F is for...

Forgotten in the move!

Well, almost. Almost but not quite...
No, really, F is for... FWINGO! The Flamingo!

Fwingo may simply be a tacky lawn ornament to you, but to me, he is a tacky lawn ornament that I earned!!

I went to a magnet program in high school. Really intense, internationally certified curriculum. The way the program works, is that during your junior and senior years, you take your exams in May, rather like the AP exams. You get your scores back from your exams over the summer, again, like the AP exams. Whether you graduate the program is determined by your totaled exam scores, along with a few other things. In the meantime, as you're waiting for your exam scores to get back to you, you graduate from high school with the rest of your class in the spring, earn the regular HS diploma and head off to college. The way my high school works it, is that there is a second graduation ceremony in December (when we come back from our first semester at college) for those who've either graduated from the magnet program, or earned certificates from taking magnet program classes and exams. The graduation ceremony is hosted by the class below you (i.e. the current seniors in the program). Our friends in the class below us decided to Flamingo-a-Friend** the school for the day of the ceremony. Our names were each written on a flamingo, which were all in the nicely landscaped garden in front of the high school. At the end of the ceremony, we were able to take home our flamingo. So, I did. I have since named him, and decorated him with the leis that you see. Seemed right for him, somehow ;)

At the moment, Zach hates the plastic flamingo, while I'm trying to find a large indoor plant to plant Fwingo in, so that he may lurk among the greenery in an unobtrusive corner of our desert home :)


**If you don't know what Flamingo-a-Friend is, check them out here. You call the company, and they will come and fill the yard of your choice with flamingos, ravens, sheep, owls... basically, the plastic animal of your choice. :) I'm sure there are other companies that do it too, but the first one I heard about was this one, so that's what I've always called it.