Tony Yarusso's Blog

So various ramblings about the recent events of my life:

For those people who haven't noticed yet or are confused, yes, I did indeed quit band. It was just getting to frustrating. So I'm in choir now instead, and I like it a lot better.

I went a an awesome retreat thingy with youth from my church up to pastor Sarah's "cabin" up north. It's literally on Lake Superior, and if she ever sells it and I have money, I want it. Friday night we had supper at Grandma's in Duluth on the way up, and I played a mean game of Risk, and was the last one to be eliminated by Jesse, all because of a bad card draw. Oh well, still fun. And like 5 hours long. Carl (the owner of Betty's Pies), came over, with two pies, of course. Five-layer chocolate-amazing. Saturday started off with breakfast at Betty's Pies, our favorite establishment on the North Shore, and which our group gives business to religiously. Rolled down the giant hill from the house to the creek. Couldn't stand up afterwards. Then we went for two hikes, one at Lutsen and another at Cascade SP, which was the infinitely better of the two. We walked along the river, seeing all the falls (which I made numerous attempts to fall into, but was unsuccessful). There were some fallen trees lodged in rocks at one part, so I waded in the river and we shoved them off, and watched them go over the falls, which was awesome. One of them survived, but the other turned into toothpicks. Very cool. Lunch at the Rustic Inn, second only to the awesomeness that is Betty's. Then it was on to the movie marathon. During the weekend we watched Mean Girls, Monty Python, Saved, and Lion King. Mean Girls: Couldn't resist, we watched the scene where the girl gets hit by a bus in slow motion, twice. Monty Python is insanity as usual. Saved was hysterical because the discussion materials that come with it thought we would be offended, but since our group is who we are, we were just laughing at everybody, 'caused they're seriously messed up. Lion King: 7 teenage guys and 2 girls singing along to Hakuna Matata; hilarious. But wait, we get stranger. So...Lake Superior...in November...., yeah, we went for a swim. I went in twice. Invigorating, let me tell you. Thawed out next to the bonfire we built down on the delta area. Played a little Texas Hold-'Em, which I'm getting better at, but I still didn't win. I decided to sleep on the porch just for kicks (so it was 45 degrees out there, who cares?), and woke up in time to watch the sun rise over Lake Superior. If you've never seen that, you're missing out, it's pretty amazing. I love the North Shore. We went to church at Our Savior's in Castle Danger, which is this tiny little church that we pretty much double the congregation at when we go. And then of course there's the food and socializing afterwards, which is always good. Oh yeah, and we can't forget to mention that a very special person also attends this church. Yep, it's Betty. As in the Betty. So of course afterwards we went back to Betty's Pies for brunch before heading home. All around an awesome time. We're going again in the spring sometime, and if any of y'all want to come, you're more than welcome.

Then yesterday of course I got home, only to take off right away again to go to Matt's house to work on our Theology presentation. Not nearly as exciting as the retreat, but I think it turned out okay when we went in class today.

The more exciting part yesterday was when I was pulling onto my street coming home from that, and noticed that part of the sky was green. After a couple confused looks, I realized that it was the Northern Lights, and they got really intense shortly thereafter. My family and I stood out in the street/neighbors' lawn to watch them. They were mostly green, and really bright, going up in streaks from all directions, meeting at a point directly overhead. If you looked straight up it looked like they were raining down on you. For a little while we could see some faint red too. It was so neat to watch them, pulsing and waving all over the place, really strongly. So chalk that up as the second time that I've seen Northern Lights, with the other time being in Embarrass in the summer of last year. Also, while we were watching them a gigantic meteorite streaked across the sky. We're not talking about your average meteorite streak; this thing lasted for like 3 seconds, was flaming red, left a long path in the sky that hung there for a few moments, and we could see it breaking into smaller chunks as it came down. It was nothing short of amazing.

First math team meet was today, and it went pretty well, although nothing exemplary. However it was interesting in that one of the questions was written incorrectly so it was in fact impossible. Odd.

So that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Overall, good weekend, definately.