This brief weekend excursion involved the following notable items and activities:
- A old green leather chair belonging to my grandfather which used to be kept inside but had deteriorated with age. It now sits outside, exposed to the weather. Being as sturdy as it is, it hasn't managed to fall apart completely in the past year - however, the back leather panel has peeled away and revealed rotting wooden frame while mold grows on the leather flap. The footrest has fallen off and has been replaced with a moldy hunk of thick plywood. In many places the leather has torn and yellow stuffing is being squeezed out along the seams (and in one case a hold I poked with a letter opener when I was nine). There may possibly be a bee's nest inside of the chair. It is the comfiest chair in the entire house. And my grandfather still sits in it.
- I finally knocked the movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" off my list in the earlier post, "The Movies". I am kicking ass at this list and I'm seeing a lot of very good movies. Other unrelated examples of great films I've seen recently are "The Truman Show" and "Life as a House".
- Floated down the river in an inflatable tube. At the end of the last leg I was hit in the ass with something. Hard. I thought it was a fish, and a bunch of other stuff kept popping up in the water. It took me a full 10 seconds of being pelted with these things to realize that I was being attacked by water balloons by incredibly stealthy neighbors. It was a little sad.
- Explored the woods. Climbed up to the top of a small ridge with my sister who was very angry at me for doing so spontaneously without proper climbing shoes.
- Tried to light a fire using incredibly wet wood. It worked, somewhat. But I let it die after realizing that I'd spent an hour trying to move past the "large stick" phase. That sucked. However, to my own scouting credit, I did only use one match and no lighter fluid or other fuel of any kind besides the grease left over in an old pizza box. And one benefit of the slow-burning effect of the wet wood was that it created a small area of extremely hot coals that made the most optimal marshmallow roasting conditions you'll ever see in your life. I got it about as brown as possible without the thing falling off or catching on fire. Seriously. I brag about this because you will never see it done better.
- Ate the pizza in that pizza box. It was delicious.
- Experienced riding in the backseat while my sister drove on a public - sparsely populated, but still populated, mind you - road. She's a year away from taking driver's training and this was her first time driving. Jesus Hernandez Christ. I've never been more terrified in my life. Driving on the wrong side of the road zooming at 35 mph around tight corners on a dirt road is now something I can say I've experienced, and folks, it is not fun. It is downright terrifying. However, I can say that on this drive I saw at least 30 deer.
- Began reading Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five
- Began reading and finished a book called So You Want to Write, for obvious reasons. I want to write. And I told myself that I was going to do it and I started to do it. But progress is something I'm not great at making when it comes to these things. So I said that I'd attempt to get into a first-year writing seminar at U of M when I got my built my schedule at orientation, which happened the day after I got back home from this little adventure. More on that later...
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