Jump Jive

Found this video of Cab Calloway on Sesame Street on a friend's web site:

Burning Sticks

Yep so we have all kinds of sticks that fell all over our yard during the winter. A couple weeks ago we piled them all up against the fence behind the garage. We thought we might have to haul all the yard waste to the dump or something, but then one of Kenji's co-workers suggested we get a chiminea and burn it in the backyard. So last night we went to Home Depot and got this one and Kenji put it together today, and we burned a nice little pile of sticks. We got plenty more to burn but we can do that some other time.

It was fun and it smelled like when we used to have bonfires in the late winter/early spring in the woods in back of my mommy and daddy's house. :)

Ohyeah, you might notice that Kenji has his finger in a splint. For some reason he likes to fall going up the stairs and this time his pinky bonked into the wall and now it's all bruised. Yesterday it was all swollen up looking like a little black and blue snowman!

Making an Egg Salad Sandwich

For lunch today I made an egg salad sandwich. As I was removing the egg shells I was reminded of a kid I went to school with named Scott.

The thing about eggs that made me think of him was that one time in elementary school, Scott brought in a brown, jiggly, translucent egg for show and tell. He said he made the egg that way by putting it in vinegar for a few days or something like that. The egg looked pretty cool, but I could never remember exactly how he said he did it. I think I tried to make a brown jiggly translucent egg once but it didn't work out, and I was too shy to ask Scott how he did it. If only I had the internet back then... I would have been able to look it up!

So anyway while I was thinking about Scott and the jiggly brown translucent egg, it occurred to me that the only other thing I remember about him is how he almost strangled me in fourth grade. I don't think he intended to do since I don't recall any malicious intent.

What happened was I was sitting backwards in my chair, working on some little project with the girl seated at the desk behind me. I was wearing a bright green hooded sweatshirt, and when Scott walked by, he grabbed my hood and wrapped it around my neck and just kept walking while holding onto my hood. I twisted around in my chair as far as I could, but I couldn't turn very much because I was sitting backwards in my chair and my leg got caught on the chair back. So the hood kept getting tighter and tighter around my neck, and I couldn't speak. Then everything got a bit fuzzy and quiet, and the next thing I remember I was looking up at the ceiling and I could see one or two of my friends standing over me. Then things got less fuzzy, and went and told the teacher and she didn't really do anything about it and then I forgot about it... until I made egg salad sandwich today. :)

20 Years Ago Today

Exactly 20 years ago today, Kenji and his family went to visit a friend of his dad's. Kenji and his brother were outside on the front lawn throwing Crazy Jacks onto the road to celebrate the Fourth of July. One of the Crazy Jacks Kenji's brother threw bounced off the road, across the street, and landed in a neighbor's large maple tree. The two brothers looked at each other - nothing happened. But then five seconds later, the entire 25-foot-tall tree erupted in flames!

Kenji thought it was funny as all the parents ran outside to fight the fire with garden hoses. After several minutes, the grownups managed to extinguish the flames. At that very moment, the fire department arrived.

The next day, Kenji went to Chicago to visit Uncle Mark. The End.