Birthday Post!

Today and tomorrow mark two very important birthdays. First, today (16th) is the 59th birthday of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote! Anyone who has known me for more than 10 minutes knows that I love Looney Tunes, and anyone who has known me for more than 10 years knows that it all started with these two. As a kid, I'd watch them all the time at Grandma Hahn's house on Patrice Terrace, and back when there was a WB Store, my mom bought a few of their tapes for me. (This was, of course, before I started collecting all Looney Tunes shorts.) I'm proud to say that I've got every Road Runner and Wile E. cartoon that Chuck Jones ever made, and I plan on watching a bunch today (after diligently finishing all of my homework, of course). If you have the chance, you should definately watch "Fast and Furry-ous". It's their debut cartoon, released theatrically on September 16, 1949.

Even more important than that is Dad's 47th birthday tomorrow. It's going to be weird, because I think that this is his first birthday where I won't get to see him, but such is college, I guess. People always say that we look the same, and I honestly never really saw it, but I found a picture from this past year where it's actually really obvious:

Yeah. That's pretty freaky. Last month, we went on an overnight camping trip where we recreated "Dad's 'n' Lads", a father-son camping trip that we did a long time ago through Camp Findley. Using our canoe, my new tent from Steve and Stacy Taylor, my new stove and beef stew from Aaron Pavlock, and after Shawn Blakslee pointed us where we wanted to go, we drove to the lake and canoed to where we used to camp. Here are some pictures of Dad during that trip.
This is the drive down to the lake. You can't see it, but we were on a huge bridge with an awesome view.

Dad and our loaded canoe, right before we head out to the other side of the lake to set up camp. Notice how Dad is not wearing a life jacket.

This is when we were picked up by the Coast Guard and ticketed because we didn't have life jackets, and that's apparently illegal in Pennsylvania. Not that we didn't know this beforehand: Andy Martin warned Dad before we left, but Dad didn't listen and got charged 95 bucks. You should've seen Andy when he found out. I hadn't seen him so happy since Katie was born.

This is when we went to Wal-Mart (yes, Emily, I know) to get life jackets. It worked out nicely for me though, because I got a new Star Wars book while we were there. Score.

Here's our campsite. This is what we got to see when we woke up in the morning. It was awesome. The tent from Steve and Stacy worked out great. I'm a fan of it.

So we finally get this going, and like 10 minutes later, it started raining. This is Dad looking sad and dejected. I thought it was pretty funny, actually.

Here's Dad at our creek. When I was a kid, we'd come here and play around, finding crayfish and rearranging rocks and making dams and new waterfalls and stuff. We did that again on our recent trip, and it was a lot of fun. I even recognized some of the twists and turns! We wandered along the creek for hours, until my hands hurt and my fingers were stuck in the position of being curled around an imaginary rock. But it was a lot of fun.

Make sure you wish Road Runner, Wile E., and Dad a very happy birthday! All three of them have played important roles in my life (the last one particularly) and have shaped me into who I am today. And if you're reading this and haven't watched "Fast and Furry-ous", jump on that. You've got 7 minutes to spare, I guarantee it.

Happy birthday to all and to all a good night.