D is for...

Dad.

Now before you stop reading, thinking this is going to be a tribute to my father, hang on a second and hear me out because this is really a story about Mike.

In high school, my dad started working at his current company.  Taking on this position meant he had to get up at 4am, meaning he went to bed at 8pm.  Well my high school concerts (3-4 a year) were always night concerts, starting at 7pm.  The band usually didn't go on until the second half, usually after 8pm.  You can see for yourself that this usually meant my dad would not get a chance to come to my concerts for the later years of my high school career.

My friends, being crazy, decided that the winter concert of my senior year was a great time to bring my dad to a concert.  Except they didn't really bring him.  Instead they hatched a crazy plan to get a picture of him, blow it up, glue it to a life-size cardboard cutout, dress it, and put it in the audience.

What they didn't realize was that I knew exactly what they were talking about from day one.  It really wasn't hard to figure out when they would talk about it in front of me, trying to make me mad because it was this big secret.  They even had code names.  MCKD= Mr. Caitlin K's Dad and MCKM= Mrs. Caitlin K's Mom.  Despite the fact that I knew what they were up to, I didn't realize the extent of how funny it was actually going to be when they finished the project.

So it's the night of the concert.  My mom and dad know, the band and choral directors know, almost everyone in the band knows, and they all think I don't know.  Well, I try my hardest to not go looking for it the moment I step onstage with the first ensemble.  Due to the lights it really wasn't that hard, since I could hardly see the audience anyways.  After leaving the stage I was walking in front of the audience when, bam!  My mom yells my name, I turn, and I see this guy-

Where Has the Time Gone?

Well everybody I think this is the longest I have ever gone without a legitimate blog.  It's a little disappointing to me to be honest.  But at the same time, what was I going to write about.  I guess I just feel that the few things that I do do aren't very blog worthy.  Interesting.  But that is about to change! (Have I made that promise before?)  Anyways, the semester is finally winding down.  We have one week and then it's Thanksgiving break.  I get a whole six days at home, Yippee!!!!  Then we have two weeks of classes and then it's finals already.  Wow.  So I have 17 more days of class and 6 days of finals, of which I only have exams on 3 days.  Things are looking up!!

So what have I been doing for the past 2.5 months?  I don't even know, hahaha. My last blog post was on October 19, almost a month ago, and that wasn't even a real post, it was a pitch to get more votes for my contest pictures (which, if you haven't voted you can check it out here- Photo Contest).  The time is just flying.  The days seem to go by slowly, but the weeks are going by quickly. So let's see what I've been doing for the past month, shall we?...

Ok so on October 15 I participated at Monter Pumpkin Madness at the market on campus, manning the OxFam America at DelVal table.  We were given the duty of being the crafts table for the kids.  So we had those scratch-off paint things where there is color underneath, and we had Halloween themed masks and picture frames.  The event was actually two days but almost everything was gone by the end of the first day.  I'm not sure what they did for the second day because I wasn't there. 

I was, in fact, at Hawk Mountain with The Wildlife Society.  Hawk Mountain is a sanctuary in Kempton, PA committed to "conserve birds of prey worldwide by providing leadership in raptor conservation science and education, and by maintaining Hawk Mountain Sanctuary as a model observation, research and education facility."  It is quite the lovely place.  We hiked up the mountain, stopping at a couple of observation points along the way.  Once we reached our destination we joined the multitude of other bird watchers and kept our eyes peeled for some birds of prey.  We saw quite a few, but I didn't get any pictures of them because they weren't exactly close.  But I did get some shots of the beautiful scenery...

 

So that was a pretty nice weekend overall.  The next weekend was homecoming weekend.  Woot!!  October 21 began the festivities with a parade through town.  The parade was a competition between the clubs, each having their own themed float or car.  The theme this year was Bright Lights, Big City.  I participated with Animal Science Society (abbreviated A.S.S.) like I did last year.  Our city was Sydney Australia.  We decorated our float and dressed up in character and hit the road to impress the citizens of Doylestown and the judges awaiting our return.  As a part of decorating the float I, for some reason, volunteered to make a tree.  Well, after about four days worth of construction we finally had a tree.

Pretty beast if I do say so myself.  Any ways so we rode our float in our costumes...

And we had a grand ole time.  We didn't place, and therefore didn't win any money, but we still had fun... and a tree.  My roommate and I decided to keep the tree, not knowing at the time just how handy he would become.  Oh yes, we named it Ferdinand.