1. Found out that dreams really do come true—at the Cumberland Pencil Museum!
Replica graphite mine! Old pencils! New pencils! Pencil-making machines! World’s largest pencil!
The best part was the secret WWII pencil: regular type pencils squirreled away from the factory under cover of darkness so that they could be hollowed out and have one of four tiny maps of Germany inserted. A compass was added under the metal piece that holds on the eraser, and then the pencils were distributed to RAF pilots in case they were shot down over Germany.
2. Learned the phonetic alphabet, including numbers. Comes in quite handy, we’ve found. My personal favorites: foxtrot and niner.
3. Introduced the second verse of “Cenaida (Mexican Flan)”:
Cenaida, Cenaida
Your name isn’t Vlad
Cenaida, Cenaida
Best roommate I ever had
Cenaida, Cenaida
When I didn’t clean the bathroom you’d get mad
Cenaida, Cenaida, Cenaida
4. Pushed Stephan and the car up a giant hill in the snow all by myself and Tony and Cenaida.
5. Spent all Thanksgiving cooking with Cenaida and sending Tony to the grocery store no fewer than three times. All we missed was pecan pie and the Special K casserole.
6. Tricked a ton of English people into liking pumpkin pie. I sent one to work with Stephan, and the initially skeptical are now converted. Apparently he had to skip the 2nd floor entirely because the 25 pieces into which he cut the pie would only go so far. I did have an English person later suggest that using canned pumpkin was “cheating,” but, as any American will tell you, that couldn’t be further from the truth. For whatever reason, pumpkin pie from scratch is just not tasty. And it’s like I always say: why would God make canned pumpkin if he wanted us to use the fresh kind?
