State Song

When I was growing up my Grandpa has a tape of a song that had all the states in it. We listened to it alot and I even think some of the girls got some money if they memorized the song.

The song he had was very close to this one form the Animaniacs except this one is states and their capitols:

Ah, non-memories

I am closing in on 2,500 posts on my blog soon, so it doesn't surprise me that I don't remember everything I have posted. However I don't remember this at all (original post):

"One of the joys of working for a master's degree is getting to know a good amount of people that are not from America. Sometimes they shed light on subjects that I have not ever thought about.

At today's data mining class I brought the rest of my twizzlers that I had started to devour yesterday (I would have ate them all, but I only took half of them with me to class last time.) I offered some of them to my professor (from China) and a classmate (from ?). My prof. tried it and said that they were ok, and tried to get my classmate to try them as well, which she refused. Then my prof. said that: "it was good, kind of like fruit jerky, and smells like toothpaste." Well if I had never tried them before I wouldn't have after that description.

But was it true? Are twizzlers fruit jerky toothpaste mix? I smelt them, and sadly I have to admit they do kind of smell like toothpaste.

Needless to say my classmate never did try them."

I am glad I wrote stuff like that down, cause it is too funny to forget.

Long hair and stunning good looks will do that

Problems for Daily Piglet's kid reminded me of a story about my past that I chortle to myself about:

When I was growing up I would get called a girl a fair amount of times.

My favorite time was when I came up to a men's retreat with our church, and other churches in the area. I came in later in the morning, during a talk one of the guys from another church was giving. There was only about 40 of us in the room, and at the end of his talk he said something to the effect of "and that is something every guy, or girl -motioning to me, could be proud of." In his defense I did have long hair at the time. But common it was a men's retreat, for guys, I had to be pretty convincing as a girl for him to ignore that fact.

Afterward at lunch he apologized a bunch.

Cinn-A-Burst

My office bro, Kent, broke out some vintage Cinnaburst gum today in celebration of becoming a "Ratings Master" on Yahoo Music. He estimates that the gum is more than 12 years old. The gum tasted like I remembered, however the flavor is already all but gone. Good times.

One of the things I remember the most about the gum is that ads that they ran during Channel One. Channel One being a "news" program for kids that schools would show during home room, in exchange for the news and free tv's for the school, the kids get 5 or so minutes of commercials with a very captive audience. Needles to say almost all of the ads during Channel One rocked, probably because they were aimed directly at my age group.

Anywho, thanks to the wonderful world of YouTube I can relive my favorite ad-at-school moments:

Star Wars as a Kid

I was thinking back to my younger years the other day, and I was thinking about how I used to go to one of my mom's friends house and listen to the Star Wars soundtrack. But then as I got to think about it I seemed to remember watching the movie, not listing to it over at the house. Then it dawned on me, I was watching Star Wars on Laser Disc. I had confused the disc with a record in my mind and never sorted it out until just then. Sweet sweet revelation.

Speaking of kids and Star Wars check out the synopsis of the story by a three year old:

Searching for my past

[In the picture, starting with me in the red hair on the left, and going around the table clockwise is; Me, I don't remember, Matt, Jenette (my sister), and the one of the two other boys is Timothy, the other one is somebody that I don't remember.]

This morning for some reason I had a strong urge to find out what has been going on with my old (old) buds from Casa Grande. I haven't even thought about them in forever, but I had nothing better to do. So away I went through the annals of Google.

I couldn't find anything at all about Chris Allender (Alexander? I can't even exactly remember his last name). I don't think that he is around Casa Grande anymore.

[From left to right, Jenette, Me, Chris making the funny face, and Timothy (?)]

I had better luck with finding stuff about Matthew Lemberg and company. Matt and I used to play football together in the streets back when I was like 8 or so. And his parents (more on them in a bit) threw the coolest birthday party for him that I had ever gone too (probally even still to this day). See he was in to baseball and so the party was baseball themed. When we got to the party we all randomly drew out sweatbands, if we got a green one we were on the Oakland A's team, if we got a blue one we were on the L.A. Dodger's. I am sure we did many cool things using those teams... I don't really remember... I just remember how cool it was to be drafted onto a baseball team for just attending a party. Even to this day I still hold the A's as one of the teams that I go for because of him. Also since he liked the A's my stack of baseball cards always seemed to be missing A's cards after he went threw them... (but it is ok, because one day when I went to his house to see if he wanted to play and we wasn't there, I stole a toy car from him, it was a toy police car. So I figure we are even.)

Anyways, Matt Lemberg is now the Chief Personal Officer at the Casa Grande Boys and Girls Club. He seems to be doing pretty good, and is married to a girl named Corrie, which sounds like a familiar name, but I might just be making that up. It is good to see that he is doing good.

[I am the red head in the front row, Chris is sitting to the left of me. Our soccer team was pretty good that year, I think we got second in the league.]

Timothy, Matt's younger brother, who I don't think was ever called Tim, has no presence on the internets besides the times he is mentioned with Matt when playing in various tennis tournaments. Don't know any more about him. When we were growing up sometimes I would get along better with Timothy than Matthew, since Matt was a year older, and I think Timothy is a year younger than me (so two years younger than Matt.)

Erin, their sister, who cut Jenette's bangs one day back when they were both 4 or so, also is not mentioned on the internet except she is going to be a camp counselor at some camp in Arizona. I don't really have any memory of her from my childhood.

The last people I found in their family, and the only one that has a picture on the internet is their parents (this pic of Matt doesn't count). Rick and Kathy Lemberg look exactly as I remember them looking from way back when. Rick is now the pastor at Sierra Vista Presbyterian Church in Oakhurst, California. It sounds like they are doing good. It was very hard to find them since they weren't in Casa Grande anymore... and for a while I was spelling Lemberg as Limburgh... that made it harder to find them. I don't remember much about Kathy... oh yes I do, one day when I ate dinner at their house she made me drink all my milk before I could go play. Ugh! I hate milk... I think though that I did drink most of it. What I remember of Rick was him building things, I remember he built a bike track in his backyard for Matt and Timothy (I had one too in my backyard... we all had rocks for a backyard, so digging in it wasn't that big of a deal.) I also remember that he made Matt and Timothy cool beds. I guess I should say that he was the pastor at the church we went to in Casa Grande, the First Presbyterian Church, but I don't really remember him there.

Well there you have it. A really long post about some people from my past, that I though of to look up on Google this morning. I came across Matt's work phone number, but I decided against calling it, I think that would be creepy... well I guess writing up an essay on their family might qualify for creepy too... but I will classify this post as memories, and all the creepiness of it goes away, right? Anywho, if any of ya Lembergs are as to stumble upon this post when you searching for your own name, go ahead and leave me a comment. I would like to hear from you.

Oh, one more story. When Matt would get hungry he would just go and get a slice of bread and eat it plain; all in one bite. He would do that alot.