Happy 231st birthday, America!

Here you go, Butters. :P

Anyway, the story is that this was "discovered" at a track meet that I was working this past spring. It was at our boys' Conference Meet, May 10th. We were running away with the meet (We eventually won conference by almost 70 points), so we're just having fun. :D My friend John Reasor and I, watching one of our top runners run 800 meters in 1:58.9 (which is incredibly good, and more than two seconds below state qualifying) and we asked Coach Kaplan (we call her Kappy), just being funny, what 2+2=?

Just keeping the mood light, Kappy replied 6.

We took that as our mantra into our Sectional meet the following Friday, since this is the postseason and it's state qualifing. We ran away with the meet along with Walther Lutheran. Walther finished second with 150 points, and we finished with 163 points -- the most any one team can get is 180 and we were only 17 off of that. Advanced downstate in 14 of 18 events: shot put, discus, long jump, high jump, pole vault, 4x800, 4x100, 110 hurdles, 100 dash, 300 hurdles, 1600 run, 800 run, 400 dash and the 4x400, and qualified for the state finals in the 4x800 (finished ninth with a time of 8:12.4), the 400 dash (finished second with a time of :49.28, school record ALL STATE), and the 4x400 (finished second with a time of 3:24.6, beat the school record by 5 full seconds, ALL STATE).

So by simply saying something stupid as 2+2=6 just to be funny carried us through the state series. :) It was an incredible season for the boys team.

I don't care, post anything. Anything at all. :D

EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you guys -- 2+2=6. :P

I'm just planning ahead for when I get my Wii.

So, when I get the Wii, here's what I'm probably going to get:

General:

Wii package (with Wii Sports and controller)

2nd controller

Games:

Wii Play

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Sonic and the Secret Rings

WarioWare: Smooth Moves

Mario Party 8 (for my young second cousin)

Call of Duty 3

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Super Paper Mario

Super Mario Galaxy

Other:

2000 Wii Points (maybe more)

Of course, the games depend on when I do get my Wii. I do expect all of them to be out by the time I obtain the Wii, because I am definitely not getting it before mid-January 2008, because of my Geometry final exam grade.

EDIT: This is also blog number 100! Wahey!

Oh, I'm so sore right now. But it was all worth it. Let me recap my last two days. Be prepared for a long blog.

Thursday, June 28:

I had golf on Thursday, and on Tuesday I'd gotten new clubs from one of my father's colleagues. My tee-off time is at 11:28 AM. However, wewere able to tee-off at 11:21, because the group ahead of us didn't show up for their round. I had to be ready to go at 10:40, so I got up around 9:50ish, had breakfast and got my clubs together, and hopped in the carpool and went off.

I carded a 46, which is very unusual for me. It's about 8 strokes below my usual score. This is just a junior league, so we all have ridiculous handicaps. :P The course is nine holes, but the par isn't 36, like in the big leagues. It's a par-28. The longest hole is the first one, 200 yards. One shot stood out to me, it was the farthest I've ever hit it on that course. The weird thing is that i used a 3-iron instead of one of my woods. It was the third hole, and it's about 125 yards. So not expecting anything near the hole (because I still stink :P) the thing that really surprised me is that I overshot it by about 70 yards. Not only did I sail right past the hole, I nearly ended up on the first fairway past the FOURTH hole which is right next to hole three. Weird, eh?

So my friend Nick carded a 43, dropping 11 strokes off his score from last week, like I said, I finished with a 46, 9 strokesbetter than last week, and then our buddy David shot a 54, which was only one better than last week and about 6 or 7 strokes over his usual score.

Nick and I waited for my little squirt of a brother and his little bro to finish (they tee off a half-hour later than we do) and then when they finally did finish, we hopped in the car and headed home to drop off our clubs and grab our bags for the overnighter.

The lake is a two hour trip from here, just a little south and then almost directly east of here. We stopped and grabbed McDonald's (I had lunch at golf, so I just had a M&M McFlurry) and the four little boys rode together and Nick and I rode together with my mother. The trip was actually about 2 hours and 30 minutes, only because the Tri-State was jammed upand twenty minutes from the lake there was a really bad accident, backing up traffic for miles.

So, as a result, we got there around 6 eastern instead of the 5:30 or 5:15 we were shooting for. Why? Because we can't go super-fast on the boat past 7 PM (eastern).

Nick and I, realizing this, immediately jumped out of the car, called first dibs on the bathroom, and changed into our swimsuits. Then, we uncovered the boat, and hooked it up to the car, and put it to the gate and drove it to the dock by the house. As soon as we got back, we grabbed the axe and found a toppled tree and began chopping logs for the nextcouple ofhours to help build the fire that burned until the following morning. We then had dinner and then chopped MORE wood.

It was getting to be near-dusk when Nick and I decided to take the rowboat and row all the way around the lake to the water trampoline and jump around a little. It was past 11 PM when we got back, but we could still see anyway.

About an hour later, it is now about 12:30 AM, we changed into long pants and long sleeves and decided to go on a swamp walk. It was almost 2 AM Eastern when we got back to the house. Promptly, we checked the White Sox score (they won their fourth in a row 5-1 over the Devil Rays if you care), and went to bed. The younger boys who also went on the swamp walk, had this hair-brained idea to stay up all night. Bad idea. They had no idea how active we were planning Friday to be.

Friday morning, Nick and I somehow managed to get up within two minutes of each other. And not just keeping one eye open to see when the other was awake -- I got up at 9:19 AM, and he got up at 9:21. Freaky. We picked up where we left off last night, we changed into our swimsuit and had breakfast, and then blew up the rafts that we were to go tubing on that morning and afternoon.

Ten AM. We're waiting for the lake to open up to higher speeds (it starts at 11) so we decide to take out the gun and take a soda bottle and shoot some bullets through it. We pass an entire hour just doing this.

At precisely 11 AM, we pull out of the dock, and then begin tubing. We have two tubes on and we're crashing into each other and constantly kicking each other away and trying to flip each other over. Obviously, Nick and I, being the two larger boys, got the most abuse out of the waves. Our energy was boundless, and we spent four hours roaring around the lake in the tubes until 3 PM, at which time we went in and had lunch and then went right back out and waterskiied. I attempted to waterski, as you know, but I wasn't very good. Fell flat on my face. At least I tried! Nick was able to get some wakeboarding in before the lake shut down for the day.

Six PM. This is when we started to pack up, deflate the tubes and changed and got in the car to head home. Around 7:00, we pulled out of the lake, and 45 minutes later, we were at Cracker Barrel. Everyone except Nick and I were tired, and he and I just had boundless energy. We had dinner, and then we went into separate cars, my brother coming with me (thanks to his all-nighter, he wasn't feeling so great), so Nick had to go into the car with his parents and 3 other little ones. I feel sorry for him. ;)

We finally got back home around 9:40, and it's 3 hours later and I just finished this blog, and now I'm off to bed. It wasan action-packed day and a half, and I'm really sore right now (mostly my knuckles), but I definitely am feeling stronger thanks to all that chopping and tubing.

'Night, guys. It'll probably be morning when you read this. :P

Blog Number 98... anyways, this is just a blog full of random crap. So, if you get bored.... fine by me. :P

Obviously, tomorrow, I'm off to the lakehouse. I'll let you guys know how I did water skiing and wakeboarding and whatever else we did there. Maybe I'll get to drive the boat... *60 miles an hour XD* :D

It's June 27th. Can you believe that it's already almost JULY?! :O I had to mow the lawn today, it was friggin' hot outside. I was pouring sweat....

I got a whole new set of golf clubs for golf tomorrow. They are very nice and light. Maybe that'll improve my score from my usual low/mid 50s down into the 40s more consistently ... we golf on a 9-hole course, so yeah. I'd been using my dad's old golf clubs (which were made in around 1978) before I got these from one of hiscolleagues. Long story, I ain't arsed to go through it. :D I golf with 2 other buddies -- one of which whom I'm going to the lake with.

I popped in Super Smash Bros. Melee last night and I've fallen in love with it all over again. And this is a little more than half aDECADE since it came out! I think the original release date was in December of 2001 when the GameCube came out? Anyways,today alone, (Icouldn't find my old data...yet

That's what I'm planning on doing this Thursday and Friday when I'm at my friend's lake house. It should be loads of fun! I can't wait, we leave Thursday after our weekly golf round and then drive as quickly as possible to the lake to get on the water. :D

In gaming news, I still haven't beaten the Elite Four in Pokemon Diamond, because I've had literally NO time to playit, because I've been so busy lately, now that the "kick back and catch up on your sleep that you lost over the previous school year" portion of the summer is over, and my friends and I are hanging out constantly, you know the drill...

The White Sox. They suck. Lost 3 in a row to the Cubs (scoringtwo runs in27 innings of baseball in the process)and have lost 22 of their last 28 games. They're horrible. The season is done. It's a wonder they're only 14.5 games out!

Well, I hope to have Diamond beat as soon as possible, but I'm really busy at the moment, and am probably going to be literally the rest of the summer!

Damn straight. Where was global warming in February after that Valentine's Day blizzard? Eh? Mother Nature, I'm speaking to you.

The reason why I'm filing an official complaint to her? Because it was nearly 100 out today here in the Chicago suburbs, with the heat index nearly 105.

Thursday was 90, Fridaywas 94, yesterday 97, today 93, and Monday 91 before it cools back down to the 80s (and 70s for a day) before we begin a long streak of 90s again.

The question I ask: Where was global warming when it was nearly -20 F out after the February blizzard? And, for that matter, in April when we had 3 inches of snow on my brother's birthday? Hmm?

Wow. I've basically had carte blanche to play my game since I got it. And I've taken advantage of it.

As of this writing, I've put in 31 hours and 21 minutes into my game, and I've got 122 Pokemon in my Pokedex. I've beaten all eight gyms, and I'm currently training up for Victory Road and the Elite Four.

My current crew:
Torterra Level 48
Dialga Level 48
Rapidash Level 44
Staraptor Level 42
Floatzel Level 42
Luxray Level 36

Friend Code: 0860 0124 4009

PM me with yours or just leave a comment with it. Whichever works, and I'll add you. I should have the Elite Four beaten by this time next week.