Windy City Wedding

It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.

For those of you who don't understand that line, it's from the blues brothers. Good ol' Jake and Elwood.....my friend Nick has two life sized statues of them in his basement, quite scary if you aren't aware of the fact that they are statues. Anyways, tomorrow my family and I will be heading to Chicago for Mike and Sonia's wedding. To pass the time in the car I think I'll finish my book about golf's four "Major" tournaments cleverly named "The Majors" while also listening to my 11 best cd's. Why 11 ? No clue.

It's odd that I'd be heading to Chicago at this time anyways with or without a wedding. My friend Jeff and I have been attending the Western Open near Chicago for the past few years. The Western Open is the PGA (professional golfers association) tour's event held at Cog Hill Golf Course. I think it's actually in Lemont, IL but that doesn't really matter. This year we are unable to attend, Jeff is interning at some engineering place in Livonia and is not allowed to take two days off. Oh well, maybe next year. We get these special passes to go inside the General Electric courtesy tent and they provide free everything....burgers, chicken, gatorade, lemon chills, ice cream, you name it.

Oh by the way, there are pro golfers there too ! For a guy like me who watches those guys play amazing golf week after week it's very interesting to see them up close. I was even able to snag some autographs two years ago, they included Vijay Singh and David Toms and a few others. Tiger Woods was there last year but it's complete chaos following him. I did get to watch him on a par 5 last year which he felt the need to eagle. (Quick golf lesson: Par 5 means you're supposed to get it in the hole in 5 shots, Eagle means 2 under par.)

Well I suppose I better get some sleep so I'm not totally out of it for tomorrows adventure. I'll see y'all in Chicago.

A little history for ya

Yes, it's true......I Andrew Jacob Cook have started a blog. I'm not quite sure why I have decided to do this but here I go anyways.

So where should we start ? I can't recall a single memory without the help of other family members before the age of 5. Wow, we covered 5 years of my life in one sentence. Maybe I can have a blog and still retain my "man of few words" reputation.

I suppose I started to remember things the day I started school. Counting, coloring, eating paste...all that fun stuff. I learned how to read in the first grade. I don't remember the name of the book but it definitely had cookies in it. Second grade I brought in a crayfish for show and tell and said it wouldn't really hurt if it bit me, well I'm here to tell you that the crayfish put that theory to the test and decided to bite, pinch,claw....whatever it is they do, and it HURT. Lets just say I don't have that crayfish anymore. In the third grade I think I mastered my multiplication and division skills......I remember those sheets of paper with like 100 questions on them and they gave us a time limit to complete it. I think multiplying was my favorite. I'd tell you when I learned English but honestly I hated it and never really got the hang of it, so if you find a mistake or 23 on here, I apologize.

For grades 4 and 5 I switched schools and attended Ritter Elementary. I honestly don't remember much from 4th grade as far as learning goes but I did meet new people so it wasn't all bad. The 5th grade was an excellent year, one of my best I'd say.......I had a male teacher and he would always come out and play basketball or football or whatever it was that we were playing and play with us. Inside the classroom we learned a lot about the explorers and American history......we also read a book called "The Island of the Blue Dolphin" which has no bearing on anything so....that's all for 5th grade.

And just like that my elementary school career is over.

Next up we have Wagar Middle School

When I look back upon my days at Wagar I often wonder how in the world I was so chubby. There is the worst picture of me in my yearbook. I was sitting at a lunch table with what looks to be a chicken nugget in hand and my head appears to be just as wide as it was long and of course in 6th grade I didn't care what I looked like so I had this greasy hair and it was all separated right in front and.......just awful. Thank goodness I got into sports or I might still be that chubby today.

The 6th grade brought many new and different experiences.........new friends, new classes, new teachers, locker combinations to remember........but after a while it seemed to be ok.

The 7th and 8th grades bring back quite a few memories. National Honor Society trips......one to Toronto and one to Chicago, baseball games, basketball games, band concerts. One fond memory of 8th grade was when we got to take a class on money management, and everyone new that at the end of the class there would be this auction and you could buy things with whatever money you had left over. Well we all new the Baby Ruth candy bar was gonna be the most expensive and most coveted item.........well to make a long story short one other girl and myself had so much money left over that the teacher just decided to give us both a candy bar. I would think that was pretty good money management on my part.

And so it goes......another stage of my life has been completed.

Next stop, Airport Highschool.

Way too many memories to think about for this category. Let me see here, while in highschool I tried my hand at many different kinds of sports.........Basketball, baseball, track, golf, and a little bit of cross country but I wasn't allowed to do golf and cross country since they were in the same season so I had to choose golf. I never did anything spectacular in highschool, in fact I was just happy to be on the team most of the time, when I look back now I wish my golf game would've been slightly better but oh well I've improved greatly since I've graduated and that's fine with me.

If we turn to academics I never really did anything spectacular there either. I was 19th in my class and graduated with a 3.8 GPA........it's crazy these days with kids getting 4.5 GPA's. I didn't really enjoy highschool that much. One thing that stands out as an accomplishment for me is getting voted onto Homecoming court, not so much on an individual level but all 5 guys that were voted on were in the same group of friends and not one of us played football. That's quite amazing to me. Anyways back to reality....Classes seemed boring after 3 years and I couldn't wait to get out of there by my senior year. I'm glad I had a crazy bunch of friends who could break the monotony from time to time.

I think I will leave highschool at that........onward and upward !

Since my college career is yet to be completed I won't bore you with that yet, you have to have something to look forward to, right ?

Well I think that shall be enough reading material for now. Thanks for stopping by.

Hello Everyone

This shall go down in history as the first "test" blog I have ever done. 3......2.....1 and POST !