Summer Early

4:45 am. That's when I'm getting up to go to work with the Park Department as a entry-level Lifeguard tomorrow. This is going to be a great, exciting adventure. So to insure I get my 8 hours of sleep, I should go to bed at... 8:45pm. But I always function on 6-7, so, not a big deal. Now this harkens back to last August when we left on vacation. I got a 3:30am phone call- from Little Brother's alarm clock. A thunderstorm was rolling by. I dozed off. I got up at 4:30 when my alarm clock went. We left at 6am to go up I-83 to I-81. What a memory.

End in Sight

Why do my most recent posts look as if I twittered them? Final Exams. And yes, one more (long) exam to go, then off to the broad summer.

Average time per exam: 1:46

1:20
2:10
1:30
2:10
1:45
2:10 (cut off)
(>2:05)- Tomorrow's physics exam- it always takes me a little longer to do it.

Memorial Day

I am indebted to say thank you for those who defend our free world freedoms.
In a world of oppression, I and many others would not be here today.

Vanilla Mint Listerine

The first time I came across it was at St. Thomas Church, and the only consideration I gave to this priest's mouth freshener was to potentially light the thurible with its alcoholic properties when there was no WD40 accelerant for the charcoal. But the Verger insisted that the concentration was too low. But, I came across this last weekend while doing the occasional task of choosing mouthwash at the store. I chose it because P+G (or is it CP?) gave a free little bottle with a liter purchase. But it's now my favorite. Mild and cleansing, tastes like vanilla.

Main House does it again

Call it "Harry Potter", but house is a big matter here.

So consider the first Main-3 kickball game. Holding a 1-1 tie, until the last inning. 1-3. We keep untamed softball field. Next game, we advance to the real field. We win, and stay. Last game, top of the third, last play. I got a call to run on anything. A good kick to far right as I was on first. I found 2nd base (a tiny orange speck on the infield grass), but after turning270 degrees, just could not find third base. I think I reached the runner's path as turned towards home. Skipped a base!? By some rule, the other guy was out (a sacrifice play, I presume), so I could not back to third, even though I was not tagged. Anyway, it should not have mattered as there was no bottom of the inning.

Dodgeball. Main wins again. second game, a last-second save by freeing all prisoners by making a half-court shot. (Victory was done by prisoner count after 12 minutes)

Flag Football- a giant heads towards me. I fend the quarterback by retreating to a side collision than head on. In retrospect- it might have made me look queasy. "Atticus it's just a matter of collision", says the physics teacher.
So our group of mostly little kids fared well. We supposed the other two teams fared even better. They did.

Whole-school activities- not for Main, in general.
Super relay. Greased watermelon, chair hop, wheelbarrow, and our grade's (virgin)'jello shots'. All tied up until this point. Our four chuggers, in relay, spun around a bat 10 times and jogged to the 2 cups of jello, each. The goal was to get that done, asap, and dash and tag your house head so he could cross the finish line. Some of our guys fared well, but some guys weren't able to chug. I mean, as a moral supporter, I chugged one or two myself. No biggie. As I asked and received, it turns out that the spinning really made it hard to swallow. We did fine.

Capture the flag. Four quadrants for four houses. Objective: Nab as many of the other six flags as you can, w/o losing your two. More complex tough, with lots of cheating. Strong defense was key. Main one one game out of three, with super defense and an administrator to monitor cheaters.

Relay. 5 of each grade, each house, except for including every 6th grader (in Potter speak, form A). It held us back quite a bit though, throughout most 29 of our runners. But Mikey really pulled us far ahead to third place in the relay...

Ice Cream and results.

It was really, really close (suspense builds)
Fourth Place- Austin- 195 pts
Third Place- Alban- 198
Second Place... (Main or Moore?)-199
Moore, (therefore), Main won with 208 points.

For a third year? Special vetting rules take place for consecutive champs- no one's won three in a row. Nevertheless, it may be time to make up for 13 years of lost time.

Field Day Tradition

(In a singing way)Field Day I don't know what's in store
Whether it be tag foot ball, pickleball, capture the flag, or dodge the ball there's a high level of intrinsic fun that can't be removed.

Per Se

I know of only one person who has patronized this ultra-high-end mini restaurant in New York at Columbus Circle, and it was a business expense. Now here is a 15/16 year young from the Philly Area who made the reservation precisely at 10am from the bathroom, and paid for the trip on his own cash, thrice.

To put this in perspective, my most expensive plate was somewhere around $40, on a business card. For me, Per Se would be an experience at the $298,000 income bracket (even so, that's 1/1000th of your yearly budget), possibly at $149,000, it's so tantalizing.

"Why would I spend half of my yearly income on a restaurant? Well this is no ordinary restaurant. I would not even degrade my time at this restaurant to the title of a "meal." Experience is much more appropriate." (f@15)

So, here is his site:
http://foodieatfifteen.blogspot.com/2008/12/per-se-2.html