Friday, April 21, 2006

Kilt her a squirr'l when she was only three

I've been sitting on this story for two days, trying to come up with a way to tell it that isn't creepy, but I don't think there's a way. So here goes.

On Wednesday, Ava & Johanna were out playing on the deck, and Tami & Thomas were inside. Tami heard crying from outside, and figured that the girls were fighting over a toy or something. Ava came inside, saying "Bird!" Johanna was still outside, crying, so Tami went out to check on her. Johanna was sitting on her little plastic trike with her feet way up in the air, saying "Squirrel!"

Tami thought maybe a squirrel had been running along the handrail of the deck, as they like to do, and scared the girls. But as she approached, Tami saw why Johanna was crying, and why her feet were up in the air: pinned under the front wheel of the tricycle was a small, dead squirrel.

As you might expect, Johanna was a little upset. She seems OK now, though, and has since told us that she thought the squirrel looked like it was wearing a hat (?), and that it also looked like it had a raspberry on it (blood?).

The Wisdom of Committees

Twice a year I run in local relay road races. The next is the Brookings Marathon. We usually have goofy team names, like "Junta," "Andante," "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes," (one of my favorites), "And Hutch," "Starsky" (we had two teams for that race), or "Frank & Beans." We never use the same name twice.

This year, there was no broad agreement, so we just combined every idea we had. We are "Automated External Defibrillator and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Mullet."

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Emma Thvedt, 1910-2006

This photo must be about 40 years old. Neither Mom nor Dad could identify the occasion nor even the location.