Surprise is a good thing
Apr. 10th, 2005 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyI'm putting on my clothes today, and I hear voices outside. My mom, and... Nick? And Jeremy? And Kevin? Well, yes. The garage opens. "Harry, you dressed?" my mom calls. "No!" I shout back, quickly grabbing a shirt and coming down. "Harry, you're coming bike-riding with us," says Nick. "...OK."
Of course, in order to do that, we have to
1. Open the bike shed. Now, I should note here that my mom used to force me to go out and ride my bike every now and then so I would actually get some exercise. However, there would always be a first one of the season, when the bike shed had not been opened in quite some time, and you didn't know what you would find inside. Usually just lots of spiders and their egg sacs, but once I opened it to find a hive of yellow jackets and two stings on my body. My dad had to go in and bug-spray it. So I was understandably nervous about opening it, especially as I'm not really a big fan of spiderweb either. But, I opened it, and not even spiders were there. Yay.
2. "Wasn't there something about the bike having a flat tire?" Mom still tried to make me get out occasionally in the past few years. Last time, though, the bike had a flat tire, and, well, we just left it at that. So we had to put air in the tires. Problem was, the pump itself was leaky. Some duct tape, though, took care of most of that. And off we went.
I should note that my bike is, by most people's standards, too small. It's several years old, after all, and that's a large "several". Still, it is, strictly speaking, usable, so I did.
And so we rode around, and we picked up Pavel, and we went to the playground at Coleman and tried all the equipment designed for people half our size (swings still work fine, though :D ), and then we got Ben, whose mom gave me a water bottle (I hadn't thought to bring one, at first... but now I realize how useful they are. I also relearned the importance of the gearshift.), and we rode into Fair Lawn and got ice cream, and then stopped at the gas station nearby to *really* refill my tires (the air is free! I had no idea) and then Ben and Jeremy left, and we went to go get Mike, and we stopped at his house for a while, and then Kevin left and the four remaining of us came back to my house and we started a game of Crimelords (finally!) which didn't work too well because I decided that, for once, I didn't want to explain all the rules beforehand, which resulted in much confusion, and we were playing on the dinner table, too, so dinner came and we decided to just stop the game (it would probably be good if we actually knew how to play, but as it was, it was kind of bleh), and everyone else left.
So today was very yay.
I came up with the title of this entry after writing the above, and then, of course, I remembered what happened yesterday: surprise birthday party for petmar! Unfortunately, I misread my map and arrived just a bit too late for the surprise. :P Others arrived much too late. :P We played a game of Puerto Rico, where Harry left during the middle. His strategy is always the same - monopolize corn - so we were able to play for him on autopilot after he left. :P He actually ended up coming in second. :P (Nick won with 59 points.) I don't really remember enough to write a whole entry about it, though.
So the past two days were very yay.
-Sniffnoy
Of course, in order to do that, we have to
1. Open the bike shed. Now, I should note here that my mom used to force me to go out and ride my bike every now and then so I would actually get some exercise. However, there would always be a first one of the season, when the bike shed had not been opened in quite some time, and you didn't know what you would find inside. Usually just lots of spiders and their egg sacs, but once I opened it to find a hive of yellow jackets and two stings on my body. My dad had to go in and bug-spray it. So I was understandably nervous about opening it, especially as I'm not really a big fan of spiderweb either. But, I opened it, and not even spiders were there. Yay.
2. "Wasn't there something about the bike having a flat tire?" Mom still tried to make me get out occasionally in the past few years. Last time, though, the bike had a flat tire, and, well, we just left it at that. So we had to put air in the tires. Problem was, the pump itself was leaky. Some duct tape, though, took care of most of that. And off we went.
I should note that my bike is, by most people's standards, too small. It's several years old, after all, and that's a large "several". Still, it is, strictly speaking, usable, so I did.
And so we rode around, and we picked up Pavel, and we went to the playground at Coleman and tried all the equipment designed for people half our size (swings still work fine, though :D ), and then we got Ben, whose mom gave me a water bottle (I hadn't thought to bring one, at first... but now I realize how useful they are. I also relearned the importance of the gearshift.), and we rode into Fair Lawn and got ice cream, and then stopped at the gas station nearby to *really* refill my tires (the air is free! I had no idea) and then Ben and Jeremy left, and we went to go get Mike, and we stopped at his house for a while, and then Kevin left and the four remaining of us came back to my house and we started a game of Crimelords (finally!) which didn't work too well because I decided that, for once, I didn't want to explain all the rules beforehand, which resulted in much confusion, and we were playing on the dinner table, too, so dinner came and we decided to just stop the game (it would probably be good if we actually knew how to play, but as it was, it was kind of bleh), and everyone else left.
So today was very yay.
I came up with the title of this entry after writing the above, and then, of course, I remembered what happened yesterday: surprise birthday party for petmar! Unfortunately, I misread my map and arrived just a bit too late for the surprise. :P Others arrived much too late. :P We played a game of Puerto Rico, where Harry left during the middle. His strategy is always the same - monopolize corn - so we were able to play for him on autopilot after he left. :P He actually ended up coming in second. :P (Nick won with 59 points.) I don't really remember enough to write a whole entry about it, though.
So the past two days were very yay.
-Sniffnoy
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-11 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-11 12:25 pm (UTC)My Mom used to concoct activities to get me out of the house. Until I got to high school, I was resolutely indoorsy and opposed to any physical activity which didn't involve computers or Legos. I resisted these enough that, after the second or third time, Mom pretty much gave up.
I was even signed up for youth soccer at one point; that didn't please me at all.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-11 11:58 pm (UTC)I also ended up in soccer at one point. What was it called? A soccer "clinic"? I had nothing against physical activity, but we never actually *played*, we just practiced dribbling and other soccer things. I think we actually played a game once, at the end. Gah. Like a gym class where you never finish the stretches...
I also ended up in baseball in 1st grade. I could neither catch nor throw, so I was put in right field, where I only occasionally had the chance to mess up. Once, due to some people missing, I ended up in left field - if right field was so inactive, I figured, in left field there must be balls coming all the time. Thankfully for the team, that wasn't the case.
At the end of the - season? - we all got these baseballs in a little case, mounted like a trophy; we were supposed to go around signing each others'. I refused. There was still one signature on mine, however, which really bugged me at the time - one kid was sick, and couldn't come to this, so he had signed the all beforehand. Nothing I could do about that. Now I use it as a weight to keep my network switch from falling over. :P
no subject
Date: 2005-04-12 10:05 am (UTC)We played games in the youth soccer thing I was in, but I just didn't get into it. I didn't enjoy any physical activity like that until high school, when I picked something (track and cross-country) which was my choice and not my parents' latest plan to make me healthy and well-rounded.
Since I lived in Canada until I was 12, we didn't play baseball much, so when we were visiting some relatives in the US and my cousins coaxed me out to a baseball game, I was amazed how tedious it was. Americans must have extraordinary attention spans, I thought.
And to think they make fun of Canadians for their interest in curling. Curling is a first-person shooter compared to baseball.
Was your refusal to have the other kids sign the ball just because the experience annoyed you, or because you don't like it when people write on your stuff? I could imagine doing the same thing in that circumstance when I was little. Some kids wrote their names on their books and such, but that appalled me. Even now I don't like it. And I'm positively neurotic about writing on skin; friends who really want to push my buttons (or who have a profound death wish) attempt to write things on me. Needless to say, I won't ever be a tattoo parlor customer.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-12 06:54 pm (UTC)