Strolling through the open doorway of the classroom, he made his way to the back. Weaving in and out of desks, he only stopped to pick up a random pencil someone earlier had left, not even noticing that it was pink. even while slouching with his backpack slung lazily behind one arm he would stand out from the crowd.
He is Asian, yet he towers above everyone like a skyscraper in a farm town. You can pick him out from his stocky build, tan skin and cropped black, Asian hair. He also has his always present red jacket zipped up all the way so that you rarely see his shirt. It is ripped half way around the right sleeve and has not left his back since we started school even in the hot Oklahoma summer. His light-brown backpack that he’s had since elementary school looks even more beat up.
As he tosses it on the ground next to a desk, his last two colored pencils tumble out. He sits down heavily in the old wooden desk that does not have enough leg room and proceeds to lay his head down with his forearms covering his face still grasping the pink pencil that he had grabbed not a moment ago. He continues to sit like this for awhile until I walk in, only the second person to enter the classroom, and open the heavy door.
Immediately his head popped up, quick as a fly, and grabs a textbook on the desk next to him proceeding to open it to a random page and pretend like he had been reading it the whole entire time. I laugh and joke with him on how he thought I was the teacher while making my way back to him. In response to my joke he just flipped his hair to the side by looking to the side and uttered a very dramatic, “Well.” This was usually his way of responding to my jokes whenever he couldn’t come up with a response.
He has been getting better at putting up more of a fight ever since he joined me in our debate class. That’s another thing we share, love for arguing, and we love to practice whenever we’re together, even if I win most of the time. He’s also been getting better at chess since I started playing him even, when no one at school can repeatedly best me.
But, probably one of the best things I like about him is that he will never back down from a challenge and will never give up no matter what happens. Just recently he went up and challenged our best debater, a senior, to a match. He knew he didn’t have much of a chance but he still stood up there and did his best to prove himself, and he did an awesome job. From all of this I know, that Phu Tran is my best friend.
We surprised our kids in April 2008 with a train trip to Fort Worth from Oklahoma City. This is the best resolution version of this movie that I have at this point. What FUN this was!
I found this video tonight as I was looking at data on an old hard drive. Unfortunately the new version of iMovie isn’t compatible with the older version I created this with. If I find a copy at some point I may encode this at a higher resolution. At least we have this version!
Inspired by Ben Grey‘s December 7th post, “Challenging Seconds,” I’ve opted for a sixty second video this year in lieu of a family Christmas Card. Following the rules outlined by Ben, this is a 60in60 video:
60 images
1 second per image (total of 60 seconds)
The video tells a story
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the Fryers in Oklahoma City!
Tonight for Christmas dinner we cooked prime rib. It turned out delicious! I probably should have left it in the oven about 10 more minutes. Here is some documentation of how I cooked it in case you’re interested, and for my own later reference.
This was the recipe I used and modified slightly. We bought 4 pounds of prime rib at Whole Foods, which was 2 bone-in ribs/steaks. We were feeding 7 people. This worked out fine, but I would like to have an extra rib next time for the same number of people.
For the seasoning rub (which turned out amazing) I added some Montreal steak seasoning to the four ingredients included in the recipe: coarse sea salt, onion powder, garlic powder, and pepper. I didn’t baste the sides during cooking. For our 4 pound roast, I cooked it 15 min at 425 degrees and then 1 hour, 15 minutes at 325. The meat thermometer read 130 at the end of the cooking time. I covered it with foil and let it rest for 20 minutes after that. As I said it turned out amazing, but since we had several people who like more well done meat it would have been good to leave it in the oven just a touch longer.
I cut it with our electric knife which worked great. To keep the meat hotter before serving, however, next time I’ll try to have all other items ready for our plates before cutting the prime rib.
Alexander recorded this 5 minute reflection using the iPhone application SonicPics yesterday, sharing some thoughts from his tour last Friday of the College of Engineering at Kansas State University.
