A Day of Firsts

Last month I was without a job and tried to make good use of my free time, with an emphasis on visiting family. After all, family, isn't it about....time?

First, Torrie and I had our six-month anniversary. We celebrated by eating the top of our cake, since we were in the process of moving and couldn't bring our cake with us to Kentucky for our actual one-year anniversary. It was actually still pretty good! The only piece of cake I had during our reception was when Torrie stuffed it up my nose, so it was good to actually have my cake and eat it too.

I would like to write about one day in particular, spent in the beautiful (see the picture?) woods of Central Idaho. It was a rather momentous day, which will forever be known as: A Day of Firsts.

Stung by a Hornet

I have never been stung by a hornet before, nor a bee. I don't know why, I've certainly had enough exposure to them. However, while opening the gate to the ranch, I was attacked by a hornet. It got me twice on my hand. It didn't hurt that bad, although it started to throb. Luckily, Tracie had an allergy pen that soothed my pain and got rid of the hornet stings in no time!

Shot an Automatic Pistol

Special thanks to my dad-in-law, who helped me shoot the H - E - double hockey sticks out of a few shampoo bottles and a tree. Buffalo Bill style, yeah!!

For the record, I've shot rifles and stuff before. Just nothing with this much power. No pictures for this one, boys and girls. I wouldn't want any future employers to get their hands on any evidence.... :)

Rode a Motorcycle

I told myself I'd never ride one of these, but I kinda knew that I was lying to myself. My grandpa is the head of an Idaho biker gang (The Black Barons) and it's in my blood.

Special thanks to my brother-in-law and his fiancee for supplying the bikes and letting me ride them. Here's the explanation of how to drive that I got from Tandee.

"Here's the gas, here's the clutch, there's the horn to tell people to get out of your way...alright! Go have fun!"

Tyler explained to me a little better, and then I started and took off.

I really took off. No one explained to me that it's not like a car and you can very easily just putt around in first gear with no fear of stalling out. After scaring Torrie half to death, my dad-in-law explained to me that little tidbit of information, which made for a much slower, safer, and more enjoyable time, just putt-putting up and down the field, which had just had most of its grass eaten by a bunch of cows.

Including these cows!

Ate Beef on a Stick

We ended the day of firsts by eating chunks of spiced steak on a stick. Delicious.

I have received many requests to give a little more information as to where the Logan and Torrie Schultz Family lives. Well, without giving out too much information to the cyber-stalkers out there, here is a picture of our house:

We are house-sitting for a great old man who is now in an assisted living care center closer to family. They needed someone to take care of the house until they can come back in the summer, and Torrie and I are renowned house-sitters, so everything worked out really well!

There’s a few things that you will notice about the house. First of all, there is TONS of land (comparatively) around it. Remember, we aren’t out in the country, we are in Seattle. This is fun because on nice days, Torrie and I get to work around the yard, clean things up, cut up and haul away fallen branches, nice manly work around the yard chores. And, it’s great for the spontaneous games of smear the queer that always seem to happen at our house.

Second, it’s a fairly old house, and they slowly added on and changed things around, so we’ve discovered some oddities like a lot of light switches that don’t make sense, our bedroom doesn’t have heating cause it was once where the garage was…things like that.

Third, the name “Twin Oaks” comes from the two trees (they’re not actually oaks, but hemlocks, but twin oaks sounds better) that mark the driveway. You have to be pretty careful, or you’ll hit a tree. Both Torrie and I have never hit either tree, and she even drives an explorer.

Fourth, the man’s wife who recently passed away was an avid collector of spoons, the decorative kind that you can get in gift shops and gas stations? Yeah, she loved them. There are some pretty cool ones, actually, although I never thought I would be saying that about spoons…

So there it is. All in all, we really like it here, and are very grateful to have such a neat (and an opportunity to save) house to live in as we begin our married life together.

Graduation

My sister's going through finals, my wife's birthday is Sunday, and for some reason I'm in a reflective mood.

The following words are from David Brooks, a columnist from the New York Times. He's trying to figure out what to tell people as he speaks at the graduation ceremony of the high school that he graduated from 30 years ago.

"At the moment, I’m thinking of talking about the chief way our society is messed up. That is to say, it is structured to distract people from the decisions that have a huge impact on happiness in order to focus attention on the decisions that have a marginal impact on happiness.

The most important decision any of us make is who we marry. Yet there are no courses on how to choose a spouse. There’s no graduate department in spouse selection studies. Institutions of higher learning devote more resources to semiotics than love.

The most important talent any person can possess is the ability to make and keep friends. And yet here too there is no curriculum for this.

The most important skill a person can possess is the ability to control one’s impulses. Here too, we’re pretty much on our own.

What young people really need is a lesson in how to choose a spouse and how to make and keep friends.

These are all things with a provable relationship to human happiness. Instead, society is busy preparing us for all the decisions that have a marginal effect on human happiness. There are guidance offices to help people in the monumental task of selecting a college. There are business schools offering lavish career placement services. There is a vast media apparatus offering minute advice on how to furnish your home or expand your deck."

Interesting comments. I would second all of his comments without reservation.

I'd also like to express my gratitude for the institutions that did teach me those important lessons: good parents, church and the other members, and a couple of very good role models at school.

While I'm still working on the ability to control all of my needless impulses, I think I'm doing a pretty good job at the friends one, and I totally hit a home run with the spouse thing.