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Ah, High School. . . I miss thee.

Hiya, Cyberspace.

Today, the Houghs revisited their past (well, I did, at any rate.)  We were invited to a birthday party by Trevor and Sara, whose children were having a combo shin-dig in Clare. . . at the same old house I practically lived in during high school (I literally spent every day of the '97-'98 summer there.)

Coincidentally, while Trevor has been an old friend of mine since middle school, Kris has been friends with his wife, Sara, since back in the day when Kris attended Clare Primary School.  Needless to say, it was really, really convenient for us when the two of them up and got hitched.

Anyway, they also have two girls (each a year or so ahead of ours) whose birthdays fall close enough to warrant a combo-party.  A ton of people turned out, and the kids had fun exploring the countryside around the house.  Rest assured, it was definitely weird for Yours Truly being at a birthday party - surrounded by hordes of little kids, pink frilly crap, and cakes - on the same hallowed ground that saw countless bonfires, keg parties, fights, hook-ups, break-ups, and every other possible teenage misadventure one could think of.

Definitely makes one feel like an old piece of shit, that's for sure.

Check it out. . .

Trevor's house is out in the country, which was awesome growing up 'cause our group of friends had an unheard of amount of privacy. . . which, in hindsight, was definitely a bad thing.

Our kids were pretty excited there was a pool on hand. . . at first.

Trevor's family also owns the adjoining property (the car shop on which you can see at top right, there.)

The infamous Porch.  Ground Zero for high school shenanigans back in the day.

That row of brush you see dividing the properties is actually a ditch that a little stream runs down.  Once and awhile we had to burn the whole thing down.  Awesome stuff.

The water was a little too cold for this tropics-raised kid.

SWIMMING

Utter chaos.

Here's Trevor's '55 Chevy that he's been working on. . . or not.  We were going to start working on this our Junior year of High School, and planned on restoring it to mint condition in order to get a lot of use out of it our Senior year.  This was ridiculously stupid of us for two reasons:  1.) restoring a car like this takes a lot of time, and isn't something that can be done in six months, and, more importantly, 2.) it requires a shit load of money.  Trevor and I worked at Wendy's in high school.

Headquarters

Later on in the afternoon, I decided to take the girls for a 'nature walk' around their pond. . .

It's not that long around the pond, per se, but it took us forever.  The girls decided to pick wild flowers (also known as weeds) along the way.

Plunder.

- Brian