insomnia

I just finished reading a book that was so exciting that I can't go to sleep now. So here's a quick update on my life.

My parents finally arrived home from England where my dad's barbershop chorus sang some songs. To prepare for their arrival, I had to do all the jobs this morning that I was supposed to be doing all week. Washing dishes for two hours straight is not much of a blast. Also, my sister and her adoring niece visited today, and I have misplaced my glasses.

Soon World of Warcraft will release an update which will completely redefine how I play my mage. Instead of primarily casting fire-based spells with some arcane spells thrown in, I will start using frost-based spells to complement my fire ones. It should make for a pretty exciting time.

All in all, this is a completely worthless post.

In which I am attacked

I visited Abbie in Farber this weekend. The first thing I did was stop by the Van-Far high school where her mother was cleaning out her classroom. A few minutes later, a visitor arrived to meet me. After a few seconds of introduction and small talk, another visitor arrived. Followed by another, and another, and six more! These people surrounded me and all pounced at once! Not only are were about 10 women staring at me, none of whose names I could recollect, they all knew everything about me: my college major, my present job, my current address, my checking account balance... Apparently, shortly after my arrival, Abbie's mother had rushed down the hall alerting everyone in the school that I had arrived. They must not get much excitement in Farber.

Today I went golfing with Abbie and her brother Ryan. That is, Ryan golfed while Abbie and I tried to golf. The only other time I had been golfing I went with my brother Andy, and we only had time to finish four holes before I had to leave. So I wasn't all that good to begin with, obviously. But add in the fact that I golf left-handed, and Ryan only had right-handed clubs for me to use, and you come up with a complete disaster. My main problem was consistency: I had a ton of success driving the cart and putting the ball on the tees, but not much talent at hitting the ball every time I swung at it. Over nine holes, I wound up with a score of 70, which is abysmal. Ryan completely smoked me. I don't know how Abbie would have ended up because, due to time constraints, we were forced to stop her after about a hole and a half.

test

So my previous post was apparently a completely unsuccessful and unintelligible experiment. Feel free to disregard it. I have learned the hard way not to push the limits of the blogging world.

busy

This has bin a pretty rough weak four me. What with playing World of Warcraft awl the thyme, and sleeping fore ten ours a knight, Eye have knot had thyme even two think about blogging. Butt I am taking a brake from my hectic schedule to regale ewe with a tail of adventure.

Aye took a walk last knight to get a breath of fresh err. I had bin pent up inside all day, sew being outside was quite a relief. This peaceful atmosphere wasn't too last, unfortunately. While strolling along, Aye herd a clamor behind a house. I piqued around the corner to assess the situation, but I couldn't sea anything because of all the landscaping. I stole into the yard two get a better look, with howling and screeching awl around.

Suddenly, I was hit! A small dog flying threw the ere maid me its landing pad. Before I could even adjust to this knew development, some shadowy figures chasing the dog pummelled strait into my leg, knocking me to the ground. I rolled away, the dog still clutched in my arms, and stumbled to my feat. The attackers were two apparently bloodthirsty raccoons. I kicked at won, but struck only a glancing blow. The second raccoon took this opportunity to try clawing it's weigh up my leg. I took careful aim and slugged it across the snout, sending it flying. This seemed to weaken there resolve because they broke ranks and fled. The dog also ran away at this point without so much as a "Thank you very much for saving my life. I thought I was a goner." Animals are pretty rude these days.

Oh weight. Did this really happen? No, I'm pretty sure I made this all up. But I'm lichen it more--and it is more exciting--than my alternate adventure story: Making a Burrito in the Microwave.

Well readers,

It appears that I have neglected you for some time. I had a pretty rough week and was unable to devote much time to the blogging. But you may be pleased to learn that my semester is finally over, and I will be hopelessly devoted to you for at least a few days.

Abbie finally came home on Thursday! In case you were somehow unaware, I haven't seen her in about 2 months, so it was quite nice to see her again. Despite my trepidation, conversation luckily flowed like...something, so it appears that we are still in love.

I visited Abbie's house for the last two days. Today, her brother ran the hurdles in his district track meet, so we got to see that. I haven't been to a high school track meet since my own high school days, and all the memories flooded back. The atmosphere at track and cross country meets can't be duplicated anywhere.

Now I am back at home again. I will be here for a relaxing three weeks or so before heading back to grueling Kirksville. Goals for these coming weeks: none.

This post is dedicated to Andre the Giant, because I'm watching him in "The Princess Bride" right now.Andre, you will always be an all-star.

rough

Finals are starting this week. Ugh. Today I only had one, but tomorrow I have two more, and my last two are on Thursday. And the worst part about this is that I am having quite a bit of trouble motivating myself to do anything worthwhile, like, oh, studying perhaps. That's a bad combination, I reckon.

The good news is that this week is ending spectacularly. Abbie is finally returning from gallivanting abroad! She is arriving on Thursday and visiting Kirksville on Thursday night! It will be glorious having her back in the country.

And now I must continue cramming for accounting. I will try my utmost to post again on the morrow, but don't hold your breath.

Blurbs

So Kirksville isn't really catching on to this whole "summer weather" fad. El Salvador is going to have 100+ temperatures in the next few days, and our temperature here dipped into the frigid 40s last night. I don't know why this town is so behind the times. It may be time for some more of that global warming stuff.

We finally cut our grass yesterday. Here are some before and after shots. This is before:
And this is after (we also planted some trees and built a fence; we were feeling ambitious yesterday):
Last night at Domino's, my coworker Chris kept talking about his impending participation in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. It really brought back memories from my younger, harsher days. But I've promised not to go back down that path. I've left too many broken men in my trail.

As promised, here are the final flameball pictures. As you can see, it is intense action that the whole family can enjoy. As you can also see, my shorts are way too big in this picture. Last night while I was delivering pizzas, I encountered people in walking in the road about 23 times. What is it about Kirksville that makes people see a car and say, "Hey, I'm gonna try to kill myself right now, or at least create an inconvenience and increase this guy's delivery time"?

weekend

This past weekend was pretty much amazing. Phi Sigma Pi had family day on Saturday, so my parents made a visit to town. The trip was fraught with vocabulary and grammar discussions. Even better, I played boggle and sudokus for over four hours on Saturday! How huge of losers are we? The folks stayed until Sunday morning, and left after brunch. It was a very relaxing visit.

On Friday night, the real excitement took place. Some friends and I played....FLAMEBALL! If you are worried that this game is as dangerous as it sounds, you are completely justified. Flameball involves soaking a tennis ball in gas, like so:
Then, somebody lights it on fire.The final step is playing catch with the flameball. I have a couple more pictures I want to add about this step, but I can't because blogger is being crazy right now. I'll put them up later this afternoon, hopefully.

But really, flameball is not all that risky. Apart from all the hair that has been burned off from my forearm, I suffered no ill effects. Our high-quality homemade gloves protect us from harm.