Day 2

[A continuing serial! See your local bookseller for back issues! Or just scroll down!]

Bit of a controversy this morning; seems Mom forgot to buy groceries when she bought groceries. She bought no bacon and only one dozen eggs. Most of the rest she was a bit okay on, but generally her quantities were too low.
-First I went out fishing with Dad at Darkwater. I caught a pike and Dad caught two during about three hours of fishing, and then a storm blew in. You can see storms from a long way off here, and you can see weather that doesn't pertain to you. This storm skirted us for a long time, but finally started putting out rain and lightning, so we left. I like storm watching. It's kind of giddying to see a really big cloud just scud right along. And it's quiet here too, which I like. I can hear the thunder even from miles off. Five, probably. There wasn't all that much rain, unfortunately.
-After a brief interlude, I went back out to Darkwater with Erin and Maria, but we didn't catch anything and it started getting weather on us again.
-There are squirrels all over the place here, and chipmunks too. They're a bit audacious, but I haven't actually gotten close enough to touch one yet. My goal is to count coup on one before the week is up. Sierra and Jazmin are having fun here, with the squirrels and the abundance of older people to watch them and have fun with them. After a makeshift lunch of chips and salsa, Dad and Micah and I went out again, to no avail I believe. I think Dad got a walleye [recall, you can't keep walleye at Crowduck]. No good. And then I stuck around a little while longer and decided I'd take Micah out to this one cove I found last year. After checking out with Mom, the two of us left.
-Micah wouldn't quit complaining. "No, stop trolling! Just leave the engine off! I told you we were too close in!" Shut up! Micah just keeps complaining; it's all he does. He doesn' stop to think that he's got it really really good sitting on a secluded lake in the northwoods of Canada for free. Just complains. I caught one hammerhandle (small pike), but it got away before I could get it in the boat. Another sorm came up and I took us back, joined by Grandma & Grandpa, who I later found out had been sent to get us but were surprised to find us with sense enough to turn back.
-Dinner was deep-fried fish and waffle fries, and I ate with Erin and Dan and Jazmin and Sierra. This year with them I'm "worm boy", because I keep saying I'm eating worms. Ah, kids. After dinner (delicious, by the way), I took the little girls out swimming. Brisk! But I got used to it, even if it took a while, and up until my arms went numb I was feeling great in that water. It's terrific swimming in a lake instead of a pool - no chlorine, way more space, possibly even cleaner. I swam for probably an hour. The waves are great on a lake - just today I noticed for the first time how interesting wave patterns can look. They're interesting, something to stare at for hours.
-When I was dry there was poker. I bought two dollars and lost that. Then I bought another dollar and slowly regained. Maria proved a strong player, as well as Dave, but not Grandpa[, who had had some refreshing beverages]. Micah sat and steadily lost almost every single hand. I think he won one, maybe two or three. I played fairly tight. On one, it was just my luck to get pocket Queens on the hand where Grandpa decided to go all-in without looking at his cards ("Looking at them doesn't seem to do much good"). A bunch of other people stuck around on his $1.40 all-in, and two aces came up on the board, and then - another Queen. I tell you, I raked it in with that full house, and I sold $3 back to the bank. I stuck around in the pot with a 10-3 off-suit, and three Jacks popped up, two on the flop, along with a three (on the flop). The river was a 6. I won with the full house again. That was about the last hand of the night, I believe. I paid back my debts and ended up in the black $4.55, though Dan's accounting probably leaves a little to be desired (for example, Mom came into the porch tonight and glanced at the ledgers and dais she wasn't down $1.50 but up $0.15, and Dan just said, "Okay," and put her up $0.15, figuring on balancing later, I guess.) Micah sulked a lot, and then left us to play Hearts - Dan, Grandpa, Aunt Ellen, and me. I won that too. I'm hot tonight! Later Dan and tracy and I checked out the stars, but the moon was too bright (though under the horizon) to let us see anything. Ah well. The night was impeccable otherwise. A light breeze, not a cloud in the sky, temperature pleasantly cool. I could live in this night - until I missed snow. It's the perfect night, in my opinion. I hope Mom hasn't already stolen the porch bed, but I think she has. I hear some loons out on the lake right now. A loon call is something I want to live with all the time. I want to be able to walk out the door every day in the summer and hear that ghost whistle, possibly fall asleep to it. This lake is, I think, where I live. I'm on a mandatory vacation 51 weeks a year. Looking at a Manitoba map early yesterday, I saw so many untenanted lakes, no roads for hundreds of miles around. Could I have a cabin on one of those? Just for a summer home. Please? My goal in life is to be the sole inhabitant - sole homeowner - on one lake. In Minnesota, in Manitoba or Ontario, I don't care. I'll go through the paperwork for a dual citizenship, I suppose, if I have to. Or whatever. It's my goal.

Some miscellany | Crowduck

You asked for the best, and you got the best! Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to transcribe journal entries from Crowduck into the blog! Metallica! I mean, no!
First, I'm going to write down this one thing I thought of the other night. See, since I decided TV was bad, I've been plagued by a nagging feeling: Well, it's just a mass medium; why is my mass medium of choice (books) so inherently superior to it? So I was sitting in bed, just having finished Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (tremendous book, by the way, and by that I mostly don't mean "long" because it is very good). And it struck me - a good book is an invention. It's not just a command on how to live your life. It's helping you along on figuring out how to do it. Walden, for example. Thoreau, obviously, had lived longer than I had when he wrote it, and had more time to think about the best way of living a life. He put all that experience into a book. Because of that, I don't have to spend all my life figuring out the same stuff he did: I already have it, and now I can continue from that point. Without computers we wouldn't be able to get these sorts of complex mathematical and scientific discoveries that we get every day. Likewise, without certain books our whole culture (our knowledge of ourselves and of other people and of what to do with this whole "life" thing) would be set back decades or centuries, and we would be way less edified in general. Next I have to figure out what's the point of edification. Because why would everyone want to be named Ed?
Okay, on to Crowduck. I'll leave out travel this year. Note that Micah and I were traveling with Grandma and Grandpa so we could visit some colleges (Carleton, Grinnell, Macalester) beforehand, and everyone else came separately.

We got Mom up to go shopping [at the Kenora Safeway] at about 0730, though she kept going back to bed until 0830. The shoppers [Mom, Grandma, and Tracy, I believe] came back at 0930 or so, and we left. An earlier start than ever, it happens! While we were on 17, it started raining, and it kept raining off and on, mostly on, all the way to the drop-off point, causing me to get the song "It's Coming Down" [by Cake] lodged in my head. Both vans (Dan, Tracy, Mom, Dad, and Erin were using a rented van) arrived concurrently, and we called Bill and waited and he got there on the boats. It was still sprinkling, and kept sprinkling all the way across Big Whiteshell. I didn't care. I'm cool. Someone, one of the dockhands, broke the news that there's a [governmental] "backwoods ban" because the summer's been so dry and they want to know where everyone is in case of a forest fire: So, we can't go to Ritchie this year unless there are at least 40 mm of rain. It didn't rain but maybe a half inch today, but it's raiing tomorrow, so who knows?
[...]
-Ah, the pickup trucks, the Limos. When we pulled into camp, the sky was a lot clearer. We unpacked and assembled poles and that kind of stuff. After a while, Dad and I even went fishing, with Micah. I drove to Darkwater Bay. Micah caught the first fish at 1620, a pike. They said pike are slow this year, but we caught one. Then, trolling, Dad caught another pike. We threw them both pack because you can't keep any the first day I had zero luck. However, there are practically no bugs this year, because it's been so dry. It's great.
-At the cabins again, I played in the water with Sierra and Jazmin [Uncle Dave's nanny Maria's daughter], who arrived at 1900 or so. Oh yes, dinner (soup) first, then water fun. It was cold, but we got used to it, sort of. Jazmin seems impervious to cold. I swam a couple times to where I couldn't touch bottom. It was cool. We must've been out there an hour and a half. Vigorous fun.
-Then, poker. At first I played well. Then I ended up sucking. Micah played absolutely every hand to the end, and he had some luch for a while that way. I tried to bluff him out once, but he just kept on going and took the pot. I got out with $6 of debt, but I stuck around to watch Micah lose all his money too. His strategy turned sour. Mine never was much good, though it did win me some hands.
-Afterwards Dan and Dave and I checked out the skes, and I went to bed. I'd write in more detail, like I usually do, but I want to fish early tomorrow

S N O W

It got cold, and then it stayed cold. As a result, Burke's pond back in Warder Park behind Whitaker froze over to a very good depth. Micah and I went up on Sunday to play krokay on it. There was only one wicket on the ice, but that was the greatest wicket I'd yet had the pleasure to go through. It was great: with even the slightest tap, a ball would go sliding for about half a minute. It was hard to get it to stop anywhere near the wicket for a reasonably good next shot. That was probably the first time I wished I'd taken more shots to get through (amazingly, I only needed two). However, with all this cold, the one thing we were missing was snow.
-The weatherman told us the story last Monday: a system was moving in, promising to dump three to five inches on us, starting sometime Tuesday. The snow began falling as I was in fourth bell at the Building, but it started coming down really in earnest during about sixth. Whenever an announcement came on, everyone expected it to be an early dismissal announcement. Eventually, in seventh bell, it was. Mr Rasulis said they would be letting out middle building first and then proceeding to high school shortly. People in my class started whipping out cell phones to call to get picked up. So here's what the building did: They waited five minutes and let out middle school bus riders. Then, they waited ten more minutes and let out middle school in general, prompting Rosie to shout, "They haven't even let out middle school yet?" About this time she also noted: "It takes my mom five minutes to drive here from my house. That means she's been sitting out in the parking lot for ten minutes in a cold car. They should've let us out an hour and a half ago, because now everyone's driving really carefully and slowly to keep from sliding on the snow, and they're also all bocking the buses." Well, what do you expect? It's not a real school. They waited another fifteen minutes, during which we speculated when we might get out: I figured we would end up not even getting out early. Aaron took it a step farther and said, "Watch. We're going to get out late. That would be the ultimate irony." When we did get out it was ten minutes before normal dismissal, but I decided I wasn't going to think of it as getting out ten minutes early; rather, as getting out half an hour late. I biked home and got snow all up in my hair and beard, which looked so fetching I had to take a picture of it.
-I learned about nine that night that Wednesday (the seventh) was a snow day. I also measured the snow after it had finished falling: seven inches.
-Keith had given me an idea. I got up at 0700, borrowed a snow shovel, and started offering to shovel people's driveways. It was 0815 before I got a customer, but I ended up shoveling five driveways and building up a good amount of warmth in the process. All told, I made $81.25 on the day and stayed warm, and also worked up an appetite. After that I walked up to Warder to check out how everything was looking. Looking out onto Burke's Pond, I noticed there were footprints halfway out onto it. Now, when Micah and I had played krokay there, we had only gone a little way out. But here, clearly, someone was daring enough to go out all the way to the middle of the pond; indeed, there appeared to have been a group of them. I decided to go out too. The whole time, I kept telling myself: "I must be a dang fool. I'm an idiot." But the ice held. I became the first person this winter (and probably for several winters, because this is the best cold snap I remember) to walk all the way across. I spotted a promising empty spot near the middle, so I went and made a Vitruvian snow angel. I also dropped off some pictures at Walgreens. I was extremely satisfied for the day; it was the best day I'd had in a really long time, perhaps years.
-Yesterday, that weatherman was at it again. Originally we were forecast to get five to ten inches overnight and today, but then it was downgraded to something like four to six, if any. The system could miss us, he said. This morning I had almost forgotten about all that, but my alarm was luckily tuned to 700 WLW, where they were reading school closings. The guy stopped at the end of the E's and said, "Let's take a break and we'll start with the F's." So then they took five agonizing minutes to do a weather report, a traffic report, a sports report, and an airport report. Then the guy started reading again. Fayetteville, Felicity, Finneytown, Franklin. All closed. Ha! I went back to sleep. Ha!
-Later today, Micah and I walked up to Panera. He wanted to eat somewhere else, but I had the money, thanks to last Wednesday. On the way, we admired the exquisite havoc. Our street wasn't even plowed yet; it didn't get plowed until 1430. We saw a pine tree that was severely droopy. Winton was fine, to my dismay. I took my camera along and stocked up on pictures of the ice everywhere. There was an especially interesting layer that had formed on a sign and partially slipped off, leaving a clear replica of the sign.
-Panera was good. I have a tradition of using names that are not actually mine at Panera. In the past I've used Spock, Vladimir, and Ivanhoe. Today I used Santa Claus. The guy who called it out said, "A little late for that, isn't it?"
-We walked back. I should note that the sidewalks were not even visible. There was of course a thick layer (well, a quarter inch or so) of ice on top of the snow. I was extraordinarily happy. Snow days are the best days ever.
-Back in the house, I contemplated how to spend the rest of the day. I was reading Calvin and Hobbes, and I suddenly realized what I needed to do. It was heavy snow, but I was determined. I started by building up a very large pile of snow with a shovel. Then I started shaping it by hand. I got the shovel and carved a big hole in the pile. I added features and sticks. And then I took pictures. It's a replica of the famous Calvin sculpture "The Torment of Existence Weighed against the Horror of Nonbeing". It is the greatest thing ever, especially for a Calvin and Hobbes person such as myself.
-"Look at that kid's snowman! What a pathetic cliché!
-"Am I supposed to identify with this complacent moron and his shovel?? This snowman says nothing about the human condition! Is this all the kid has to say about contemporary suburban life?!
-"The soulless banality of this snowman is a sad comment on today's art world.
-"Now come look at my snowman.
-"I call it, 'The Torment of Existence Weighed against the Horror of Nonbeing.'
-"As he melts, the sculpture will become even more poignant."
-"I admire your willingness to put artistic integrity before marketability."
COPYRIGHT BILL WATTERSON. REPRODUCED HERE ONLY FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES. (PLEASE DO NOT SUE ME, MR WATTERSON; I HAVE NO ILL INTENTIONS AND I LOVE YOU DEARLY. AND I'LL TAKE IT DOWN IF YOU WANT ME TO)

Studies Show Finneytown Secondary Campus Not a Real School

This was Keith's discovery. I remember it well: one day, he sat down in first bell and just asked me, "Is this a real school?" He had determined that it isn't. The first and best tip-off is that it doesn't even call itself a school. Up until my junior year, we had a wooden sign out front that animatedly proclaimed, FINNEYTOWN HIGH SCHOOL. Then they renamed the school to "Finneytown Secondary Campus" and received a new sign: it's stone and has engraved (in Times New Roman, small, and aligned to the left, not centered as it should be) FINNEYTOWN SECONDARY CAMPUS, and, below that and almost the same size, GIFT OF THE CLASS OF 2005. It's an exceedingly disheartening and half-assed sign. Another clue is that the State of Ohio rated us "effective", not "excellent". So that means I'm learning effectively. That explains why Mrs Otten was loath to teach the class the correct way to solve the phone number problem last year. And why, the day before exams started last month and Miss Miller was doing review, she gave in to the class's clamor and let us all play Heads Up, Seven Up. If this were a real school, nobody in high school would have wanted to do that, and the teacher wouldn't have let them anyhow. Besides these rather major things, there are subtle clues all over that Finneytown isn't a real school. When Keith and I find ourselves wondering why something in Finneytown is, the answer is usually that it's not a real school. For example, at lunch Keith asked me, "Why does that clock say 8:24?" I told him, "Because this isn't a real school." Why did Mr Crawley mark me wrong on a question for which there was no correct answer? He told the class it was because, if none of the answers seems quite right, you should pick the term that's most related to the issue raised in the question, even if it's wrong. That is to say, if the question is "2+4=?" and the choices are "dasanki", "Massachusetts", "13", and "efflorescence", the correct answer is 13. Keith and I quickly realized that the real reason I got the question marked wrong was that Finneytown isn't a real school, and, additionally, Mr Crawley isn't a real teacher. He's just a monitor who makes sure we all do psychology-related sorts of things. Most of the teachers at Finneytown are actually monitors, in fact, excepting only Dr White, Mr Volz, and Mr Rahn. Mr Rahn still isn't a real teacher, though, but more of a computerized correspondence course. In a real school, the English teacher wouldn't spend twenty minutes one day talking about her cats, and she would actually read the journal entries she makes us write in our composition books (I believe she has yet to open one of them). Our school lunches are obviously not real--hot wings drowning in vinegar, chicken patties made bulkier with rubber, and sandwiches with one slice of meat. Our mascot is the Wildcat, which isn't even a real animal. Coming up with it required zero thought; the person whose job it was clearly had heard of some other team named the Wildcats and copied off of them. The Wildcat logo we have everywhere is just a ripped-off version of the UK Wildcat, and it's been copied so many times by such inexpert artists that it no longer even has a nose. We've made some other discoveries, too. For example, the sidewalks at Finneytown Secondary Campus aren't really paved with concrete, but with children's broken dreams. In the bathroom, Keith regarded the sink water and said, "You know this isn't a real school; that's not really water, it's the saliva of all the students." Then he made a disgusted face and said, "Ouhww!" thus becoming the first person I know to gross himself out. We assume that on May 31st, we won't actually graduate; instead of a diploma we'll just receive a blank piece of paper plus an unemployment form. Since realizing this, we've taken a pretty dim view of our education in general, and we're kind of depressed that we haven't actually been going to school all these years. It's also sort of freeing, though, to be enlightened while everyone else still has all this school spirit and thinks they're getting a real education. That doesn't make up for it, of course.