Monday, May 01, 2006

Biological Clock on the Fritz Again

Almost everything about this weekend was cute. Well, perhaps I need to be a little more specific. Almost everything about this weekend brought out some deeply submerged but gradually emerging paternal instincts in me. I am a big believer in using examples to show what I mean, so allow me to begin.

This weekend's plan had been snowboarding, then it changed and became a trip to Placerville, then it changed again and became a trip to Sutter Creek, and then the whole plan for a trip fell apart since no one wanted to go, so we postponed it and I drove down to the ranch with Kira and Ryan to visit with the family. Family, you know who you are. Well, sure enough, within 10 minutes of arriving I was happily assisting Vincenzo to save some tadpoles who were caught in a puddle on the verge of drying up.
Thousands of tadpoles. Not having the resources to save them all, we made several trips back and forth with a cup of water and successfully saved about 50 tadpoles.
The ranch was really quite crowded this weekend. Kira, Ryan, Me, Josh, Oriana, Florence, Grandma, Grandpa, Ariane, Vincent, Luccina, Vincenzo, Heather, Carson (who, though I have known him for 8 years, spoke to me for the first time), Morea (who is, suprisingly, shy!), Coleen, Hal, CJ, Chris, and Tate (shown below). Tate and I played for the better portion of the afternoon, which creeped Kira out since Tate looks like she could easily be my daughter. Tate taught me the words "chair", "duck", "daddy", "window", "drop" and "shower". I felt very fatherly as we learned that her daddy was not a duck. It was a strange feeling.
And this is me right after I tried to smell the Stinging Nettle because I thought it was mint...
And here is a cute puppy.
Well, originally I had planned to drive back at 5 with Kira and Ryan, but after Oriana and Josh agreed to drive me home, I decided to stay. Well, dinner happened, and after dinner Oriana, Josh and I went for a nice, long walk. Then we came back and ate all of the apple pie.
And here is a tortoise that now lives in Florence's flower bed.
Me eating Oriana's hair. Why did I choose to include this picture, I wonder. Actually, I was chewing gum when Luccina decided to take this picture, so when I pulled away I realized I no longer had gum in my mouth. Near disaster.
Well, as I mentioned, Oriana and Josh were nice enough to drive me home in time to go out to lunch with Keiko. We then met up with Grace, Sohyun, Rick, Sean and Boeun and went to Arroyo Park Pool (which is awesome).
I had promised to teach Boeun how to swim, and for the amount of experience and lack of fat that she had, she did very well. Obviously, we will need to keep going to the pool, but I have high hopes for her. She tries her best and is very brave, which are two essential building blocks for swimming. Although, once again, I felt vaguely like a parent helping his daughter to learn.

I also discovered yesterday that my camera takes fantastic pictures in a pool environment. After all, that is the environment for which my camera was designed. There was one catch, however: in the place where my camera works best, no one wants to have their picture taken! Really, that shouldn't have supprisedd me. So here is all I am going to publish, a picture that doesn't show how not fat everybody is.
I had great fun swimming with everyone, and don't be supprised if I go again!

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