Dave Thomas (no relation to the Wendy’s guy) was my 7th and 8th grade science and algebra teacher. He taught me a lot. He was smart, funny and really just a nice guy. He had flaming red hair in a long ponytail and a beard to match. He was in his late twenties or early thirties when I went to Cascade or as he said since he was born on leap day he was looking forward to his 8th birthday. He loved Mr. Natural (an R Crumb character) and if you did really well he had a stamp he would use on your paper.
He was already suffering pretty badly from Parkinson’s (I believe) and the deterioration was noticeable even during the two years I was there. He played basketball everday at lunch, but moved very slowly. He had a smooth shot though and could beat just about anybody at H-O-R-S-E.
So Happy Birthday and “Stop that Crap!” (inside joke).
Tags: Cascade Middle School, Dave Thomas, Mr. Natural, Sedro-Woolley, washington
My cousin Ian and his wife Julie have just (well a couple of weeks ago) had their first child. Callahan Brady Hunter. Ian and Julie have a blog with lots of pictures (from which I stole this photo). From their site:
The little guy was born on Monday, February 11th at 7:06p.m., weighing a whopping 9 lbs, 6.7 oz. and is 21.5 inches tall. His size took all of us by surprise.
We wish them the best and of course we wish them lots of sleep (they’re going to need it).
Jillian, who still isn’t crawling in the officially sanctioned and defined way, has become a lot more mobile the over the last few weeks. But she moves in a way that is almost so subtle that you don’t notice it. She’ll sneak up on you (or away from you) if you let her. It happens like this:
- She starts in a sitting position
- She stretches out to whatever direction she is going and ends up flat on the floor
- She kind of scrunches her self up and pulls herself into a sitting position
- She repeat the above steps very slowly and cutely so no one notices she is getting ever closer to Wesley’s toys
The movement reminds me quite a bit of an amoeba. Sort of amorphous, fluid movement that looks random but has a definite vector. She’ll be crawling soon enough, but for now I’ll just enjoy watching the show. It’s kind of mesmerizing to watch.
Tags: Jillian
Apparently we have an annoying bird that visits our house early each morning. I haven’t seen him or heard him myself, but I’m now convinced that he is around. Wesley has been waking up fairly early (between 6 and 6:30) the past few weeks. I had thought it might be the light coming in his window and we planned to get him a darker window shade. Still each morning I would go in and he would tell me that he heard the “birdies outside talking, tweet, tweet!”. I didn’t think too much of it because I could hear your average early morning bird tweeting outside and assumed that he heard it too after he woke up. But last week with my family in town at least two people complained to me about our “alarm clock bird”. Apparently he hangs out in the trees near the East end of the house (where Wesley and Jillian’s bedrooms are) and begins making a racket at about 5:30 in the morning. The lovely song this bird sings sounds quite a bit like “Beep, pause, Beep, pause, Beep, pause, Beep” according to independent accounts by multiple family members. I’m not sure what kind of bird it is, but I both wish he would go away and am glad he doesn’t hang out near our bedroom.