Political Theory?

While reading the newspaper this morning, I came across an article on the negotiations of the debt ceiling. For whatever reason, it reminded me of something I had read in Gulliver's Travels (weird, I know). Looking back at the passage I had in mind, I found the following excerpt about a political theory a man had from Gulliver's voyage to Laputa to be oddly appropriate in this time of political gridlock...

"When the parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance to reconcile them. The method is this. You take a hundred leaders of each party, you dispose them into couples of such whose heads are nearest of a size; then let two nice operators saw off the occiput of each couple at the same time, in such a manner that the brain my be equally divided. Let the occiputs thus cut off be interchanged, applying each to the head of his opposite party-man... he argued thus: that the two half brains being left to debate the mater between themselves within the space of one skull, would soon come to a good understanding, and produce that moderation, as well as regularity of thinking, so much to be wished for in the heads of those who imagine they come into the world only to watch and govern its motion."

Think about it :)

Heat Wave

Finally, the heat has (somewhat) abated!! This entire week has been super hot and humid outside - at least for Michigan standards - and it is wearing on my nerves. The past few days haven't been that bad (currently, it is 86 degrees outside), but the first part of the week was torture. It almost never gets into the high 90's here, and with the humidity, it felt even hotter than that. My brother keeps on insisting that it's not that hot out there, but what does he know - he spends his entire day inside, in the air conditioned house, playing on his video game. And to top it off, even if I wanted to go swimming in our lake to cool off, I couldn't because they put the chemicals in there on Monday to kill weeds or something. It seems obvious to me that it would make more sense to put the chemicals into the lake in the beginning of the summer, and not in the middle - during a heat wave, no less - when everyone wants to swim, but apparently, not everyone is as intelligent as myself.

Anyway, back to what I have been doing since I returned home. Well, as you all must know, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part II came out on Friday, July 15th, and seeing as it is the last movie in the series, my family unanimously decided that we should go to the midnight showing, which is what we did. It was a pretty cool experience. Every theater in the complex (and I think there are about 20) was showing the movie, and quite a few of them were sold out. We came super early (8:30-ish to be precise), just so that we could get a good seat. My sister's friend, "Sacajawea", came with us, dressed up as Darth Vader. It was quite funny. She had on the mask, as well as a light saber, and on a sign, she had a picture of Harry Potter on the front and "The force is strong in this one" written on the back. A good percentage of the people there were dressed up as characters from the books, or at least had on a t-shirt that had something to do with Harry Potter. Sadly, I was not one of those people. Even so, it was still pretty cool seeing some of the costumes people thought up. There was even someone who had dressed up like Ron Weasley from A Very Potter Musical, with a sweatband on his head and a rat on his shoulder (full disclosure: I myself haven't actually seen that musical, so my sister was the one that pointed it out). Except for a little bit of sleep deprivation and the traffic jam to get out after it was done, it was a fun experience. The movie itself was superb, even if they did change a few key scenes around. What matters is that they got the feel of the book, as well as the majority of scenes correct.
Other than Potter-related things, I haven't really done anything worth noting. I did go on a bike ride with my sister and friend, which was fun. I have also been forcing myself to read Gulliver's Travels, which is one of my summer reading novels. I took a week or so hiatus to read other books (6 other books to be precise), but I really need to get cracking, seeing as it's the third week of July already, and I am only on my second book. You see, my problem isn't the reading itself. In fact, the book is quite funny if I actually get around to reading it. My problem is the starting to read it - I have so many other things I would rather do, no matter how interesting the book could be. That has been pretty much the extent of what I've done since last blogging. The only other thing I should say is that my sister's friend, "Sacajawea", is coming over tomorrow and spending the night, so that she can help my sister with hair and makeup for senior pictures, which is on Tuesday. My sister has decided to make a cake for her today, so that should be tasty. So now that that tangent has been exhausted, I say adieu.

Random Pictures from Vacation

"Kingsley" Digging in the Garden (Courtesy of Aunt "Rose")

Kingsley Enjoying his New Blanket

LaMar's Donuts

Max

Gus and Max

Gus

Casper resting

Tour at Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis

Cardinal's Game

Cardinals Game (you can see how close we were)

Cardinal's Game

Cardinal's Game

At the Lake

Puppies and Driving Home

Star

Kingsley meeting Ninja

Kingsley meeting Ninja

Ninja-Star

Ninja

It's now time to get back to work...well for some members of my family. Though I still have plenty of free time, my family's vacation to Missouri is over. We arrived back in Michigan last night after a long and grueling drive. We were originally supposed to get home at 8:30 PM (at least according to the GPS), but due to some difficulties, we didn't arrive until around 11:00 PM. But more about that later; right now, let's recap the last few days of our vacation. I think last time I posted, I left off on our last day. Well, the last day was a nice one - we went swimming, on one last boat ride, and then ate dinner at a restaurant in town called B&J's, where I got a delicious burger and tried fried green beans for the first time (I don't know about you, but fried vegetables seem to defeat the purpose of having something healthy). By the time we did all that, we didn't leave to 6 PM or later, so we didn't arrive at my grandparent's house near Kansas City until relatively late at night. My Aunt "Rose" and "oldest uncle's" new Westie puppies, Max and Gus, were sleeping when we got there, but they woke up when Kingsley nudged his way into the room the were in. Of course, now that they were awake, we had to introduce them to Kingsley. My dad suggested that we do it one puppy at a time, as to not overwhelm Kingsley, and eventually, Kingsley adjusted to not being in the center of attention (though he occasionally got jealous). For the record, I have to say that the puppies are extremely cute, though a bit rambunctious, especially Max. After unpacking everything, I played around with them for an hour or so, and then went to bed (which I had to share with my sister and mom - not fun).

The next morning, I was awoken by the high pitched barking of the puppies, and after tossing around a bit, I decided to get up. My mom and Aunt "Rose" had left earlier to get donuts from LaMar's Donuts, which was twenty miles or so away, I believe. Why they had to go so far to get donuts, when they could have gotten perfectly good ones closer to home, I don't know, but I will say that the donuts were delicious. I had two sprinkle donuts, as well as pieces from some of the others they had gotten. There was no set plan about when we were going to leave for St. Louis, though we joked that we would leave as soon it was lunchtime, so that we could go and eat at Hiboy's, a local fast food restaurant, and one of the few exceptions I make to my no-fast food rule. In essence, that is exactly what we did, though more for the reason that that was when we finished packing up than anything else. As promised, we stopped at Hiboy's on the way out, and, though it may seem superfluous to say it, the food was very good.

The ride to St. Louis was pretty uneventful, but what happened afterwards wasn't. When we arrived, Kingsley met another set of puppies, this time pugs. Their names are Ninja and Star (do you see a theme?), and per Aunt "Rose's" request, I have posted pictures of them. Though we stopped in St. Louis on the way down, they hadn't gotten the dogs by then, so this was the first time we met them. Like Gus and Max, Ninja and Star were full of energy and rarely sat still. It was some feat to take a good picture of them. After meeting the dogs and unpacking, it was revealed that my aunt had two extra tickets to that night's Cardinals' game, and wondered if any of us wanted to go. Both my brother and I wanted to, and in a few minutes we were on our way. But don't feel sorry for the rest of my family; they met up with my Grandpa (my dad's dad) at the Wildhorse Grill, where they ate dinner. My dad rarely sees his dad, so they had a good time. But back to the Cardinal's game. Let me tell you, the seats that we had were amazing. They were one section away from the Away dugout, and about 5 or so rows from the field itself. Pretty nice for a game, I wasn't even expecting to go to (or knew about, for that matter) a few hours ago. It even had its own private concession stand and bathrooms. All I can say is that it was quite a bit nicer than the nosebleed seats my family had at the last baseball game we attended, watching the Tigers at Comerica Park. Nearer to the end of the game, my brother, cousin, and I went searching for cotton candy, and in the process, got our pictures taken twice for the Cardinal's website. We found this kind of strange, seeing as only my cousin was wearing Cardinal's clothing, and were joking that if another person came up to us, we would say something along the lines of "no paparazzi, please." The game was pretty exciting, too - especially in the last two innings, where the Cardinals tied and then won. I feel sorry for the people who left in the 7th inning, when they were down by 3. Luckily, there were no extra innings, so we got home at a relatively reasonable time.

And now on to our trip back to Michigan, which was certainly longer than 10 hours. First, there was a traffic jam just before we got off to eat lunch in Plainfield, Indiana. I'm not joking, it took us thirty minutes or more to travel 2 miles. When we finally got there, we had trouble finding the Panera Bread, because we had never eaten there before. But the worst was after we left from there. My parents planned on going one way so they could bypass some construction or something like that, but it turns out that the exit they were planning to get on was closed. So, we decided to follow the GPS and see where it took us. Well, we got quite a nice drive through the nice and not so nice parts of Indianapolis. The route was also confusing because this road we were driving on eventually turned into the highway, which was hard to see on the map. Needless to say, everyone was a bit cranky by the time we got out of that mess. We finally got back on track, but it took quite a bit longer than we expected it would. The vacation was a lot of fun, but now we are back to reality, where you can't swim every day or read books for hours on end. The only thing I wish we would have done is stop at Ted Drewes' in St. Louis, but it's probably for the best that we didn't, seeing as I have eaten so much ice cream and desserts during this vacation. Right now, I kind of need to detox. It's also probably high time that I start reading the rest of my summer reading novels. So, until my next exciting adventure.

Traditions and Boat Failures

As I previously mentioned in one of my blogs, the plans for this trip have been constantly changing. You would think that once we were on vacation, the plans would be set in stone, but no. Fortunately for me, this is a welcome change. My whole family was going to have to leave the lakehouse and drive up to Kansas City to my grandparent's house so that my sister could go to this college visit, but yesterday (or maybe the day before), my parents decided that my sister and mom would go up by themselves in my grandparent's car, and then we would follow them there the next day (today). As you can imagine, I was happy about this change because it meant that I would get an extra day down at the lake.
But back to what I have been doing since I last blogged. I think I was complaining about the fact that we hadn't done any of the things that we normally do. Well, per tradition, on Wednesday, we ate lunch at the Port Grill, and then for dinner, got pizza from Pizza Hut. I was kind of hoping to go to Pizza Hut by boat, but you can't have everything. The only tradition that we have left to do is go tubing, but I don't think that is going to happen, seeing as the tube has a whole in it somewhere. I'm not too disappointed in that turn of events, though it would have been fun to go tubing at least one time, even if it was behind the waverunner. Anyway, at the Port Grill, I got a Reuben sandwich, which was pretty good. Mind you, it was no Zingermans, but I didn't expect it to be. Even though the food was pretty good (excepting the onion rings we got for an appetizer - the crust was all flaky), it took forever to get anything. Granted, we did have a big group, but there were people who came in after us, who had groups just a little smaller, who got their food first. It was pretty annoying. But the meal there isn't really what was important about this trip, that was the same old, same old. It was what happened afterwards that is memorable. Right when we got out of the no-wake zone and tried to go faster, there was something wrong with the boat. My uncle wasn't sure what was wrong with the boat, and didn't want to risk anything, or to turn the engine off, in fear that it wouldn't start again, so we had to drive all the way home at about 10 mph - in the hot, sunny afternoon. Needless to say, it was not the fun experience we were looking for. We managed to make light of the situation, though, by making a video pretending that we had been on the boat for 60 days, or something like that, and were all about to eat each other. It was pretty funny. When we finally got back to the dock, we were all sweaty and hot, and as soon as it was possible, we all jumped into the lake to cool off. Of course, it was just our luck that as soon as we went back to swimming, it got cloudy, while while when we were stuck on the boat, the sun was beating down on us.
Fortunately, the boat got fixed yesterday, so we were able to go on two boat rides that were faster than 10 mph. It was a huge improvement. We even got off to go swimming, in a cove that is apparently called "Party Cove," though there didn't seem to be any partying there at the time we stopped. Like I said before, I'm not really sure what the plans for today are, but hopefully, we will be able to spend some time down at the lake before we have to leave. Until next time, then!

More Fireworks

Here are the videos of the fireworks that I promised. Though these are just some of the highlights, they should give an accurate portrayal of the awesome fireworks display yesterday. A few of them are sideways, so if if looks like the fireworks are shooting off to the right, just turn your computer or deal with it :)

Fireworks Galore!!!!

Just in case you were wondering, last night's fireworks display was awesome. There were several ones that I've never seen before, and even though it was a bit short, I enjoyed myself a lot. There were a few mishaps, however. One of the fireworks caught fire, a few went sideways and almost hit us, and another that we had lit earlier in the day just randomly went off. But, at least for me, that added to the excitement of it all. Instead of shooting them off down the street, as we usually do, we decided to shoot them at the end of the peninisula. I believe the resoning for that was so that not as much would need to be picked up and they wouldn't land on other houses. Though they were a lot closer and we were in more danger of being hit, I found it cool that it seemed that they were shooting off right over our head, that we were in the thick of the action. You can't really see that in the videos, but in person, it was pretty cool. I think that my favorite firework was called "the peacock," which, as the name suggests, shot fireworks out in a triangular way, just like the feathers of a peacock. Unfortunatly, I did not manage to get a video of that particular firework. I thought I was recording, but apparently, I wasn't pushinng hard enough down on the button, and the video didn't even start recording. I'm sure that these videos and pictures will make up for it, though. Enjoy!

R&R at the Lake

"Hope High School"

Joplin, Missouri


Random Kingsley Picture - I just saw it and thought it was cute

Dogs Relaxing at the Lake

Happy Fourth of July everybody! Once it gets sufficiently dark, my uncle will be putting on his very own fireworks display, which is something that I look forward to every year. All weekend we have been watching the fireworks from across the lake or down the street, so in theory, we don't really have to our own, but it is still exciting. I will have to put some pictures later. But before that, I should describe what my time down at the lake has like been so far. To start out, the weather has been amazing. Up until late last night, it has been sunny with few clouds in the sky. If it weren't for the heat (yesterday it got up to 111 degrees), it would be perfect. The first two days down here were everything that I was expecting. We went swimming, rode on the waverunner, read, and generally relaxed and eaten delicious foods. Actually, correction: we didn't ride on the waverunner until the second day because my dad had to get it working. The deal with the waverunner is that it is only ridden one week of the year - the week of the fourth. In fact, if my dad isn't here to fix it (like he wasn't a few years ago when we stayed home), it doesn't get ridden at all. Basically the only bad thing that happened is that I got a little sunburned, but that's to be expected.

Yesterday was the exception to the routine. Instead of going down to the lake and vegging out, my family decided to go over to Joplin, Missouri - where that horrible tornado hit in May and where my two uncle, including Uncle "Frank", live - and volunteer for the tornado relief. Other than the heat, the day was nice. What we did is we signed up at the volunteer base in the local university parking lot, and then were bused to the high school, which was destroyed during the tornado. From there, we were given our assignment and were bused out to the house where we would be working. Because of all of the particulates in the air, it was required that we where these masks, which, while effective, were still uncomfortable and hot. The actual temperature outside did nothing to help. I think at one point, it got up to 111 degrees. Because it was so hot and there was a chance of getting a heat stroke, the volunteer leaders were constantly going around making sure everyone was hydrated. I must have drank around ten water bottles during the few hours (3 or 4 - I'm not sure) that we were there. What did we do exactly, you might ask? Well, basically we were picking up debris from the house and in the yard and sorting it into different groups. For example, there was the whole brick wall that had been blown over, and over the course of our volunteering, my family was able to clean it out and put all the bricks into the pile for salvageable bricks. After a few hours, we were super tired, dirty, hot, and sunburned, so we decided to stop and after signing out, just drove around town to get the whole picture of the destruction. I think my favorite thing from my time in Joplin was the high school sign. All that was left of Joplin in "Joplin High" was the o and the p, so someone put the letters in tape or something so that it spelled out "Hope High." It was something very simple, yet touching. Also, in the house across the street, one of the only thing left untouched was the closet full of clothing. It was stuff like that that really made you think.

Once we were back at the lake, we just relaxed and lay down because we were all so tired. Other than sleeping, though, one of the main things that I've done here is reading. I've finished four books while on vacation, not to mention the three or four others that I finished the week before we left. I'm a veritable reading machine. Granted, many of said books were quite a bit below my reading level, but that is still an accomplishment to be proud of. Out of all the books I have read here, my favorite is probably Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I thought that Pride and Prejudice couldn't get any better, but this book was hilarious. I will definitely have to read the sequel and prequel. One of the books that I finished at home was A Tale of Two Cities, which is one of my summer reading novels. Even with all the preparation from hints from my family, I still was surprised by the ending, which I liked very much. (SPOILER ALERT: skip to next paragraph if you don't want the ending revealed to you) Sydney Carton just came out of nowhere. I didn't really think he was that important in the first two books, but in the third books, he comes out of the shadows and into the spotlight. From all the foreshadowing and such in the book, I was sure that it was going to be Charles Darnay who was going to die. Needless to say, I was certainly surprise when it was Sydney, not Darnay, who died. I also liked how everything came together and was glad that Mme. Defarge was killed. All in all, it was a very good book, and even though some say that the middle is sluggish to get through, I still enjoyed reading it. It is definitely one of my new favorites.

Until Thursday, this is what my days are going to be like. The only new thing today was that we went on a boat ride this afternoon. It was delayed by the early morning rains and then by not being able to start the boat, but when we finally went out, the weather was beautiful and cooler than the previous days, which was nice. We even stopped for a while and swam off the end of the boat, which is something that I haven't done in a while. Now, all we have to do is order pizza from the Pizza Hut and go to the Port Grill - two traditions. Again, happy Independence Day, and tomorrow, there will be more on the fireworks display. I promise.

Down at the Lake

I know that it is already the third day of my Fourth of July vacation, and this is the first time I am blogging, but the past two days were veerrrry long, and by the end of the day, I was too tired to do anything but sleep. For those not in the know, I am currently at my uncle's lakehouse on Table Rock Lake in southern Missouri, where we spend (almost) every 4th of July week. I know that southern Missouri is not France or Italy, as two of my friends have gone or are going to this summer, but we've been coming down here every year (with one or two exceptions) for as long as I can remember. Our vacation began on Wednesday, when my family drove down to St. Louis. The car we used, our ten year old Suburban, recently had its air conditioning fixed, and we were crossing our fingers that it would hold out - you do not want to be driving south for ten hours in a car that does not have air conditioning. That would make an already unpleasant experience more uncomfortable. Luckily, it worked, and the drive was relatively uneventful, if slightly boring.

Usually we drive straight through to my uncle's lakehouse or stopover in St. Louis, only to drive the extra five hours the next morning, but this trip was different. Before setting off from Michigan, there were quite a few plans that were made about the way down - at first we were going to visit a bunch of colleges before driving to St. Louis. Basically, every day, there was a different plan and it was so hard to keep track of what we were going to do that I stopped trying. Luckily for my family and my sanity, we decided to visit only one college: Washington University in St. Louis. But trust me, we made up for all that time that we didn't spend on on other colleges in this visit. First of all, we had to get up early for a campus tour - it was at 8:30 AM and we just made it. Then, we had meeting after meeting, we had to eat lunch, and while waiting for another meeting, we went into this weird modern art museum on campus. We didn't leave until 3:00 PM. It was a long day and super hot outside - 97 degrees out - so even though I really liked the campus and thought the school was nice, I kind of just wanted to go back to my aunt's house by the end of the visit.

When we finally returned to my aunt's house, we packed up and drove down to my uncle's lakehouse. Even though it is usually a 5 hour drive, it seemed to be super long. On the way there, we were on the lookout for this billboard on the way, that we didn't have time to take a picture last time we came down. All it says is "Jesus" in huge lettering, and for some reason, I just find that very amusing. Even though we were on the alert, we still didn't manage to get a picture. Maybe next time, but for the time being, I put a picture at the top that I found on the Internet. I don't know if it is the same billboard, but it looks the same. Anyway, we finally arrived there at about 10:00 PM or something like that. Now today, all the dogs, my dad, sister, Uncle "Frank", and I all went on a walk early in the morning. It is supposed to get hot today, so that was the only time where you wouldn't melt with the heat. Hopefully, today we will be able to go swimming and go out on the lake :)