The Things About Brinkerhoff Males...

Us males of the Brinkerhoff family have some similar traits...

One thing: most of, if not all of us, are hairy. Seriously, by the age of 15, the average Brinkerhoff male will have hair all over the place, and it'll keep coming and coming...

Another thing: According to my cousin The Donald, as Dad calls him, if you don't like black licorice, you're no Brinkerhoff. He supposively "challenged" me last summer, telling me this, so to prove I was truly of Brinkerhoffian descent, I ate four "Red Vines" brand black licorice, and as much as I disliked the taste, I got 'em all down. So that means I'm really a Brinkerhoff, right??? RIGHT???

Finally, and I'm not sure if this goes outside our household...: we Brinkerhoff males have a curse upon us that we have a REALLY hard time finding stuff. Cindy will send me out to find something, and trying to find it will frustrate me to death (unless it's in plain sight, of course). Dad and probably Tyler have this trait, too.

So, there's the scoop on Brinkerhoff males for y'all. Okaaaaay, so I got these from different opinions, but I'm guessing these are mostly true...

Good day to all of you.

Spring Break

Yeah, this is pretty late for me to be posting, but who cares?

This week for me is Spring Break. That's only for me, though, since Ellysa and Kaylee are in a different school district. I was a little apprehensive, as I usually like having another person of my age or younger home with me. But that's what the Puddle Jumpers are for, right?

And besides, after all the company this last weekend, having peace and quiet may not be such a bad thing after all (we had a LOT of people here last Saturday). No offense, of course.

That's all for today...

Shyness

When my Dad did a post on his blog called "Five Largely Unknown Things about Mike", he mentioned he was extremely shy. He said he knew a lot of people didn't believe this about him. I'm one of those people.


See, I know my Dad, as a DJ, is always being social with others, so to me there's NO WAY he's shy.

I also happen to be shy, but much much more so than Dad. I think it may have something to do with my autism (Asperger Syndrome). I find it a challenge just to look someone in the eye while talking to them. Actually, I can't remember the last time I looked someone right in the eye while having a conversation. Dad seems to do this without any trouble at all, although he may just be "pretending", as he said in his post.

TTFN (Ta-ta for now)

Frogs and Vocabulary

So, a couple of interesting moments today...

First of all, here's a rundown of my classes just for kicks:

1st Period: Personal Choices:

All right, I'm sure some of you are scratching your heads on this one. Well, you're not alone: I've had to explain quite a few times what exactly this class is about. No, it's NOT about making a PERSONAL CHOICE of whether you want to stay in this class or not. No, personal choices has to do with communication skills and the decision-making process... and we watch a lot of LIFETIME movies. Okay, so we've only watched two: one I actually liked a lot, the other not so much. But you can't like them all, right?

2nd Period: Geometry 2:

If there's one good thing I can say about this class, it's that it's INFINITELY better than Algebra II. If you didn't read the article on "Rodney's" Blog, I HATE ALGEBRA 2!!! Polynomials, absolute values, radicals, OH MY!!!

3rd Period: Auto Maintenance:

This class is alright, but not my favorite. Most of the time we sit at the computer and watch videos to answer questions on these assessments. Although we did have an actual lab assignment last month, taking apart an engine and putting it back together. Man, that was a hard assignment (do you know how many parts a simple engine has?)

4th Period: Special Needs P.E. (Teacher's Assistant):

Okay, you probably remember me mentioning this on my last post. Now, being a teacher's assistant in P.E. is, in my opinion, BORING. No offense to anyone, but I'd rather be playing hockey in the gym rather than "motivate" the players to hit the puck when it comes their way. I know I'm doing a great thing for these kids, but as great as it is, I just don't enjoy it that much. However, we TA's DO get to join in with the regular students and play games sometimes, and that's fun. Oh, and every Friday we get in swim in the pool for the whole period!

5th Period: Sophomore English:

This is probably up there as one of my favorite classes. One gripe I have, however, is that in class, when we read a novel, we analyze the crud out of it. I mean, really, we have to do TONS of worksheets on the novel we're reading. The thing is, I actually enjoyed the first book we read ("The Contender", by Robert Lipsyte), and I'm enjoying the second one we're in the middle of right now ("Flowers for Algernon", by Daniel Keyes), but I'd rather just read the book than analyze it to death while doing it.

6th Period: Biology:

This is another cool class. Our sixth period class is doing a project on Snake Lake (a nature center just across the road from my school), and we were part of a video conference last month, with four or five other schools. Not only that, but we also have some animals in our classroom and in an aquarium out in the hallway, including salamanders, frogs, fish, and turtles. I get to feed them all, too (I'm the official animal feeder)!

... now, you're probably wondering about the title of this post. Well, today in Biology, we got to do the classic science experiment: dissecting a frog. Here were my thoughts while doing the experiment:

• "Wow, that frog almost looks like a rubber play toy!"
• "Ugh, what's that awful smell? It smells like wet paint!"
• "Wait, that's the FROG I'm smelling?"

... and that's before we started dissecting the thing. When we got to see it's insides, let's just say we saw plenty of organs... but no pianos.

(ooooh, bad joke...)

Just one period earlier, we had 10 vocabulary words in English class. Our assignment was to come up with a situation using at least 5 of those words, then ACT IT OUT. So, here's what I wrote (I bold-formatted the vocab words...)

Jim is the ecstatic affiliate of the portly, pompous Rodney. The affiliate is invariably in proximity with Rodney, and unintentionally encumbers his close affiliate. Life just isn't plausible for Rodney.

Oh, and MAN, you should've seen the show me and Oleg (the classmate I was partnered with) put on with that. Oleg's kind of a dork, so I thought he'd be good as the ecstatic affiliate. I was the portly, pompous affiliate, of course.

That's all for this post!

Dear Diary...: Fourth Period Missing. $12,000 reward if found.

This was kind of an interesting day...

When Dad picked me up for seminary, we had to drive to the District Office, as when I took the second writing WASL last Thursday, I forgot to sign my name on the front. So, since we had to drive from the church to the office, then the office to my school, I got there a few minutes late. Dad wrote me a note, and I was off the hook (though my first period teacher didn't mind: they had just started).

First three periods went as normal, then...


For fourth period, I am a teacher's assistant in the special needs P.E. program. But most of our class took off today on a field trip, and my teacher, Ms. Cowling, had no idea, so class was cut for the day.

Fourth period goes for one hour, then lunch for a half-hour. So I had just under an hour of spare time on my hands. I have a couple of "acquaintances" in my P.E. class, and I was thinking they'd just hang out at school, and I'd be near them so I wouldn't be by myself. But it turned out they were "going somewhere", so I was stuck.

I ended up staying at the library for half the "period", listening to my MP3 player to keep myself occupied (I, like my Dad, am a big music person). Then I decided I was still pretty bored just sitting there, so I just made my way back to the cafeteria...

Ms. Cowling spotted me, and gave me a job: one of the students who decided not to go on the field trip left his lunch on the bus, and he can only eat Cool Ranch Doritos, so Ms. Cowling gave me a big bag of 'em that she had, and told me to take them to Ms. Gherke, who was back at the special education room. I went to give them to her, and she was so pleased with this that she gave a $5 (or maybe $10) bill to give to Ms. Cowling. So I went back to the cafeteria to give it to her, but she said she didn't want it, so I was hustling back to the special needs room, and I gave it back. Then I went back to the cafeteria.

Note that my backpack feels like it weighs 50 pounds, and I had a note in one hand, and a lunchbox in the other, so it got pretty tiring going back and forth and back and forth and...

But then again, when you think about it, I probably got my exercise in even when there was no class!

Andrew Brinkerhoff, signing off (hey, that rhymes!)

My Writing Hobby

I have quite a few hobbies that I like to do in my spare time. I play video games, read, ride my bike, and... write stories.





I've been writing stories for years, and it was never really something I did all the time for a while, just something I did every now and then. But I think last year in 2008, I wrote probably over 30 stories/books. Yep, I was busy.





I hope to get some of my books on here, or possibly on the family blog. I write AND illustrate both of my books. I'm also a pretty good artist, and I did some work on the family blog, with the hand-drawings of Tyler playing various sports or the current blog title panel.





I've created a lot of universes in my writing, such as "Cook Andrew's Stew", where my cartoon counterpart wears a chef hat and heads and works at "Andy's Diner", or "The Counter", a series about three boys who find a magic pedometer and use it to travel to different dimensions.





My latest series I've completed, however, is my favorite, called "Secret Agent Stick". I got the idea from a comic strip I was doodling in class when I was bored. I thought I might be able to write a story about the character, and wrote the first book, dubbed "A Short Novel in Cartoons", in a single week. It was 50 pages long too. I showed it to a lot of people and they really liked it, so I decided to create a sequel, and then a second sequel after that.





My friend at school, Aidan Hunt, really liked the books too, so he decided to create his own universe: the world of "Nick Nacho"!!! Nick is a taco-loving moron who is also a HUGE Agent Stick fan. This was pretty cool, inspiring someone to create their own book. I did this with the Puddle Jumpers a couple of times too, reading my books to some of the boys and them creating their own stories.





I always thought my talent was on the pogo stick (I once went for 30 minutes straight, non-stop), or video games (I've beaten a couple), but I realized later on that my true talent lies in writing.





Dad, after reading most of my first SAS book, thought it would make a great cartoon, so I thought, "Ah, what the heck", and came up with this:





It'll be about 15-20 minutes long, and done in some animation program. Me, Dad and Kaylee will be doing the voices, and it'll hopefully turn out good!

That's all for now.

About the blog...

Now, I've seen that a lot of the Brinkerhoff clan has gotten into the blogosphere, and I really wanted to be a part of it. But, considering I didn't think my life was exciting enough for a blog of my own, I used the idea my Dad gave me: become "Rodney Redhart", from my comic strip, "Rodney and Jim", and create my own blog. SO...

(You can click on that picture to link to the blog itself)

... and it worked out pretty well for a while, but then I just kinda ran out of ideas, but I still wanted to do more blogging. So after surfing on the internet, I came across a "game review blog". Now I thought this was pretty awesome, so, soon enough:

I was totally fired up to do this one, and kept going and going... for two weeks. This daily review thing was kinda exhausting, and I once again lost interest. Click on the picture to link to THIS blog.

So, finally, I just decided to continue reading my Dad's blog, and not do any more blogging, though I REALLY felt like starting my own blog. But then, just yesterday, Dad gave me some ideas, and I thought it was worth a shot. The result: KEEPING UP WITH A BRINKERHOFF!

That's my story. Now, with that out of the way, it's time to get this party started!

HEY-LOOOOOOOOOOOO THERE!!!

Well, after two attempts at blogging under the guise of "Rodney Redhart", I've started a blog for myself. No pseudonyms, just plain old Andy. So, this is just my "Welcome to the Blog" post. More information can be found on the next one.

Here goes!