How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

Honor! I absolutely loved your Siri-tribute. It made me start thinking of all the reasons I love our wonderful sister too. I'm gonna steal your cool idea. But I'm including this disclaimer so that everyone will know I didn't think of this first. I bow to the creative genius as we declare together, WE LOVE YOU SIRI!!!

32 reasons why I love you so much:

1. When Troy Dougherty liked you better than me, you decided you wouldn't like him back. Ahh, the heartaches of 10 year olds.

2. You let me practice my French braiding skills on your head. Ouch.

4. You never gloated if I didn't finish my dishes night and had to do yours too.

7. When our parents sent you to check off my jobs, you always helped me finish and told Mom everything looked great! It stills warms my heart to remember your loyal heart.

15. In high school when we were both in typing, sigh, that was my worst class, but the best part was sitting next to you. Every glowing praise from Mrs. Hestilow to you always made me so pleased. So what if I couldn't type worth beans, It was like knowing a celebrity :) You and John Gross are my typing heroes.

18. When Damon stepped on that cup and sliced his foot down to the tendon, you were so calm. I remember you went to the Doctor and were there and saw the whole thing. You were strong for him that day. You were always strong for all of us. Its like cotton batting over solid steel how fiercely strong and devoted you were for all of us.

23. The Gilbert version of Anne of Green Gables. How many times have we watched that together fast forwarding all the scenes without Gilbert? We were both so smitten. It was fun to share that with you. You were the Diana to my Anne.

29. Your friendship has been one of the pivotal experiences of my life. Your testimony, kindness and goodness has been like a lodestar for me. When we were preparing to go to the temple I was mostly looking forward to my mission but you were preparing solely to make sacred covenants, it helped to keep me grounded in what was important, in “what was needful”. I still remember that day as holy and sacred. I am so grateful we could share that together like so many we have shared before and since.

32. Ok, so I cheated a little and skipped some numbers. I'm getting sleepy. Here's a final poem to make up for the omitted numbers. A poem written by Siri for all of you to enjoy:

Damon White,
was a boy,
who just sits there eating crackers
and it doesn't even matter much to him,
he just...something...something...something...

Siri! Help! Do you remember this song?! How did it go?
Ok, it can be argued that that wasn't much of a poetry reading; let's try this one written by Honor and Roger:

Karen has a goiter,
and Siri's not much shoiter,
than her,
because she is 5'9",
and she's looking very fine,
Na, na, na, na, na. Na, na.

Siri, you are still looking very fine! I hope your birthday was wonderful!
Aroha Nui (Much love)!!!

Spring Break!

I'm so tired I could sleep for 4 days straight. Which I guess I can do since it's spring break!

The Breakfast of Champions: Taking breakfast and Tetris to a whole new level. (pun intended)

One quarter at WWU I took Organic Chem., Physics and Tetris. It was a fantastically full load. I even flirted with the idea of dropping Tetris but instead I worked hard and stuck it out. It was a huge time commitment, as I studied two or three hours a day for that class alone. At night I would close my eyes and see blocks falling in my brain. It’s possible I passed my other classes but one thing I know—
I am addicted to Tetris. A-d-d-i-c-t-e-d-!
My favorite version is Cowtris; which you must download immediately. I promise you will love it.


Get it here: http://nonsense.wglick.org/cowtris.html

Of course waffles are also deliciously wonderful so I chuckled when my friend Aims sent me this picture:

Waffles. Yum. Calories aside, they are delicious with whipped cream and maple syrup and they taste best on the couch in front of the fire watching reruns of whatever show you never have time to watch because you are always trying to sharpen and hone your Tetris skills.

My roomie got me hooked on from-scratch buttermilk batter--no dry mixes here! I especially love to toss in mini choco chips and dried cherries, fresh blueberries or bacon. Maybe not all together, but maybe. If that's your thing. My thing is to enjoy separately. But hey it's your breakfast so go wild.

What's your waffle thing?

An irrational love of pie.

I love pie. And I know I’m not the only one. Jealousy is the most common response I get when I explain our family’s tradition of waking up to a pumpkin pie breakfast on Thanksgiving morning. Yum. Pumpkin Pie. Lemon Meringue Pie. Raspberry Pie. Apple Pie. Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. Chocolate Pie. I really love all pie…sans mince meat; sorry Dad. I just don’t understand what exactly it’s made of—it makes me nervous.

Fact: Every 5 minutes one in four people is currently eating, preparing to eat or thinking of eating pie.

Fact: 9 out of 10 people would rather eat pie than brush their teeth.

Fact: Astronauts and Cosmonauts won’t go to space without pie http://www.cnn.com/US/9511/atlantis/11-16/index.html

So you can imagine my joy today (3.14) when my love of pie intersects with my love of pi. The irrational, never repeating, wonder-number that represents the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. My love of pi started in 10^th grade Geometry when Mr. Crack offered me extra credit if I could memorize pi to its 25^th decimal place. A few days later he gave me a chunk of chalk and stood back surprised as I quickly jotted down pi to the 49^th decimal.

49?! you ask? Yep, 49. And it was easy, here’s how:

Fact: telephone numbers are in groups of 7 (except for in the Cook Islands where 5 digits will let you reach anyone in the country).

Fact: I had seven friends in high school. (Who knew I was so popular!)

Fact: I simply assigned a set of 7 numbers to each friend

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375…

3 + 1 + 4 = (20 x 0) + 8

CRACK-O!

Happy Pi Day!

I'm going to the moon and I'm taking my flannel pajama bottoms.

Lately there have been a lot of discipline issues at school. Marijuana on the bus. Language sailors would blush to hear. "STUDENTS!, talk like your grandma is sitting next to you.” I call it pre-WASL spring stress. The principal calls it lack of goals.

So on Friday she passed out goal setting surveys for each kid to fill out. Questions like “What college do you want to go to?”, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, etc. One of the questions was “If you could have twenty things, what would they be?”

Understandably, some of my students had a hard time after about five things they wanted, most of us don’t have a running total we have easy access to that quickly. To be helpful, I wrote some incredibly random things on the board to inspire them to think beyond the obvious nano i pod, clothes from Hollister, a million dollars, yada, yada, yada.

My Suggestions:

• planetarium in my house,
• a puppy,
• national parks pass,
• surfing lessons,
• a cupcake,
• vacation to New Zealand,
• a telescope,
• fraction skills,
  
• waffle iron,
• a very minor role in a very major film,
• more rocks for my rock collection,
• for Pluto to have its planet rights reinstated, (we miss you Pluto!)

But here’s my quandary; if you read the question carefully, is it saying you would get these additional twenty things along with all of the other things you currently have? Or do you only get twenty items to own? Are you getting sent off to the moon and may take only twenty items? Curious. I'm going to the moon and I'm taking my flannel pajama bottoms. What would you take?