Cotton Candy Skies.

Today I am going to take a break from the alphabet theme and write about my family reunion and maybe some other general weekend stuff.

In 1983 my family started having annual family reunions, and my mom was going out with my dad at the time so she has been there from the first one, and she has documented them through pictures. I am not that much of a photographer, but I love looking back at pictures of people I know and seeing how life has brought so much since those days.

My family is pretty big, but I don't know anyone really well except for the people who are always at family birthday parties, which is mostly my dad's siblings and their offspring. My dad has one brother and 5 sisters, and I have been priveleged enough to sit in on a few of their nights of reminiscing and storytelling, and let me tell you, they had a crazy childhood.

Anyway, the point of this is that today was my family reunion. I had to say "yeah, I'm taking summer classes, it sucks" and "I'm going into biosystems engineering, it's kind of a mix of biology and engineering" and agree whenever someone commented that it's hot or the water is pretty. But mostly I ate a lot of food. We got there about an hour earlier than anyone else, so that we could leave early so I could get back to school. We didn't end up leaving that early, but usually we end up being some of the last to leave, and I am always bored and hovering behind my mom or dad while they talk to people.

Oftentimes, my mom, my aunt, my cousin and I play Scrabble or other games to entertain ourselves. Today we made a really good Scrabble board; we don't keep score and we help each other if we can't think of anything, so it's more fun and less competitive and you get cooler words because you're not focusing on "double letter" or "triple word" scores. This game was much better than most though.

Our family reunions used to be at a public park, but then my aunt got a cottage so we started having them there, then we started alternating between there and my dad's cousin's house on an island. The island is cool because you have to take a ferry there, and there are a bunch of awesome willow trees with big knots all over, and they remind me of the whomping willow and of my best friends. My aunt's cottage is cool because there is a sandy beach with lots of good skipping rocks and a tree-fort near a blackberry tree and I had some fun times there in my childhood.

Sadly, now I am back at school. I like driving here though, because I leave in the evening when the roads aren't too crowded and I head west toward the setting sun and the sky is just. so. pretty. It's like a sweet goodbye to the day and a promise that there are good things in life and tomorrow will be a fresh new day. I sometimes get distracted and wish I had a camera in my mind where I could store pictures of things that I observe throughout my life. Nature is so freaking cool! And there is nothing quite like being by yourself and jamming out to crappy pop tunes (and if you're me, some country as well).

I am procrastinating my re-do of my exam that I talked about failing last week. Everyone did horrible, so that's why there was need for a re-do. Obviously, that should tell the teacher that he is not doing a good job, but I don't think he gets it. But I guess I should get back to that.