Letters to Camp, Part 1

Every summer Amy and Anna go to sleepaway camp at Mt. Gilead in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. And every summer, without fail, Onil writes them the best letters ever. After years of laughing hysterically at these letters I finally decided to post them here to share them with you and to save them for posterity. He wrote three letters each. Sometimes he draws things and when I get into work I'll scan and post them here. Here are Amy's:

'Sup Amy?

Are you maxing and/or relaxing all day long? Any good Bible verses this year? Ooh! I hope you guys get parables!! Whenever you see the Lil' Lord, don't forget to remind her she has to poop at camp. For the both of you. If she doesn't poop you're BOTH grounded.

I'm writing this letter before we go to your Grammy's party in Virginia so I'm gonna do radio psychic. I predict you will poop your pants. I will have three pieces of cake, your mom will be all cranky by 12:15 and she will say chillax at least 37 times.

You should tell some sweet scary stories at the campfire. I just made that up. I invented it. Tell the one with the dudes hiding underneath cars with the slicing and the heels and screaming.

More radio psychic: I predict I will have to stop myself from slapping your cousin at least six times and your mom will have food in her ear this time.

I can't wait to watch Stepbrothers. It's gonna be so awesome! Better than Iron Man even.

Anyways. Enjoy the rest of camp. Always be alert. Keep your head on a swivel looking out for ganados. They're everywhere!!

Sincerely,

Jens Lekman

P.S. It's really me, Onil.

P.P.S. You smell!

*****

Dear scheiße kopf,

Are you having a killer time at camp? We're having the bestest time ever without you. We went mini-golfing and skydiving and bull riding and wrote our names on cement and spray painted Mighty Horse on the Wilbur building and had Rita's Water Ice every day this weekend. So much fun! Cuz you suck!

Did anything scary happen yet? Have you seen any Jersey devils or Nessie?

There's supposed to be a solar eclipse this weekend but it's not visible in the northeast. And it's all your fault. Cuz you suck?

Todd and Kitty both pooped on your bed. They were high-fiving and laughing the whole time. Todd also farted on your pillow.

We also went to Berlin and spray-painted "Amy eats!" on the Berlin wall and had our own personal Oktoberfest with the Chancellor and Megatron and Daniel Hood. Daniel Hood says you suck. And he's gonna name a dragon after me.

Also I bought Halo 3, beat the game and sold it and used the money to make 10,000 flyers with your face photoshopped on a monkey's butt and then passed it out at your youth group. Good times.

We miss you both. Hope you're having fun!

Sincerely,
O to the Nil

P.S. Jog on!

*****

What's up, Vanilla Face?

Can you believe it's camp time again? Time sure does fly when you're a buttbag. Your camp deserves a better class of buttbag. And you're gonna give it to them.

Are you enjoying the mandatory fun activities? Funtivities!! Are there sing-alongs? Maybe you can sing the Karate Kid song for everyone.

How are the horses this year? Maybe you can do some jumps. You can get like three feet of air if you try hard enough.

Do try to write to your mommy. She will cry like a fart face if you don't.

Remember the time you cracked everyone up with your purple feety pajamas? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Good times. Hold on, still laughing. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh my sides.

Scout out the berries while you're there. I wanna know where all the good spots are as soon as I get there. Mmmmm.... berries.

Also I hate your fat cat. He has become the bane of my existence, my nemesis. He is a total jerk. He is the engine of chaos. Some fat cats just want to see the world burn.

Don't lose your Transformers towel or else we will destroy you. DESTROY!! >:(

Last of all. Don't forget to have a good time. Have a pleasant demeanor always. If you start to feel down, just ask yourself: Why so serious?

Your friend in Christ,
Onil_1

P.S. I believe in Amy Fartface.

*****

Here's a letter from me:

Dear Amy,

Hello from my air conditioned living room, where I am rocking out to sweet tunes and surfing the nets! It's as awesome as you're imagining. How about you? How many bug bites have you gotten? Are you rocking out to sweet tunes as well? Do you get to see cool videos?

I asked my good friend Thundercrackers if he would swing by and check on you this week. He said something about terrorism and then gave me the finger, so I guess he's not going to. That's what I get for asking a Decepticon. Maybe Bumblebee will do it.

Speaking of flipping people off, our friend in the PT Cruiser sends his regards.

Speaking of saying hi, Colin Meloy says hi and he wants you to know that he loves your mom. <3

I hope you're getting to be a corral-aide. I haven't talked to Shirley yet so I don't know. How many bracelets have you made for Onil?

We went to see Stepbrothers yesterday (you're not allowed to see it -- weiners) and then to Five Guys for dinner. Yes! It was awesome.

Sincerely,
[full signature]

P.S. I had to ask Onil if Thundercrackers was a Decepticon. Of course he knew. Because he's a NERD.

More catching up: The Franklin Institute

It's no secret we're all four of us a bunch of dorks. Amy and I, however, go above and beyond the other two in our dorkiness. Hence, our recent trip to The Franklin Institute in beautiful scenic Philadelphia for the exhibit titled, "Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination". We visited sans The Little Lord because she's a buttbag.

Basically, the exhibit had lots of Star Wars scale models, costumes and props tied together with the real world science principles that inspired the films' "science" principles. There was actually some interesting bits about the evolution of robots and artificial intelligence throughout the years. The exhibit was geared towards children so there lots of hands-on Mr. Wizard/Beakman's World type gadgets to play around with.

The movie costumes were actually very neat, as were the life sized replicas of some of the characters. It was interesting to see the details close-up.

All that is good and well but the real treat of the day for me and Amy was not the lightsabers and blasters behind a glass case. Nope. The best part of the day were the living breathing Storm Troopers courtesy of the 501st Legion. They had members of their group roaming around the place and taking pictures with anyone who asked. The funniest part was that more adults grown-up nerds than kids were asking for pictures. And not just the regular stand-next-to-you picture, the younger kids were happy with those. The hardcore older fans were asking the troopers to do all sorts of things like firing poses and pretending to be prisoners.

Amy and I (mostly Amy) had a field day posing with all the Storm Troopers and stray Jawas and Tusken raiders. The only one we missed was Boba Fett. We totally stalked him but he was off to his lunch break or something and wouldn't stop for pictures. Can't really blame the guy. I imagine he and Darth Vader would be the most mobbed of their group.

The highlight of the day was when Amy totally got groped by a Storm Trooper! She asked for a hug with her picture and the guy leaned in super super close and grabbed on extra tight. When it was my turn, the guy went back to his generic shoot-the-camera pose.

We also took the time to see some of the other sections of museum like the world famous giant heart you can walk through and the working locomotive.

It was a fun few hours on a Sunday afternoon.

Here is a Flicker set of the day.

Amy's birthday trip to New York.

Yeesh, there's a lot of catching up to do. On the weekend of December 7, we went up to New York to celebrate Amy's birthday. Friday night we went to the Kinokuniya bookstore by Rockefeller Center because we heard they were having a close-out sale with discounts of up to 75% because they were moving to a new location. Amy is big on manga and anime so she was able to get a few things there.



We didn't feel like fighting the rest of the tourists to get to the tree. That's as close as we got.

Saturday was the real reason we were up. The American Museum of Natural History has an exhibition called Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids. Rachel, Michael and Gaby went with us to the museum. We got there around eleven in the morning and spent a few hours altogether. We spent most of the time at the dinosaur exhibits and the actual Mythic Creatures room.


Hurray, we have our tickets!!


Amy with her new best friend.


We can't tell if The Little Lord is looking at the dinosaur or if she's enraptured by her own reflection.


Michael also made a new friend.


It's Gamera!! Yay!! Unfortunately, he is no longer filled with meat.


Onil and Faith going all MSTie under Gamera.


Onil with horns.


Anna with horns.


Rachel just couldn't quite get it together to properly sit in front of the horns.


Amy, Anna and Gaby are gonna need a bigger boat!


It's a Jim Henson Chupacabra Baby.


Here's Rachel, The Little Lord, and Gaby in front of a unicorn. It's too bad the unicorn's most important feature did not make the picture. Free tip: Frame your subjects properly.


DRAGON!!


MONKEY!!


Amy and Pegasus.


I forget what that bird is supposed to be.


St. George and three buttbags.

After the museum, we went to Strawberry Fields so Anna could commemorate John Lennon's death.


The Imagine mural as a shrine.


Just to give you a sense of the size of the crowd.


We also got our Christmas pictures taken while we were there.

Later that night, we had a party for Amy. Pretty much all her presents from us and my family were bought at the museum. We had Michael distract her while Rachel and I were paying for things.





So that was our fun birthday weekend. We drove back down that Saturday night.


Happy birthday, Amy! The end.

Amy is a Predator.

A couple of weeks back, we were watching one of the Dateline: To Catch a Predator shows. We started cracking up at one of the Predators who tried to hide his face by pulling his shirt over his face. We hit the Tivo back button a few times just to watch the dummy put on his disguise. That's when we noticed something awesome! The Predator was wearing a red shirt and a black baseball cap. It so happened that Amy was wearing a red hoodie and a black cap also. Twins!





It's like looking into a mirror.

Call It Amy and the Dream of Horses

Dream of horses, ba da dum bop, you dream of horses, ba da dum bop....

Even though it's three weeks since the 4th of July, I still wanted to post about our activities for that week. There are a lot of pictures to slog through so I asked Onil to make a movie and I'll post it here. I asked a week and a half ago, though, so who knows when we'll get that. :o\

While we're waiting, I wanted to share some pictures of Amy riding. Amy's been taking horsemanship lessons for close to a year now. Her usual day is Wednesday which means that because I work in NYC I can't go to see her ride unless I have the week off from work. The bright side of not seeing her ride every week is that I got to see how much she has improved. And boy, has she improved a lot. She started riding last fall and I saw her in December. She was good but very much a beginner -- she needed to learn a lot. I just saw her ride again on July 4th, and she has definitely come a long way. I love her posting form and the cool way she handles the rails and jumps. It helps that the horse she rides is pretty calm and easy-going (she just doesn't like other horses, which, sister, I can relate -- there are plenty of times I don't like my species either). The horse's name is Duchess and she's big and sometimes grumpy but she's a good horse overall.

This weekend Amy and Anna are going to overnight camp in the Poconos (the same one I went to as a kid) and Amy will be a corral-aide for the first time. This involves getting up at 5 in the morning, mucking out stalls, feeding and brushing the horses, cleaning the tack, and generally anything that needs to be done in the stable. For girls who love horses, this is a dream come true. Hopefully Amy will enjoy herself as well.

Here are some pictures of Amy and Duchy:

More Than Half a Cup

Hi peoples! It's Amy again with the news again.

Anywho, Transformers! We saw it monday night, it rocked! So much better than dumb Spider Man 3 or Pirates 3. It was great! It had the original Autobots and Decepticons, not the ones I had to watch growing up with different characters. I even won a dumb shirt! It has the Autobot symbol on it, and it says: "Their war, Our world." On the back it says: "Transformers 7-4-7" even though we saw it on the 2nd. The people that were giving them out were such losers! You had to answer these dumb questions and stuff, and the dude asked the same questions over and over again! He was looking at his dumb notes the whole time too. The question I had to answer was "A few years ago, what station was the cartoon "Transformers" on?" I havn't watched it in years so I barely remembered. I thought it might have been ABC Family, so I said, "29." He had to double check that it was ABC Family. I got it right, so I got a really smelly shirt. It stunk! It smells better now that I've worn it though.



The dude was sexist too! Either that or I'm the only girl who actually tried. Of course, he had to call me, I was practically jumping out of my seat. No other girl was called. At the end, the guy called three dudes to try and win an Optimus Prime toy, which you could probably buy in a store somewhere for $20. The first guy was some teenage kid and his questions were simple! The kid answered them in about a total of 5 seconds. The next dude was asked another easy question even though he got it wrong. Dummy. Then the last dude, who was a total dork, answered correctly. Then they had to sing the best to try and get the toy. The first kid refused so he got some sweet looking poster, then the next guy sang like, one line while shaking his hand, and then he gave up. So he got some poster too. The last dude then sang a bunch of the song and he was into it and he sang it like opera or something. Mom was the only one who stood for the guy as she clapped. The loser.

So, the movie was great and when they transformed was pretty awesome too. The only I really hated was the fact that Shia LaBuff was the lead role. I think they should've gotten a different person. I can't stand him.

Anywho, here's a poster from the movie. I wish I could get rid of the Hasbro logo on it cause it looks really lame with the poster, but oh well. What're you gonna do? Huh?



Out of all of the summer movies so far, it is far by the best. It could be better, but all in all, it's a good movie. Well worth the money you spend on it, but not the money on the snacks!

Dun Dun DUUUUUUUNNNNNN

Hello folks, this is Amy with all your retarded and random news for the day.

Anywho, I was watching G4 last week at the beach with my cousin Justin, and we saw this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHjFxJVeCQs

It's really funny when you say something before he turns around. Try it. I know you're sorely tempted. Just give in. It will make you feel so much better!

"Think of it, little friends! All of the power, the influence you could have. I am there for you, faith in your heart or not. If the wider path be dammed, then so be it. We've got nachos, where they offer breadsticks! I've got answers for what you lose sleep over! No more confusion, fear, or anything to make you question the value of it all! All of this for only a small registration fee! What do you say, dear friends?"
~Senior Diablo
SQUEE'S Wonderful Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors

Have a happy bumble bee of a life!