Stillwater!

I have about ten favorite days in the calendar year (family birthdays, Christmas Eve, the day of BCS bowls, Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day are some, if you must know), and Walkaround is one of them. Every year as a kickoff to OSU's Homecoming, Stillwater puts on a remarkable Walkaround festivity where we all get to return to our college home, walk the streets around campus, and take in all of the awesome house decorations. When asked to explain what these house decorations are like, I explain the facts of them: they are huge, made of tissue paper stuffed into chicken wire, and move around. But that just sounds like something, well, crazy-like. Giant pieces of tissue paper that move around like chickens? Um, no. Here is an example of what some of them this year looked like:

 

We never miss Walkaround. Now that we have kids, we arrive there early and leave a little earlier, but you'll find us there each year. Silas particularly enjoyed our time this year. Some of the house decs were exciting to him, especially the one that had moving puzzle pieces and the one that had a moving front-end loader. He liked looking at the camels in the carnival area, throwing sticks into Theta Pond, viewing Pistol Pete (albeit from afar), eating popcorn, and watching the tubas in the OSU marching band (a shout-out to Hooge is appropriate here!).

Time with the boys at Theta Pond really brought back memories, as always. I could practically see my 19-year-old self reading about the Rwandan genocide on a bench by the water, and getting bit by the local swan as I tried to walk through heading to the NSC one day (that son of a bitch drew blood on my leg, and I was minding my own business!). Go Pokes!