My Family by Thomas Schwarzrock

My family is pretty chill, with my Mom and Dad, my brother Erich, and 2 dogs. My dad is a man's man. He received degrees from Paul Smith's college in forestry, as well as the State University of New York, in geotechnical engineering after he figured out that you can't make much money in forestry jobs. He built his own 8 ft wide by 14 ft long by 9 ft tall, 112 square foot woodshed with only common power tools, lumber, and leftover roof shingles. Known neighborhood-wide for his tree-felling abilities, he spends a lot of time cutting, transporting, splitting, and stacking firewood in his shed. As we live next to Mahlon Dickerson's forest reservation, and own quite a bit of acreage, my father is quick to scavenge all of the firewood he can from whatever trees fall down on our property. A big win for him was after hurricane sandy, as many trees fell down throughout our woods. We own our own hydraulic wood splitter, and it is my father's pride and joy. In our house, we have two fireplaces that my dad keeps burning practically non-stop from November to March. It can get upwards of 80 degrees in our house if my dad really pushes it. My father owns 2 tractors, the old one with a snowblower attachment for our driveway, and the new one for mowing. In conclusion, my father is quite a hardy man. My mother is a different story, graduating from Duke with a computer science degree, but she wanted to give that up to raise her kids. Granted, she still has been working, as she founded her own soil-testing lab. A caring woman, she always gives her own, sometimes odd advise or constructive criticism on topics, even when you don't ask for it. She is very much unlike my father, as she enjoys relaxing, while my father always likes to work. Erich is my brother, and is attending Worcester Polytechnical Institute in pursuit of a computer science degree. My brother is an eagle scout, as well as an accomplished robotics wiz, and he and his team would have made it to World's, had Erich not pressed the wrong button on the robot, running the wrong program. He was not sad or mad though, as Erich rarely shows emotion. Also an experienced tree-feller, he knows his way around a chainsaw and splitting maul, as him and I have been learning in our father's footsteps. Other than that, our two dogs are pretty cool, and my family is pretty neat-o as well.