Randoms from the Month of Caesar

Hi America,

Summer's winding down, and no one feels the impending doom that is the coming school year more than I.  While I don't start back until the 18th of August, I generally switch back into 'work mode' as of August 4th - the day after Kris' birthday, if only to prove to myself that I didn't do anything productive throughout the month of July.

Though, as you can see from the pictures below, I did manage to accomplish a few things.

Check it out:

Due to crap-load of circumstances that I won't delve in to at present, I've decided that this will be the last year I teach at my current school.  Over the eight years I've been there, I've accumulated a library of books large enough to facilitate a small town (not joking.)  As such, I felt that it was time to bring all of my books back to the house and start sorting through what I wanted to keep, what I wanted to sell, and what I still needed for work, and what I wanted to donate to charity.  What you see in those boxes above is about half of what I brought back to the house.

My work library is about 1/2 the size of my home library, so when combined, it's enough to make my wife foam at the mouth.  Over the course of two days, I whittled down my personal library by about 20% and my work library down by about 70%.  Now I have mountains of books piled up in the garage waiting to be sold or donated, and Kris finally has room to put stupid stuff like 'statues' and 'picture frames' on some of the bookshelves.  Lame.

Abby loves anything she's not supposed to be playing with.  Especially if it belongs to Kris.

Rosining up the bow.

I have the ugliest palm tree in Florida.  Prove me wrong, America.

Kris plays the Card Cheat

The Houghs make a Rainbow Connection (Zack Smith must be nearby.)

I bought MarioKart 8 for our Wii U a couple weeks ago - Nintendo was running a promotion where if you bought MarioKart during the months of June/July, they'd let you choose a free game download (your choices were Super Mario Bros. U, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, Pikmin 3, and WiiU Play - all which retail for about $50.)  This was obviously too good a deal to pass up - two games for the price of one - so I found MarioKart online for $45 (its usually $60) and ordered Pikmin 3 (I already own Wind Waker, and Pikmin has won rave reviews for its graphics and puzzle-based gameplay.)  MarioKart, of course, doesn't disappoint either - the kids (especially Alayna) has really taken a shine to it.

She's not great at it - usually places last - but she's improving, and loves using the Wii U's Gamepad controller.

Kris puts on her 'race face.'

Homework and reading time.  I could lie and say this happens all the time, but we're more of a video game and Netflix sort of family over the summer.

Alayna at her second annual eye appointment. . .

. . . and catching up on some articles in Wired.

Good to see our H.O.A. dues going to good use. . .

The kids were pretty stoked that they had to take turns swinging down at our subdivision's park. . .

Watson Rutherford Hough

Everyone Poops.  A new Hough Family favorite.

Makin' snakes.

(That red thing's a mouse so the snake has something to eat.)

Alayna and some of her gift card plunder from Justice - an overpriced store designed to whip elementary-aged girls into a frenzy.

See the cat with a surfboard shirt? That may be the creepiest shirt I've ever seen, but that's what Alayna picked out.

Watching a movie

Some summer samplers that have accumulated over the last month or so (the Woodchuck's Kris' - give me some credit.)

I brought four or five of my better fake trees home, seeing how I was cleaning out my classroom clutter and everything.  I managed to convince Kris into letting me keep them, but I think the remaining four or five at work may have to go.

- Brian

Hildts, Hilderdudes, and Houghs

Meh.

A long, long time ago, Yours Truly lived in Africa.  Technically I was over there serving in the U.S. Peace Corps, but more accurately I was over there avoiding adulthood for a few more years, traveling on the government's dime, and otherwise still acting like I was in college.

Read a shit-load of books, got a whole slew of diseases one doesn't see outside of Oregon Trail, was made a chief, and sweated more than any human being is designed to do.

Anyway, I made lots of friends while I was over there living like a Victorian Englishman in India.  In the decade since returning to American soil, I've stayed in touch with basically everyone, as is the norm with Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (after all, in Ghana we lived social networking before that became a thing.)  Over the years, there have been a handful of large-scale RPCV reunions all across the country, notably an '08 reunion in Chicago and a '13 reunion in Washington D.C. - both of which I was unable to attend due to my work schedule or the fact I was bringing miniature human beings into the world.

Though I did get to teleconference  in via Skype to the D.C. one:

(Note the handsome man on the laptop.)

Well, this past week we had ourselves a mini-reunion down here in America's Wang.  Mike and Tara Hildt (who both served in the volunteer group a year ahead of me, and consequently became engaged during their term of service in Ghana) were bringing their offspring down to Orlando for the whole Disney park thing.  As such, they ended up staying their first night in town at our house, where our kids (who are the same age) mingled, we drank the usual RPCV amount of beer, caught up on gossip and prevented Watson from sodomizing their young son.

Yes, seriously.

Hildt and Yours Truly at Bywell's Tavern in Accra, Ghana, ca. 2004

Anyway, towards the end of their Orlando vacation, they invited us over to their hotel - the dreaded Coronado Springs Resort Kris and I stayed at for our five-year anniversary, which you may or may not remember - to swim at the pool and hang out one last time before they returned to Massachusetts.  

And as you all know, we're hardly the sort of people to turn down a resort pool.

Behold:

Abby, a fake Mayan pyramid, and some fat guy making a retard face.

The Hildt's daughter, who happens to be Alayna's age, already knows how to swim.  Alayna has a hard time floating.  This angers me.

Lauren (holding the boy at top) swung out to hang out with us. She was also in the Peace Corps (same year as me), and also worked with Guinea Worm during her term of service.  You may remember my somewhat foggy account of her nuptials a few years back.

Abby loves dog-paddling.

Lauren's son isn't buying what Abby's selling.

This is not authentic.  Or even close to being historically accurate.

Play area adjacent to the pool.

An attempt at an offspring group photo (nice job, Lauren's kid.)

Orlando Mini-Reunion '14

Alayna and Quetzalcoatl

Funned out with swimming.

Processed food!

Post-swim shenanigans

As usual, Disney paid a lot of attention to their decor in this resort.  I'm assuming its supposed to be 'Mesoamerican' or something, hence the Quetzalcoatl statues and pyramids.  Still, I was bummed there wasn't any human sacrifices on hand.  I wouldn't definitely taken pics of that.

These are the first children to play Checkers since the 1950s.

Somehow Mike and I got stuck with kid-watching detail.  Not sure how that happened.

Delegating checker duties.

Not sure what exactly Abby's doing with my backpack here. . .

Scheming.

The kids didn't take to Checkers. . . so they just said 'screw it' and built a tower instead.

This was bound to happen.  Kids can't engineer for shit.

En route back to the Hildt's hotel room. . .

Chasing lizards.

Chaos back in the room.

After saying our farewells, we began the mile-long trek out of the resort (like idiots, we parked on the opposite side of the lake from their hotel room.)

This ended up happening about three minutes into our walk.

Front lobby on the way out to the parking lot.

See the attendant on the right?  I had him in SEVENTH GRADE.  He's a high school graduate and going into the army in a few weeks.  I'm so frickin' old it's ridiculous.  Still, he said I was the best teacher he ever had, so I guess I have that going for me.

Out.

- Brian