Ants and Micro Machines

My extended family is spread out around the world. Italy, Germany, Iran all have these invisible threads across the Atlantic to Texas, Minnesota, and Illinois. It doesn't happen often, save for weddings and the like, but when I was ten or so family came in from Köln. The most important site, for them, was downtown Chicago. Now, Germany is the "old country" for (me and) a lot of people, and there's a reason why it's called that; hundreds of years old houses and ruins and vestiges of the past rise up everywhere you look. Great monuments and memories of both fantastic and poorly conceived, even devastating ideals. In later years I realized that that sense of history is almost normal. Seeing a three hundred-year old church or park that has existed longer than any of the oldest buildings here in the U.S. happens as they're walking to the bank. My relatives wanted to see something new, something distinct to this country. Among those things was my second cousin nearly jumping through the roof of my parent's mini-van in excitement over seeing a Corvette and the Sears Tower.

It's pretty funny to think back to when you're a child and remember the wonder that existed as you looked down at the city, holding your wide-open hand up like you've just blocked out nearly half a large city. How small the ants (if you could see them at all) and Micromachines were moving about like they're part of some greater thing. Moving together. And then running over to tug on your dad's shirt, to point out the white, domed building rising up from the trees drawing everyone towards it, unifying ants from all over the world.

I ramble a lot!

Yes, Shirin is a Precht

My sister went to the State Science Fair today to present her project of which water is safest to drink (I can't recall the actual name, sadly) to a panel of judges. A week ago it became apparent to me that she wasn't all that interested in going and had been nervously and anxiously thinking her way to a ulcer (no, not literally). She would stand with her elbows to her stomach, slightly hunched over, white knuckles to her collar bones. She went anyway, as one of ten students from her school; six girls. She called with ten minutes left on the three hour drive back home to tell me that she received a gold medal in...some specific category. My mom chirped in the background, to which my sister responds, "I want to have a Viking funeral when we get home." My mother was obviously displeased, "Someone next to me said that she was going to burn hers when she got home," my sister responded with a chuckle.
Upon arriving home, or so my sister filled me in soon there after, she "stomped on it." I asked if she took pictures, and she responded with a 'no' but said that she "started yelling...and mom yelled at me and dad laughed." Of course mom would yell at her daughter stomping on the project she was sure she loved and felt no animus towards. Problem was, there was a lot. She then mentioned that she didn't think our mom would let her having her Viking Funeral, "but it would be cool". It was at this moment when I realized that this needed to take place. The project needed a proper destruction, and what better way than setting it out in some filthy water in some lake somewhere. I then asked "could we shoot a flaming arrow as it floated away?", and that she should keep it so we could give it the proper send off by ourselves. She would, of course, need to keep it quiet from mom as she would kill both of us if she found out.
This whole exchange of continuous laughter concluded with my sister saying "so I think that I'm just going to stomp on it and kick it and throw it in the mud until it DIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Now, none of her text was changed from the IM conversation we had. That is actually what she typed and how she felt. Amazing. She had to go, I bid her "good luck with [her] destruction", and we concluded with a couple goodbye's and an 'I love you'. I cannot properly put into words how wonderful my little sister is, but I hope this produced some kind of feeling.