Pizza Hut

The Summer Reading Program

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Ah, the summer reading program. Evie has been participating at our local library, and it sure brings back memories.

Growing up, the library was probably my favorite place on earth. I have spoken before about how, uh, intense I was about reading as a kid:

Speaking of being a weirdo about reading, when I was little I read like a kid possessed! I gave new definition to the term book-worm. I used to hide behind the couch so my mom didn’t catch me reading. Sometimes she would force me to go outside and get some fresh air so I would pretend like I had to go to the bathroom and throw a book out the window and then go outside and retrieve it and hide behind the garage and continue to read. When I ran out of books I would read anything including my mom’s old text books and even the backs of all the shampoo bottles or things in the medicine cabinet. I am not making this up!

(Side note: is quoting yourself from an earlier blog post weird?) (Side note #2: I don’t mean that to sound like I had to hide from my mom because she didn’t want me reading. (That was my dad.) My mom just didn’t want me reading all. the. time. to the exclusion of all else in my life, which is what I usually did.)

I did not need a summer reading program to encourage me to read. On the contrary, you couldn’t have physically prevented me from reading over the summer. The best part *about* the summer was all the free time I had to read. Every day I would ride my bike to the library to return the four or five books I had read overnight. When I discovered they would actually give you things for free if you simply listed all the books you had read, it was a no brainer. (Especially if someone would give you honest to goodness Pizza Hut Pizza for reading, aka Book It!)

Even at that age, I knew the prizes they gave out were pretty lame. But it was a free bonus for doing something I wanted to do anyway. The grand prize was usually a tee shirt that said something about the library. I loved those tee shirts. I was proud of them. I’m not really sure why, since it wasn’t very difficult for me to get to the grand prize level, and I always continued to read long after I hit the top, but I guess it was a shirt about the library, and I loved the library. These days, I wear shirts about other things I love, like the Packers or Thundercats or Jim’s Cheesesteaks.

I remember proudly presenting my carefully handwritten list of books to the librarian, the margins scribbled in with book titles that didn’t fit in the slots (it only went to 100). I also remember my shame and outrage when the librarian told me that she didn’t believe me, and it wasn’t possible that I could have read that many books so soon after the summer reading program started. I think my mom had to vouch for me or something, and even still the librarian thought we were trying to pull a fast one on her (you know, because the library tee shirt and eraser that looked like a crocodile were well worth the effort of a con job). And you know, in retrospect, what did she think I was doing in the library every day in the summer, setting up my alibi? Why did I keep checking out all those books if I wasn’t reading them? Could she have been so unobservant that she didn’t notice that I was in her place of work almost as much as she was?

Mean old librarians aside (and believe me, the mean old librarians of Chicago put the mean old librarians of back home to shame), libraries and the summer reading program will be forever ensconced in the deepest part of my heart. The summer reading program is one of the quintessential experiences of youth. I’m so hopeful that Evie will look back on them with the fondness that I do.

The restaurants of break

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Over the break (the two weeks over the holidays during which I didn’t blog), we were out and about a little more than usual, which led to us hitting up more restaurants than usual. So I wanted to mention a few of the highlights:

The best of the lot was Electric Cheetah in Grand Rapids. Evie was pretty excited to go here, since she considers us the “Cheetah family” (on account of how fast she and I run at soccer practice). She must have been hungry too, because she insisted she was going to order “everything” from the waitress. The waitress must have been taken with her, since she spent a few minutes showing her pictures of her kids. I had one of the best sandwiches I can recall, the “Sloppy Jalopy” which was:

House-smoked corned beef brisket and black forest ham, caramelized red onion, tomato, thousand island, Dijon, and Swiss on grilled rye.

They also had a root beer list the way a brewery has a beer list, which was also enjoyable to read (but the one Sara ultimately chose did have high fructose corn syrup in it). They also had good fries with *awesome* dipping sauces for them. I don’t remember what they all were, but there were like 10 different kinds and they were all delicious. My favorite was the dill. Also, Sara had some saffron-tomato soup which she enjoyed. All in all, a very awesome “hipster” lunch spot (it even said hipster on the menu, so I know it’s true).

Obviously that was a little more interesting than the Pizza Hut lunch buffet, but that doesn’t mean Evie didn’t enjoy it more. Evie ate more than Sara! She had 3 pieces of pizza, garlic toast, a dessert breadstick, 3 slices of peaches (she didn’t beat her old man though).

Next up was a restaurant a little closer to home (and one we go to now and again), Chant. At this one, Evie was excited about getting to try “sushi” (except it didn’t have fish). She had wanted to try some at Sara’s work Christmas party, and then she got a set of play sushi from Rachael, which she loves to play with. So I ordered some so that she could try it. I don’t think she really liked it, but then again it was non-traditional sushi, so she might go for it again some time.

The last and least exciting restaurant was Quiznos, the name of which Evie found hilarious. “Quiz-nose? The restaurant is Quiz-nose?” Now, it’s just funny to have “nose” in the name, but this was especially funny to Evie, because she has special names for all of us in the family. Evie is Spoon-nose, I am Fork-nose, and Sara is Kitchen-nose. This all happened one day when Evie and I were being silly, and I was wearing a spoon on my nose, but in true Evie-fashion, she never forgets a thing. So these names have been around for a long time and she never forgets them. So this sort of added to the humor of Quiz-nose.

There were a few more restaurants, but those were the ones that stood out.