I'm Back from my Poconos trip

Yesterday I returned from Pennsylvania and the annual Hoberg family reunion. First I flew to Philadelphia, then drove to my aunt and uncle's house, where I spent two nights before driving to my great-uncle's lodge in the Poconos, where I stayed for a week with some of my extended family, whom I'm sure you would love to hear about, so I'll give you a quick rundown of the tree. ROSA Present at the Poconos were: Jan and Mark Gingold with identical twin daughters Sara and Beth and son Daniel (Beth brought her boyfriend Jeremy and Dan brought his girlfriend Janelle), Rick and Jeanne Hoberg with son Matthew and daughter Mellissa (Mellissa brought her friend Kim), Peter Hoberg with son William (me) and daughter Becca, Chris and Ron Bizer with sons Stephen and Tim and daughter Kate, my father's parents Shirley and George Hoberg, Shirley's brother, Bill Kieser, his daughter Valerie, and Don and Jane, whom I don't really know. ROSA Not present were: bunches of other Hobergs, Areharts, and Harrisons.

The lodge overlooks Silver Lake, of which a picture can be found in the upper right corner of this post. The lake is great for swimming and for catching fish. This year I landed three rather large fish, of which I am very proud, a pickerel and two bass. It has long been tradition for the entire family to converge on this site and cause havoc from sheer numbers. This year had a relatively small crowd compared to other years, but there was still lots of havoc. What was really awesome was that all week long there was a chance of thunderstorms, but it didn't so much as rain until the one night our cookout was planned.

There was a dilapidated pool table there, and I played just about everyone on it. I'm not very good at pool. I was introduced to a new game called Pictionary-Telephone, which is exceedingly fun. I visited two waterfall parks, which were both fun, and managed to skip a rock 4 times. I found out that the fish in Silver Lake are attracted to sunscreen the hard way (they chased me out of the water). And I joined The Woodbumz, my cousins' white-rap group. Their names? Ginga Snapz, Bredd Loaf, 20-Inch D, Ju-C Juice, and Vanilla Bean Speck (Matthew, Tim, Daniel, Stephen, and me). They featured me on the track "Damn, it Feels Good to Be a Woodbum," which I believe will be on their album of the same name. Stick around for rhymes to be published on this blog.

Back to the Blog

I haven't blogged in ages, and not since I went camping at Yosemite with the YMCA and my friend Caleb. I found lookalikes to a friend's mom, Shia LaBeouf, and my sister's friend. I saw a black bear rip open a log. I hiked Vernal Falls and Yosemite Falls. But none of that matters. My life will have neither meaning nor purpose until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is released. My goal is to be among the first to blog about it, but I doubt that's going to happen, and for two good reasons. One, people have probably already blogged about it, and two, some people, like my sister, can read a book like that in something like four hours, a superpower I, sadly, do not have. I'm going to see Order of the Phoenix on the 14th, which sounds exciting if inaccurate and superficial (sorry, I had to vent). Wikipedia's list/ dictionary of Harry Potter spells is horribly full of holes; it does not even come close to sticking with the canon it specifies. On a completely different note, tracing someone's genealogy back thousands of years is not quite as easy as it sounds, even when that person comes from the house of Levi.