in the last Driving Adventure I chronicled on this blog. It seems to choose the perfect moments to come up in the shuffle. The chorus of this song goes like this: "Maria, Maria, Maria, where did you go?". My brother about killed himself laughing. On the way back through Fairfield, I saw a street that I was pretty sure would take me to the Corbin house by a back route. For some odd reason, Jonathon was against that. I can't imagine why (I checked with Ronda later, and the street actually would have gotten me there just as I had thought it would). As we drove, it occurred to my brother and sister that they could help look for the street if they knew what it was called. I told them its name, and they spotted it shortly thereafter. Apparently, it was spelled "Resor" rather than "Reysor", but sometimes I only see the exact thing that I'm looking for.

Monikers

I've accumulated quite a few nicknames over the years. Some of them died right away (fortunately this includes the two that really needed to go), but a great many have lasted for at least several weeks. Here they are in the order in which they came to be:

Ria Roo (before I can remember): This one came from my dad. I don't remember getting it, but it has stuck with me for many years. In second grade, I had my name changed to Ria at school, so some of my friends from elementary school still call me Ria. In third grade, I went back to my real name.

Snuffy (7th grade): One day in Mrs. Reichert's seventh grade English class, Layla and I were both very congested and very tired. We kept snuffling and making slap-happy comments. At one point, I said "You're sniffy today," and she replied "You're snuffy today," and we thought it was outrageously funny. So she became Sniffy and I became Snuffy.

Missy (summer after 8th grade): We went on vacation with the Corbins (a family from church) one summer, and through a long-ish story, their daughter earned the nickname Sissy. Later on in the summer, we ended up matching one day, so Ronda decided that my nickname should be like Kate's. And thus Missy joined the ranks of my monikers.

Fooseba (summer after 9th grade): This one is kind of embarrassing. On the way back from the canoe trip two years ago, we were playing some game (I can't recall its name) wherein we were trying to spell words. Each person would add a letter to whatever the previous people had said in order to spell a word, but you didn't want to be the person to add the last letter. If you had to end the word, you lost. So people would constantly try to redirect the word so that they wouldn't have to finish it or the next person would. Someone started a word with "f". The next two people added an "o" each. I thought the next person was doomed to end up spelling a word, but instead they added an "s" after much deliberation. I was completely baffled. What word could possibly start with "f-o-o-s"? The next three people added an "e", a "b", and an "a" respectively. Then it was my turn. I could not for the life of me figure out what word would start with "f-o-o-s-e-b-a". In exasperation, I shouted "What on earth is 'fooseba' supposed to mean?" The other passengers burst into laughter, and eventually I figured out that they were spelling fooseball. Thus, "fooseba" became one of my nicknames.

M.O.M. (fall of 10th grade): M.O.M. stands for "Manly Octave Maria" and is a tribute to the fact that my vocal range is lower than typical for a female. Bev and Lauren G. gave me the name, so I came up with names for them too. Bev is B.O.T.A. (Bev of the Arctic) and Lauren is L.O.T.S. (Lauren of the Scarves). Gertrude (winter of 10th grade): Morgan is pretty much the only one who uses this one now. Stork was our sub one day in gym, and we got him to believe that Gertrude was my real name. La Bosse (early fall of 11th grade): My friends and I all have French nicknames. It all started in the list of zoo vocabulary when we learned that the word for seal is "la phoque" (pronounced "fock") and deer is "la biche" ("beesh"). Both sound suspiciously like "bad words" in English, so Katie decided that she would be La Phoque Volant, "the flying seal", and that Courtney would be La Suisse Biche, "the Swedish deer". I got to be La Bosse (the hump), Morgan is Le Snack-Bar (pretty self-explanatory), and Anna is L'Eyeliner (also self-explanatory). I can't remember anyone else's name.

Maple (mid fall of 11th grade): During Shantytown, I was spelling my name in strips of duct tape on my box/house. When I had finished my masterpiece, my friends pointed out that I had amputated the second leg off of the "R", so the box said "MAPIA". It made me think of the word maple (probably because our little encampment was under a red maple), so I decided to make that my new name. It's fitting, don't you think? I added the middle name "Laburnum", and when filling out surveys on the internet I make "Stwittyspokkit" my last name. This is the most widely used of my nicknames. All my teachers have been handed papers with this name on it, and three of my six teachers call me Maple. Some of my little sister's friends know me as "that girl who called herself 'Maple' and dressed up as autumn the Halloween". I don't see this name leaving any time soon.

Dr. Lithium Bromide (last week): I haven't asked anyone to call me this yet (and I probably won't), but it will be my nom de plume for all semi-official documents. This hasn't started yet, but I think its first use will be on the agreement to obey the Dungeon rules.

Druidic Sacrifices at Church

Sunday was the annual congregational meeting at the church, and this year's food related competition was to see what you could make using pre-packaged dessert snacks, such as Little Debbie snacks and others of that ilk. My idea wasn't too exciting. I cut overly fudgy brownies into rectangles and built a castle out of my bricks. My thirteen and eleven-year-old sisters, however, had an ingenious idea (which I got to contribute to later on): they built Stonehenge.

First they filled the bottom of a circular cake pan with marshmallows (yes, they had the foresight to spray it with Pam first, thank goodness) and put them in the oven until they were slightly melted. Next, they stuck Nutty Bars into the marshmallows for the vertical pieces, slopped some peanut butter on top, and then laid Nutty Bar "stone slabs" across the tops of some of them. For the others, they broke Nutty Bars and positioned them near the vertical stones. Once they had done that, I notice what they were doing and made a suggestion. We then built an altar in the middle of the pan, laid a plastic hippo on top of it, and then slathered the hippo in red icing to be the druidic sacrifice. We wanted to use a plastic cat we found, but our youngest sister cried, so we stuck with the hippo. Besides, it had its mouth wide open, so we decided it looked more like it was in agony. Thanks to the fact that Ben and Todd were the judges, we got honorable mention for best appearance. Unfortunately most people didn't see the sacrifice at first, but we got the desired results when we pointed it out: some people looked slightly disturbed, but others really enjoyed our morbid sense of humor. It took a couple minutes for Dan Chan to stop laughing, and one of the younger boys promptly showed it to his mother while declaring how cool it was.

Here are some pictures of Stonehenge:

Story Time!

First things first: yesterday was Groundhog Day, and Punxsutawney Phil did in fact see his shadow. We now have six more weeks of "winter". Maybe that means that we'll actually have a real winter sometime in the next few months.

Now it's time for a random, amusing little thing that happened as I was leaving church. My brother decided to only look in one direction as he turned left out of the parking lot onto Winton Road, so he ended up clipping a large SUV. He and the other driver pulled over into the St. Barts parking lot to decided what to do. The oldest two of my younger sisters and I were left in the car as he talked to the other person. The hazard lights were on, so there was a ticking noise in the car - one that could even be described as a Mysterious Ticking Noise, if you so desired. I turned around and told my sisters that it was pipe bomb that had been planted by Lord Voldemort, not expecting them to know what I was talking about (if you don't know what I'm referring, go to YouTube and type in "mysterious ticking noise"). Much to my surprise, Allison (the younger one) immediately did a perfect imitation of the puppet Snape.

Allison: "What is that mysterious ticking noise?"
Me: "It's kind of catchy though. Snape. Snape. Severus Snape. Snape. Snape. Severus Snape."
Rachel: "Dumbledore!"
Me: "Snape. Snape. Severus Snape."
Allison: "Ron. Ron. Ron Weasley."
and so forth
We re-enacted the entire thing, but it was a little hard with just three people when Hermione and Harry were added into the mix.

After we had finished our unexpected burst into chant, I turned around to see how my brother was doing with the other driver. Much to my surprise, the other person was Ms. Mascari, the director of TX (St. X's theather program). It was really quite odd. I'm glad she didn't recognize me, because it may have been hard for me to find something pleasant to say to her and vice versa. We were not always the best of friends.

Anyway, that's it for my story today. Unfortunately, it's just not the same to type stories as it is to tell them orally. Why has the art of storytelling been lost in our society? I think it was a wonderful little talent, and truly an admirable one. While we may have people that like to tell what happens to them in dramatic and interesting ways, the days are long gone when troubadours, bards, and minstrels roamed the land, welcomed in the halls of lords and kings as they told tales both new and old of laughter, sorrow, heroism, and the like. If someone wandered the countryside today, offering to sing ballads and arias, someone would call the police in a heartbeat. Okay, so I'd probably be a little uncomfortable if a bard came to my front door, but if only we lived in the days when such happenings were commonplace. The times when patriarchs' stories were the bread and butter that sustained a little hamlet through the winter months and the word of a poet was worth more than the verdict of a king. Sure, life was harder then. To reach forty years of age was no small feat, with threats of all sorts lurking about your very doorstep. Illness, famine, war, bandits, beasts, bipolar rulers, consistently cruel rulers, crop failure, kelpies, dragons, imps - take your pick.

Cults, Societies, and So Forth

It has recently occurred to me that I am the member of many a cult/secret society/not-so-secret society/what-not. Without further ado, here they are in order of creation (I am, was, or will be a charter member of all of these societies).

SSC:
It's a super secret cult, but that's not what SSC stands for. If you ask what it does stand for, we tell you that it's a super secret conundrum, but that's not what SSC stands for either. There have been a wide variety of guesses about what SSC really stands for (mostly things starting with "super", such as "super secret crew", "super special crew", "super (p)sycho crew", and some others), but all of the suggested meanings are much more interesting than what SSC really stands for. It's actually a rather boring and unexciting name, considering the strange people that named it.

The SSC started close to show week of St. Xavier's production of Miss Saigon. The very impatient and somewhat unreasonable director decided that the reason running crew didn't get the cues perfectly right on our first run of Act II was that there were too many crew members in hte wings. This wasn't the real issue, as others would discover later, but she took it into her own power to winnow out the ranks of the running crew without consulting crew heads about who was actually useful. I was cut along with several other very experienced and helpful crew members, so we formed our own backstage crew. Another guy, Brad, and I organized a crew of the people who were booted plus some others who were never nominated for running crew in the first place (it's a high honor), and we rotated set pieces in and out of the wings so that the actual running crew wouldn't have to. We even wrote up a detailed list of what needed to be where and when, complete with illustrations of Trogdor and other barely relevant pictures.

The High Order of Dipodism:
I already wrote about this. For review, click here.
My position as founder and High Priestess of Dipodism will probably be included in my title for the next cult on my list.

The Chivalric Order of the Sword Organum:
Approximately one third of the three semi-regular readers of my blog is very well acquainted with The Chivalric Order of the Sword Organum (originally called the Brethren of the Sword, but that was changed due to the facts that not all the members are brethren and Brethren of the Sword would have an undesirable acronym). In fact, this reader is the founder so he knows much more about this cult than I.

Assembly of the High-Fiving Shark and Gorilla - Nice:
This actually came into existence before I received my official invitation to the previous society, but I had a better transition for the dipod-to-sword organum jump. This group has technically perhaps been around for ages, by the way we refer to it. In this society, the "we" refers to my siblings and I. Over winter break, my family got the delight of driving nine hours for some quality extended family togetherness. with that side of the family, togetherness always results in fierce subconscious competition over the most unreasonable "accomplishments". It can be quite maddening. Anyway, back to the explanation of this cult. On the drive up there, we passed a sign for Nunica, a city in Indiana. Nunica spontaneously became a holiday in memory of a the day a bus full of blind nuns holding baby refugees was driven off the edge of a cliff, exploding at the bottom (based on an utterly purposefully ridiculous song that was written by some of my dad's brother's classmates for a contest that they won). There are various rules, traditions, and the like associated with Nunica, but I will not enumerate these details at this time. With Nunica in existence, it needed a cult/religion to support it. Based on a pre-existing t-shirt from the Dr. McNinja, the Assembly of the High-Fiving Shark and Gorilla - Nice was created. So far the only purpose of the Assembly is to support Nunica and place its seal of approval (usually a leopard seal, sometimes harper seals will do) on random deeds, sights, or sounds.

Native American LSD Ritual Cult:
This one doesn't have a real name yet, but one day in French class my friend randomly invited me and some others to join her in creating a cult based off of Native American rituals involving hallucinogens. She hasn't really gotten very far yet. We're working on it.

Herbivore-Omnivore Alliance:
Several of my classmates, most of which are my friends, are vegetarians. They want to start a vegetarian club, but they'd like us non-vegetarian friends to be part of it too because that would make it more fun. Essentially, it would just be an excuse to make up some random collection of people who already hang out together and talk on a daily basis, which we could then write on college applications. A couple of my friends are already trying to find ways to "pad their resumés" as people say. Us omnivores refuse to give up meat, so our club needs to have a way to include everyone anyway. One girl came up with the idea that if there's a Gay-Straight Alliance, we should form a similar group called the Herbivore-Omnivore Alliance. The idea still needs some tweaking, especially in the name category. One of our more sarcastic friends who is completely opposed to the idea was quick to point out that the original name would end up being the HO Alliance for short. We quickly dropped that moniker. I will say, I'm more inclined to agree with the sarcastic friend though. What on earth would the society do?

Angsty Girls Society:
This final cult was first thought of yesterday. It was inspired partially by a YouTube video that makes fun of how much of an angsty, moody drama queen Harry Potter is in the 5th book. Such a cult wouldn't require much organization. After all, we're all so angsty that nobody in our cult could really understand what anyone else was going through. Our cult's t-shirts would be all black with black writing on them. Both blacks would be blacker than the blackest black times infinity (but not dealing with coffee in any way), so nobody could really read our shirts, another symbol of how much nobody understands us. Our shirts would have meaningful slogans such as...

• got angst?
• Don't talk to me. You wouldn't understand.
• I ♥ nothing
• I can't ♥ anything anymore because my ♥ has been cruely torn out and trampled into the dust
• you can't see my eyes because the windows to my soul are so filled with pain that you wouldn't understand
• I am filled with angst, even unto overflowing
• and other deep and marvelously angsty phrases that "could be turned into some pathetic emo song on the radio" as my mom puts it

Sadly, most of these societies haven't gotten very far. I fear that the most successful group (the SSC) may have already crumbled, but I'll find out in April if not sooner.

Please note that I am not actually a member of any real cults. We have given up the red-pen ritual of dipodism, neither me nor any of the people in the hallucinogen group have ever done elicit drugs and I don't plan to, and neither me nor my friends are really filled with angst even unto overflowing.

Games of the Future

From the imagination of my youngest sister I bring you a game of the future. It has no name yet, but my six-year-old sister taught it to us with such great enthusiasm that it's preposterous to think that it won't be the next "thing". Here's how you play:

1. One person (we'll call them person A) starts it off by asking the person to their left (who we will cal person B) the question "odd or even?"
2. Person B answers by saying "odd" or"even"
3. Person A then asks person be to say a number.
4. Person B replies by saying a number, but it doesn't have to correspond with their earlier answer of "odd" or "even" (ie. if person B said "odd", they can say "four" in response to the second question even though four isn't an odd number).
5. Now person B repeats the question from step 1 to person A.
6. Person A must choose whichever answer person B did not choose.
7. Person B now asks person a to name a number, and the same guidelines from step 4 still apply.
8. Person B now turns to the person on his/her left and starts the process anew. This is repeated indefinitely. It is sure to provide endless hours of distraction.

No goal or end point is clear, but Amanda assures us that it's fun. After being stuck at the dinner table for a full cycle through my family of nine people, I admit that the intrigue still escapes me, but it must be something revolutionary.

Happy Day After Thanksgiving/Black Friday!

In the Gast house, Thanksgiving preparations started Wednesday. We cooked pies, turkeys (yes, plural, we had about 30 guests and made enough bird for everyone to take home leftovers), sweet potatoes, cake, homemade cinnamon applesauce, a cheese ball, and I think that's it.

I got the supreme joy of dressing the turkey. I had no idea that playing with the raw poultry could be so fun, but, surprisingly, it was. There was just something about the texture and the way it was kinda squishy and rubbery that was unexpectedly simply delightful. I also got to look inside it's ribcage and pull its neck out of its backside where the turkey slaughtering company had stored it in the event that you wanted to use it to make gravy, along with a packet of mystery flesh from some organ that the bird once used.

I also got to make the most delicious sort of cheese ball, and I'll admit I ate quite a bit of the "scraps" after I was done "thoroughly scraping" the mixing bowl onto a cookie sheet.

We always sprinkle cinnamon on top of our pumpkin pies, and we frequently make it more interesting by making a stencil out of paper, laying it on top of the pie, and filling in the uncovered portion with cinnamon, leaving the shape of the stencil. I was in charge of making stencils for the pies. The first one was a perfectly normal, fall-esque sugar maple (Acer saccharum), but the second stencil was a sea serpent. I get a strange sense of elation from weirding out my extended family. I actually made a little story for the dragon and wrote it out in calligraphy and French, because it was a remarkably stupid story, and I would rather nobody else could read it.

Then came Thursday, the official Thanksgiving Day. I woke up at 7 when the sun started coming up above the trees to the east of my house and then proceeded to do what I've done every Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember: start the traditional jigsaw puzzle. Every year we get a new jigsaw puzzle of a thousand pieces or so (this year we got two, because I have a habit of finishing one by noon) to be solved as a family on Thanksgiving. I'm pretty much the only person who does it now, but after dinner I sometimes get some help.

There were no specific episodes that were especially interesting, but things followed the same pattern as normal. My uncle Mike showed up just in time for dinner (which is actually unusual I suppose, since he's normally at least a half hour late) and then got picked on for the entire time he was there without realizing it, my uncles and my grandpa all ate Reddi-Whip in strange ways and taught two of my sisters to do the same, my aunt moped around like the apocalypse was coming and she was the only one who knew or cared, my youngest sister threw a fit about something completely trivial, and one aunt and uncle decided to stay well past their welcome. I think they were having some sort of stand-off against the Corbins to see who could stay longer. They weren't even doing anything. They just sat silently on a sofa until they took the hint that it was time to go.

And so now it's Black Friday, and I pity anyone who has to work today. I also question the sanity of anyone who tries to shop today. Later today, my family and a couple from church will go pick out a Christmas tree from a tree farm, and we'll each pick out a new tree ornament like we do every year. Then we'll stuff the tree into the van (and I'll sit as close to it as possible, because surprisingly they make good pillows, plus they smell like frost and sap) and drive back home being forced to listen to the Partridge Family Christmas Album while me and at least three of my other siblings wish we could gouge our ears out, or stuff them with someone else's or something like that. Once we get home, we will drink hot chocolate and get out all our decorations to make the house all festive looking.

For now, I get to just sit here occasionally stirring some homemade chicken soup with rice and staring out the window at the delightful snow. This has been your host, Maple Gast, with a full report on a Gast Thanksgiving.