You are viewing stuff tagged with johnclappier.
Ok, have a seat. This is going to take a little longer than my heavily-edited moderately-stilted prose attempts at wit, wisdom, and condensed life experience. That stuff falls flat more often than not, anyway.
Some things have happened over the past few days that knit themselves into a little ball that I feel the need to tug the strings of. You know that part in a TV show where you know it’s the season finale because you can just feel the writers pulling hard at these strings they’ve strung between characters? I always imagine a sweater, and you have a hold of a few of the pieces and you keep pulling and the fabric is bunching and warping in places. You really see how it is all connected. Ok, this is possibly not edited enough. Starting again…
Congratulations, John & Kellie. You’ll enjoy many many more autumns together. Plus, I won’t be (in the name of photography) telling Mykala to use a giant 3-foot diameter silvered reflector to shine way-too-bright sun directly into your eyes. Yes, here’s to many autumns without retina damage.
In the past few weeks, I’ve had some very near misses with some very bad things.
(Almost) Bike Death
Seymour Avenue winds down a very steep hill as it approaches Franklin Avenue. At the intersection between the two, there’s a blind intersection controlled by a stoplight. In the winter, I come down this hill on my bike and turn left onto Franklin. 99% of the time, the light is red and I slow to a stop, but I’ve made it through on a couple of green lights in the past.
Best use of plinky piano counter-melody: “The Brilliant Dance” by Dashboard Confessional. That album was released 8 years ago. 8. Years. Bad things have happened since then, but I can remember nothing but good things. I think that means that nothing truly bad happened. That’s interesting.
Just returned from a wonderful night out (aka bachelor party) with my great friends Matt, Steve, John, Nils, Dan, Ryan, and Chris! We went to a great place in Maple Grove called Dave & Buster’s — featuring food, bar, and full gaming area. I came home with the prizes from the night — Gophers fan hand, Dave & Buster’s novelty soccer ball, and poker chips + cards + box! Awesome! So, it was exactly the kind of night I had in mind — nobody puked, nobody was naked, and everybody will be able to get into work tomorrow! I need to get out with these guys more often.
I’d like to do a catch-up dinner with you all. I’m thinking the weekend of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. So, something like the 16th of January, we could all go out to dinner somewhere… hence the McRupekoeclapespe moniker for this post. Naturally, all others who I wasn’t able to wedge into the catchy name are absolutely invited. RSVP* here with regrets, suggestions, and acceptances. It will be awesome.
I just found out at The Blue Shallow that John passed his boards. Congratulations, John!
I found out in the middle of last week that I PASSED the National Boards I took late last year. So what does this mean? Provided I graduate in May, I can practice as early as the first business day after graduation. The National Boards say whether or not I will have a License to practice Veterinary Medicine. And now I can.
I really like the way this picture turned out.
I don’t know why, but this picture make me laugh.
A week or something ago (time is fuzzy lately), John hosted a great DDR Extreme party in which we all got together and played the new game. I am rusty since last year, but it felt good to play just a bit. Ping pong, pizza, dancing, sweating, laughing, they all came together for an excellent Friday night. I owe Mykala quite a bit, she gave me a ride there, and stayed to play. She played! DDR! That was, suffice to say, really cool.
The “here and now” is currently overwhelming. My projects include repairing my 838, catching up in Calc III, attending offices and the dental convention for the pre-dental co-op, finding time to return the multimeter that Professor Mowry so generously loaned me, finding new weight gloves, finalizing my school schedule for next year and this summer, polishing this catchy new piano riff, supporting Katy in her search for an apartment (she’s going to the U — yay for my sister being a graduate math student!), photographing South Campus for Katy’s memories, finding new lifting shirts, finding a summer job/internship, keeping my room clean, sleeping, and ending world hunger.
I ran across some interesting things whilst perusing the Sunday paper today. First of all, the color TV has turned 50 and an article celebrating the joys of color was written to mark the momentous occasion. So Americans watch, on average, 70 days per year of TV. That’s all well and good - la dee dah. But, what about this quote from the grandma who wants to keep her grandchild occupied in the car:
I forgot to mention (or maybe I forgot I wrote about) the basketball game we had going a couple of days ago. It was a lot of fun. Participants included me, Steve, John, Matt, Tommy, and Richard. Playing basketball in the summertime sure brings back memories. We’ve been playing every summer for four years straight. Back when we started I was a complete basketball novice - I credit basketball and fall football over there at Steve’s with helping me discover that I actually can handle sports. Tons of good memories of just plain fun competition, and relatively few serious injuries. Also, we took a picture of all of us at basketball - I plan to take that one to college; one needs to have some concrete memories of the summer. That is partly why I keep this log. Life is full of so many good times that it is good to be able to remember what actually happened. Regardless, my broken toe seems good enough to play basketball, and that’s great news.