Tag: boat (Page 1 of 2)

The Bare Minimum

April 24, 2018 / DB

Lazy ass.

That’s what I’ve been.

Well, to be fair to myself, we do have a couple potentially large projects in the planning stages that have dominated my attention of late. Should they proceed, I shall share them here at a future date.

But I’ve also just been lazy. Freaking weak-ass weather isn’t helping either.

We got the boat in the water last weekend. All went well in every aspect of that process. No issues getting the boat down from Indy to the lake. S got the trailer in the water as quick as she ever has. And the boat started right up for a very chilly, early Saturday trip from the ramp to our lift. We had to do it early in order to get back for L’s soccer game, so it was still idle speed hours on the water, thus we casually cut across the lake, the only boat out.

We were also able to check out the repairs that had just been completed to our boat dock area after a big-ass tree fell on it in February. Everything looks good as new. The crazy thing is it looks like there was about a 5% chance of that tree making it all the way to our dock without getting blocked by another tree. Somehow it threaded that needle and did a fair amount of destruction in the process. I think it may have actually bounced off another tree on the way down. Freaking gravity…

Spring sports are officially underway, although our family has more rainouts than games played in kickball so far. I have a legendary kickball story to share in another post at some point.

Other things I need to write about soon:
* KU basketball and the FBI
* A Reader’s Notebook
* Something about the Royals maybe
* Perhaps some NBA playoff chatter
* Share a couple more good links

It’s supposed to start drying out here tomorrow and slowly begin getting closer to normal April/May temperatures. Hopefully that will get me re-focused on providing you quality content on a more regular basis.

Friday Notes

April 6, 2018 / DB

It’s been a busy week around these parts.

First, crazy ass weather. Sunday night/Monday morning we had our fourth snowstorm in the past two weeks. This time we got somewhere between 3–4” of snow. We received almost as much snow in those two weeks than we had gotten all of this winter before then and last winter combined. Weird.

We followed that up Tuesday with ridiculous rains. Some areas got 5” of rain. Pretty much any low land around here was/is still flooded.

And then Wednesday it snowed again, flurries all day.

I actually kind of like this late winter burst. Only because we’re leaving for a week in Mexico on Saturday. I like leaving for spring break when it still feels like winter. It’s kind of strange to leave when it’s already in the 70s and sunny every day. Now the real trick is for spring to finally kick winter’s ass out of here while we’re gone and come back to normal April weather.

Another sign spring – and summer – are getting closer: I had our boat scheduled for its spring start-up so it is ready to put in the water in two weeks. That’s a little earlier that we would like to do it, but we had to switch storage places this year and the new business has an earlier pickup deadline than our old place.

Today was also confirmation that our boat survived the winter. I forget if I shared this already, but the place we store our boat had one of their storage buildings burn down right before Christmas. I assumed our boat was fine since we never got a call. But I was reserving about 1% of my brain for there to be a long pause and then the owner asking me to come into his office when I was setting things up today.

Our new deck at the lake was not so lucky. About a month ago a large tree fell onto it during a wind storm. The tree took out one side of deck railings, destroyed a few of the floor planks, split our peddle boat in two, and also damaged a bunch of pavers that form a retaining wall. Luckily insurance will cover most of it and the repairs have already begun, so everything should be 100% when the summer season begins.

Wrapping up college hoops, I remember when my mom used to tell me, when I was a kid, that I should always want the team that beat my team to win the championship. She argued that validated my loss. I always thought that was garbage; I wanted the teams that beat mine to go down in flames in their next game. I wanted them to feel the pain I felt. Besides, my team should have won, why give that other team any credit?

I’ve softened in that view as I’ve grown older. If the other team was legitimately better, I’ve learned to give credit. And Monday night Villanova proved they were the best team in the country, by far, this year. There was zero shame in KU losing to them in the Final Four. I think the only team this decade that is better than them is the 2012 Kentucky team that had Anthony Davis. He’s probably the one guy this decade that Nova couldn’t guard. And that Kentucky team would give them fits because of their height. But Nova shoots the ball well enough that they would still have a chance in that mythical game.

KU and Villanova play the next two years in the regular season. Those could be decent games.

By the way, Bill Self has won three straight games against Coach K. He’s won three straight games vs. John Calipari. And he’s won three straight games vs. Roy Williams. But he’s also lost three straight games vs. Jay Wright. Interesting.

As I was eating my lunch today the news broke that Lagerald Vick has declared for the draft. That came a day after Malik Newman announced he was leaving school. And now suddenly KU has an open scholarship! They just happen to be one of three schools in the running for the best un-signed recruit, a shooting guard from southern Indiana. I would approve of KU finally signing a blue chip recruit from Indiana.

Oh, and I finally finished season one of Stranger Things last night. I started watching it in late January and went 2–3 weeks between episodes until this week when I knocked the last four out in two nights. That was some high quality television programming. And the final episode was about as good as TV gets. Pretty much every note of that episode was perfect. Looking forward to starting season two after we get back.

That will pretty much do it for posts here until our return. If we have a rainy day and I’m stuck inside I might post something, but do not expect any new content for awhile.

Weekend Notes

October 17, 2017 / DB

A quick (and late) rundown on our weekend. Which had a little cray-cray in it.

Saturday was a freaking perfect day. Low 80s, breezy. One of those mid-October days that you wish you could hang onto for the next five months. So of course we spent it blowing leaves at the lake house and then hauling the boat out for the winter.

There was a wrinkle to our winter boat plans this year. The place where our boat was originally purchased, and where we’ve stored it the four winters we’ve had it, went out of business at the end of the summer. We used it not just because it was where the boat came from and because they were an authorized dealer for our brand, but because it was about the easiest major boat place to get to. Once we got it off the rickety, country roads near the lake, it was a straight shot up a county highway. Only two lanes until you hit the city, top speed limit 55. As long as I kept it straight, I was good. And things got much easier two years ago when we upped the size of our vehicle that pulled it.

But now I would have to get on the interstate for at least part of the jaunt to the boat place. I don’t know why, but hauling a trailer and a 3000 pound boat at 65–70 miles per hour stressed me out way more than driving those curving, hilly roads that have nowhere to bail out if you get into trouble. I guess it was because I don’t really know much about trailers and was concerned maybe something was wrong with either our trailer itself, or how we hook it up, that would present itself at 65 on a four-lane interstate but not at 35 on a rural, two-land road.

Everything turned out just fine. Those 10–12 minutes on I–465 were a little white-knuckley, but we made it to the shop without losing the trailer or boat or causing any accidents. She’ll sit there for six months before we get to make the trip back south for the summer of ’18.

BTW, it was in the mid–30s down near the lake this morning, so we got it out right in time.

Sunday was supposed to be L’s last soccer game of the year. The weather turned cold, blustery, and rainy that day, though, so we rescheduled it for tonight.

Our wackiness kicked in Sunday night. Or Monday morning, rather. I heard something kind of bang around that was loud enough to wake me up. Moments later I heard a car door slam and pull away. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was just after 2:00.

We have a Nest camera at our front door, but at night I silence the notifications so I don’t get woken by every moth that flies by. Or spider that builds a web right on the lens, which happened a couple weeks ago.[1] I picked up my phone and there were two new notifications from the camera. I swiped, watched the clips, and ran downstairs. The video showed a couple kids running up to our front door, grabbing some of our Halloween stake lights and the pumpkin L had carved the night before, and then running back to a car parked in front of the house. The banging around I heard was because the dumbass who was harvesting our lights didn’t unplug them from the extension they were on, and a large, plastic pumpkin “chased” him until the cords finally decoupled.

When I got downstairs, they were already gone. I looked around and made sure there was no damage or graffiti or other nonsense, and all appeared fine. I watched the video again. One kid had a hoodie on, but the other kid’s face was partially visible. Unfortunately the headlights from their vehicle kept me from being able to identify the make/model.

I tried to go back to bed but I was a little wound up. It was close to 4:00 before I was out again.

After I got the kids to school I checked with my neighbor, who also has a Nest cam, to see if his video showed anything. On his we could see a couple more kids walking around, that they were driving a Jeep, and that there appeared to be other pumpkins thrown in the back.[2] But the taillights blinded the night vision camera and we couldn’t grab a license number.

Since there was no damage and we were only out about $10, I didn’t file a police report. I just let our HOA know and then sent the videos over to the police in case there were other reports of theft/vandalism at the same general time.

Now what the hell were teenagers doing out at 2-something AM on a Monday morning? Because it was freaking fall break in the district we live in.

I loathe fall break. I think it’s a useless interruption in the academic calendar for schools that remain on the traditional August-May school year. Why the hell do we need two days (or more) off this time of year? It’s not like spring break, when we’ve been suffering through 2–5 months of brutal weather. And it totally screws up youth sports, as different schools being on different break schedules means you go through a three-week period where at least one kid is going to be gone.

You’d think with our kids going to Catholic schools things would be regulated, but they’re not. A few schools in the Archdiocese had their break two weeks ago. Ours is this Thursday and Friday. So while we’re not in any CYO sports right now, plenty of our friends have had to deal with reschedulings because St. Whoever is on break and none of their girls can play basketball on a given weekend.

Garbage.

I have two ideas to fix fall break:

1) As most schools give 2–3 days for fall break, let’s move those to November and give everyone the entire week of Thanksgiving off. That’s when kids need a break, and every year it seems like more families duck out a day or two early anyway.

2) Or even better, GET RID OF THE FUCKING BREAK. It’s useless. Take those added days to bump the beginning of the school year back. Our girls have been starting on a Wednesday or Thursday for several years. Push that back to the following Monday and we have one more weekend of true summer.

I think I’ve found a new cause…

No shit, I had 60 notifications the next morning. In each one you could see the spider slowly moving back-and-forth across the face of the camera and its slowly building web. ↩
My first thought was that these were all going to be placed in one person’s yard, likely a friend or rival from school. Not that I did anything like that with election signs back in the fall of 1988. ↩

Summer’s End

September 5, 2017 / DB

The last real weekend of the summer is in the books. And, if you judge only by how tired I was last night, it was a good one. Fortunately by nearly every other measure it was indeed a fine way to wrap up the summer.

It’s become a tradition that our KC friends the Belfords come into town this weekend. They stay with our local friends the Heberts, and on Friday night we go to the local high school football game. We did not get a good result, so let’s not say any more about the actual game. The remnants of Harvey were pushing into Indiana, making it a cloudy, breezy, cool night, more like October than Labor Day weekend. Luckily the rain stayed just to the south of us so we at least stayed dry.

Saturday we stayed in Indy and took all the kids downtown to hang out at the Labor Fest and then the official Purdue tailgate before their game against Louisville. Bounce houses, face painting, balloon animals, and a beautiful day made it solid way to spend the afternoon.

Sunday it was down to the lake for the final time this season. We hadn’t been down for a month so it was a bit odd driving through the roads that split corn fields with the corn now being up above your eye level. Where back on Memorial Day weekend you could see the fields spreading out for miles, now it was like driving through a tunnel.

We’ve had some cool nights lately, so the water was a little chilly. It didn’t stop the kids from having lots of fun. There was the normal tubing and kneeboarding, kayaking and paddle boarding, and running around on the Lily Pad and lounging on the floating island.

Then, sadly, when we packed things up yesterday we began breaking a few things down for the year. The floating island was deflated. The hammock came home with us instead of being stored in the shed. We grabbed all the condiments out of the fridge. While we will likely take a boat ride on our next visit, whenever that is, it’s unlikely anyone will be back in the water.

The lake part of the summer was very good. I think we got a good return on our investment of building the new boat house and deck. It made our space a lot more useable, kept the boat cleaner, and generally made our shoreline look a lot nicer. We packed a lot of fun into this year, had a lot of great guests, and hopefully have a lot of great memories of everything we did in our eight weeks down there. As always, I’m wishing we had been able to squeeze another weekend or two in. I’m becoming more-and-more a fan of the Michigan school schedule, where they go a couple weeks into June and then don’t start the new year until after Labor Day. I’d gladly trade June weekends for August weekends at the lake.

Fall has been giving us hints for a few weeks. Although August was fairly warm and very dry, the nighttime temperatures have already been cooler for several weeks. Yesterday we bumped back up near 90, but tomorrow we’re only supposed to be in the low 60s. Morning lows are going to plunge into the 40s a couple times this week.

Yes, summer is over and fall, with its changing leaves and football and pots of chili and the distant glow of the holidays, is here.

Gearing Up

August 8, 2017 / DB

We got our final lake weekend of summer vacation in the books. Like our last visit, two weeks ago, this was a split weekend. Saturday was gorgeous: upper 70s, no humidity, warm sunshine, and a fairly open lake as a lot of the locals were already back in school. Then clouds moved in and Sunday was cool and rainy, which caused an early return home. We still have a Labor Day weekend trip planned, but with school and sports starting, it’s unlikely we’ll make another trip down before then.

We are pretty well prepped for school. We knocked the school supplies out early. We did a shoe-buying trip a week ago. Closets have all been organized, uniforms sorted and properly distributed. The school lunch calendar is on the refrigerator and the girls have marked when they’re getting hot lunch for the next three weeks. Backpacks are all ready to go Thursday morning.

C surprised us by starting to get up early on her own last week. And for the last two nights she’s gone to bed at 9:00 while her sisters stayed up until their summer bedtime of 10:00. For a kid who has almost no impulse control, C can sure surprise us when she is determined to do something.

When we got home Sunday I was hit with a flurry of “We have to do X and Y before school starts!” pleas. Funny how we had a couple weeks when no one wanted to leave their rooms or get off the couch, and when we had three days left with practices sprinkled in, all of a sudden everyone has an agenda.

You know what’s crazy: we didn’t go to a pool as a family all summer. We have a few friends who have pool memberships that we thought we’d tag along with as guests sometime, but those invites never came. And it was always on the list to go to the city pool, but it just never worked out. We may still be able to knock that out on a weekend while the pools are still open.

Today is full of practices, so other than a final Target run, we can’t really squeeze anything in. Tomorrow may be a State Fair day. We’ve never been, they’ve been begging to go for years, and it seems like a pretty solid way to spend the last day before school begins.

Lake Weekend

June 12, 2017 / DB

The first big, friend lake weekend of the year is in the books. I believe all who attended will judge the weekend as a success.

This was a four-family, 17-person weekend, including us. The kids ranged from 13 to 8, so it’s a pretty good time. The 13-year-olds, all girls, are still capable of relaxing and having fun with the younger kids. And the youngest kids are all comfortable in and around water. The beauty of that is the kids pretty much take care of themselves. Sure, we keep an eye on them, ensure they follow rules, etc. But we also get interrupted a lot less than we used to.

It was the perfect lake weekend, weather-wise. Mid-upper 80s both days, sunny, hot. Last week was still very cool at night, though, so the water remained on the chilly side. It was warmer than two weeks ago, but it did take a few seconds to get used to.

We determined on cool water days, the best way to get acclimated is to just jump off the upper deck. I took my first plunge ever this weekend. Our guests agreed with my impression from our first view from the top deck: it looks a lot higher when you get up there. It’s not really that high. I’m guessing it’s 11–12 feet down to the water. But it feels higher once you get up there. My leap benefitted from me having to remove my glasses. I pretty much held my breath as soon as I jumped because I couldn’t gauge when I was going to break the surface. Anyway, it’s a solid drop, it’s fun, and it’s deep enough where you aren’t hitting anything other than some tall seaweed[1] after you enter the water. You do have to be careful with your limbs. You’re moving pretty quickly when you hit, and that impact can sting. One of the other dads, who jumped off a good 20 times over the two days, had big bruises on his inner biceps Sunday morning. Tuck those wings.

What else? There was a lot of tubing. One of the 13-year-olds is a real daredevil and likes to go by herself. I whipped her around more than the other kids and even dumped her on the big turn. She loved it and the other kids enjoyed watching her antics.

L did her usual fishing. Her count was down this week, only five total fish. But she also landed this beast, by far her biggest catch ever. That’s an adult’s hand next to it for comparison.

Other than that, lots of good food and conversation. The obligatory Cards Against Humanity game at about 10 pm Saturday evening for the adults. Plenty of beer, wine, margaritas, and bourbon was consumed.

The crazy thing is our summer is something like 1/3 over already. I kind of hate these shorter summer breaks. Ask me again how I feel when we hit mid-July.

Or lakeweed, I guess. Why does everyone call it seaweed, including me? ↩

Finishing Off and Starting Up

May 22, 2017 / DB

Last weekend of spring, last week of school. Just four more mornings of an alarm at 6:35 and the normal grumpiness as the girls and I navigate the time between me waking them up and dropping them off at school each day.

We set the stage for the summer by putting the boat into the water on Saturday. We’ve usually done it a week or two earlier, but had a good excuse for waiting this year. Our big project for 2017 was to have a new boat shelter and deck built. The existing boat house was not sturdy enough to hold a boat lift safely, nor was it wide enough to install a drive-on style lift. Our lake is really clean – the conservancy always brags that it’s the second clearest in Indiana – but it would be better for the long-term health of our boat to get it up and out of the water when we’re not using it.

We met with contractors last October, went back-and-forth on the quote for awhile, and sent in the deposit just before Christmas. Then we sat and waited and hoped that the winter was mild enough for them to get started in time to finish before Memorial Day weekend. They kicked things off in early April and other than a few days lost to storms, have hammered it out. There are still a few details that need to be wrapped up, and hopefully those will all be done with week. But last week we got the ok to go ahead and put the boat on the lift. So we dodged some crazy, heavy rain and got the boat in, along with a lot of yard work, on Saturday. We had to come back that evening, so only got one quick lap around the lake in.

The girls did take advantage of the new deck area. We have both a large deck that extends from our shoreline, and a “party deck” above the boat lift. The water was fairly warm, so all three took their first leaps off the party deck ten feet down into the lake. I think that’s going to be very popular with the young people. We’re headed down this Saturday for the holiday weekend with family, including the first birthday for one of the new nephews.

L wrapped up her soccer season Sunday. We were really worried in warmups, because the other team both looked huge and had some kids that could kick the crap out of the ball. L’s team dominated possession early, but gave up a goal against the run of play and we wondered if that was the beginning of another thrashing. But our kids stayed cool, kept the ball in the offensive end of the field, and tied it right before halftime. They took the lead shortly after halftime when L hammered one home from about 15 feet out. Eventually they went up 4–1 before giving up one late goal and dodging a couple near-misses to hold on for a very satisfying win. It was the best they played as a team all year. They worked together, passed, charged down every loose ball, and didn’t make too many defensive lapses.

I believe L ended the season with 10 goals, which I’m about 90% sure was highest on the team. Having a five-goal game will pad your stats a little bit. She had a lot of fun again. Last night S and I had the first discussion about moving her to a more competitive league next year. We’re anti-travel sports at this age,[1] but several of the travel programs around us have rec leagues that could be a step up for her. When she’s 11–12, if it looks like she’s good enough for travel soccer, we’ll put more thought into it. For now we’re good with one game per week at the same location each week.

Tuesday is the last spring sports day of the year for us. M’s team finally plays for the city kickball championship. There was a rain postponement in the other division that extended their season until last week. Then we had to dodge the city track meet and a parish festival, thus the game being pushed to this week. The team we expected to win the opposite division did. So they’ll face a team that can really kick but may not be as strong in the field as our girls are. I’m already getting nervous.

I want to emphasize travel sports don’t work for our family at this age. We’re not saying they’re bad for other families, or judging families that are all-in early. We’ve just always said we will balance the three girls’ interests, and putting an 8-year-old in a travel league gets in the way of that philosophy. ↩

Tuesday Notes

October 18, 2016 / DB

A few assorted tidbits for Tuesday.

Here’s the thing about Indian Summer: you never fully appreciate it. Sure, you can talk in wonder about it being in the mid–80s in the back-half of October. You can take a long lunch, leave work early, or just take the day off to get outside. But as good as these days feel, we are also craving those cool, autumn breezes. It looks like the weather here is going to shift dramatically in the next 36 hours. I’ll miss these warm, muggy, breezy days.

Sunday afternoon was kind of crappy around here. It rained pretty hard for about 90 minutes, which just happened to coincide with the time of L’s soccer game. I think the kids mostly enjoyed running around in the rain and mud. I was a little surprised there wasn’t more sliding around. L played probably her best game of the season, scoring two goals, and just missing three other chances. I think it helped being little, as the bigger kids were having more trouble cutting on the wet grass. Four times she brought the ball up the sideline, cut hard back into the penalty box, and then fired away. One went in. Another hit the post, the goalie, and then bounced away. And two others the goalie knocked away.

We took advantage of yesterday’s delightful weather by heading down to the lake after we dropped the girls off at school in the morning. S and I did some yard work, met with some contractors to talk about some winter projects, and then pulled the boat out of the water for the year. Our contractors showed up a little late, and our conversation took the better part of an hour, so I missed the chance to haul ass one, last time. I did get to take a quick spin as S was getting the trailer into the water at the marina. I think the boat knew this was her last chance to show off, because she jumped up and went fast quickly. Or maybe it was just having one person inside and not towing anything behind that made her go so fast. Regardless, I enjoyed the five minutes of racing around the dam-end of the lake while waiting for the trailer to be ready.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather that the Royals were playing in this year’s MLB playoffs. But I have really enjoyed this year’s games so far. I think it helps having no strong feelings about any series, other than wanting Toronto to lose.[1] It’s way less stressful to watch the games that have been close deep into the contest when I can be reading an article on Instapaper, or scrolling through Twitter as I watch. And I’m free to go to bed at 11:15 even if the game isn’t over yet.

That said, I’ve missed a couple excellent finishes by calling it a night before the final out has been recorded.

Such a shame that team is on the verge of losing to a team from the AL Central for the second-straight October. ↩

Last Summer Weekend

September 6, 2016 / DB

The last weekend of the summer is in the books. It was a busy and fun one.

It started super early, at least for C and I, as she had her first cross country meet of the year Saturday morning. I had to have her at the course by 6:30 am, which meant a 5:45 alarm for us. I was not super fond of the early wake time, but she did just fine. She was in as good of a mood as she’s ever been in first thing in the morning. I think she was looking forward to running.

That showed in her performance. She ran in the 3rd–6th grade group, and finished 16th overall out of 105 runners. She was the second-fastest fourth grader, and the fastest fourth grader from St. P’s.[1] More importantly, she cut 30 seconds off her best 3K time. That’s huge, especially when she’s only been going to practice sporadically because of kickball. Her kickball season ends this week, so who knows what she’ll be capable of once she’s running 2–3 times per week before races. She was pretty pleased with her performance, as was I.

After the meet, we grabbed the rest of the family and headed down to the lake. Our guests weren’t arriving until Sunday, so we had the afternoon to get the house and yard in order. It had been exactly a month since our last visit, so there was lots of work to do. The girls swam a little, and we took one trip around the lake with L in the tube, but overall it was a pretty relaxed day.

Sunday, our guests the Heberts and KC Belfords rolled in. There was a lot more tubing and swimming with the addition of five more kids to the mix. Lots of catching up, laughs, and good food and drinks for the grown ups. We had beautiful, if not quite ideal weather all weekend. We had a few cool nights late last week, which extended into the weekend, so the water temperature had already dropped a bit. It was right in the refreshing zone as long as the sun was out. When a cloud passed, it got a little chilly. Naturally, when everyone was packing up to head home on Monday, the temps shot back up into the 90s after five days in the 70s and 80s. Just in time for us to sweat like lunatics as we packed away the dock toys.

And thus wrapped up our 2016 lake season. It’s always crazy to me how quickly this part of the year goes. When Memorial Day rolls around, you’re hoping the water is warm enough so that everyone will want to get in and enjoy it. By late July, the big Friday night trips to the grocery store and the packing up on Saturday begins to get old. August is always a light lake month with school and fall sports beginning. And then suddenly it’s Labor Day weekend and you realize it’s the last chance to spend two days lounging in the water.

We’re going to try to do better about getting down for at least part of a weekend before the month is over. It’s tough with cross country meets every Saturday morning, and L having soccer every Sunday. And while it may be too cold to swim for hours if we make it down later this month, we can still take the boat for a spin or two. We just want to try to make sure our next trip isn’t the annual quick one to get the boat out of the water before the first freeze, or to just do yard work.

And now I guess it’s time to start drinking Oktoberfests.

There was a St. P’s third grader two spots in front of her. That kid was moving! ↩

Holiday Weekend

July 5, 2016 / DB

We had big plans for the holiday weekend. Unfortunately Mother Nature got in the way.

The Fourth of July weekend is normally a family gathering time at our lake house. This year we had our family from Boston coming in, along with most of the locals. Which meant we added a one-year-old to the mix. Plus two babies. In a small house. And then it rained most of the weekend.

Guess what? Everything turned out pretty great! All the little ones dealt with the close quarters and lack of outside time well. More importantly, our girls did really well. There was minimal whining about being bored.[1] I think having their cousins around was a fine distraction.

We only got one boat ride in Saturday, which was cool and cloudy and threatening, but stayed dry until late in the afternoon. It was one of those rare summer days when the water was warmer than the air, so the kids were happy to swim and play on the water toys around the dock. L did some fishing, and caught the biggest fish she’s ever caught. She came running up to the house yelling, “Dad! I caught a fish this big!” with her hands about 18” apart. We ran down and saw she indeed got a good-sized bass, but closer to 12” than 18”. She’s obviously turning into quite the fisher as she’s exaggerating about the size of her catches!

Sunday was pretty much a total washout, with heavy rain off-and-on all day. We still squeezed in a big family meal for lunch, then naps for a lot of us as the kids watched movies. The real fun kicked in Sunday evening when the power went out for about five hours. Thank goodness it was relatively cool outside or we would have been miserable without A/C.

We packed up much earlier than planned Monday and came home for another lazy day. We stayed up and watched fireworks from Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston but that was the extent of our Independence Day celebrating.

Today we’re off to the zoo with the Boston family. After three days in the 60s and 70s, it’s supposed to be pushing 90 and humid. Timing, man, timing.

Now there was some whining. But less than I feared. ↩