Independence Day, 2008!

Today is Independence Day. On this day in 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, and the United States officially broke from the rule of England.

Happy Birthday, USA!










Regis and I were on a little mission and we ran across these two enterprising kids with a lemonade stand. They explained how it folds up and fits on a cart that they pull from their house down the street. We were their third and fourth customers.















This is what Washington Avenue looks like on the 3rd of July. People come out very early to claim spots on the boulevards and in the parks. You can't see it in this picture but some of the blankets are held down with a steak knife in each corner. Regis is amazed that the whole process is so orderly and nobody messes with the stuff overnight.













More blankets and chairs by the library.












One of the most fascinating parts of St. Peter's history is the strong circus presence this area had through the Engesser family during the early 1900s.

This year's St. Peter July 4th celebration will honor the legacy of George Engesser and the rest of his family. This year's parade and old-fashioned picnic in Minnesota Square Park carry the circus theme with several special events.

The Engesser family will be on hand en masse to march in the parade as Grand Marshals with several dressed in circus garb. One of those who will be riding in the parade will be Grace (Engesser) Paquette, 98, who was married to George Engesser's brother Henry and was part of the traveling circus. Grace, who still resides in St. Peter, will ride in a golf cart in front of the rest of the Engesser clan.

Pictures and stories to come later!

a bad day driving

I met my friend Jill for coffee this morning a little after ten o'clock. We talked until almost one. Regis is always amazed that we can gab for so long and wonders what women talk about for hours. He told Tom once that I wanted to know if men talk about their feelings when they get together. Tom said, "Yeah, I feel like having a beer."

I was going to stop at two music stores to hang signs on their bulletin boards about my for sale piano. I didn't have any trouble with the first one but the second one was on a frontage road bordering Highway 14 where they were doing some road work. I got into the right lane but they had dug a big trench down the center of the road so there was no going back, no turning right, and no getting into the music store so I went on up the hill. It gets better...keep reading.

I stopped to ask a road worker how in blazes I would get out of there. He pointed and gave a long-winded explanation that I knew I wouldn't be able to follow but I thanked him and on I went. Road construction workers give some real disgusted looks when you get in the way of their diggers and scoopers, let me tell you.

I ended up somewhere behind Loyola High School and the nun's place. I couldn't find a way out and kept hitting dead ends, and of all things, the nun cemetery. Dead end...nun cemetery...get it? It was like a bad science fiction movie. I didn't see a person (a soul) but there were lots of cars so I knew people had driven there and therefore, there had to be a way out.

I think I have figured out how the Catholics increase their fold: trapping Lutherans with the old road construction ruse. I was desperate and ready to do anything, conversion included, when I found a tiny road down a steep hill that led to the Thompson Ravine Road. Whew. To hell with the piano.

We're watching No Country for Old Men. What I'm doing is not exactly watching, as I peered through my fingers for most of what I saw in the first five minutes, then left the couch and moved across the room. I don't like to see this ugly side of humanity. Unless the sounds get worse, I'll watch it from here. Those Coen brothers have some weird shit in their heads.

The sounds are bad: gagging, retching, broken glass, gun shots, squealing tires, heavy breathing. My 4th of July chicken is on the table so when I look at the television, I bend down a little so the chicken's head on the tv screen. I recommend it.

There have been some great stories in the paper lately. One about a week ago included a picture of a couple in their 80's posed in an old wooden canoe. They had a wind-up record player on one of the seats that he had used to court her when they were young. I can't copy the photo because it's in Flash but you can try to see it here: WOODEN CANOE.

The story today that caught my eye was about a 74-year old man from Fergus Falls who caught a 46-pound muskie in a river. He said it was the fish of a lifetime. Here's his picture and here's the story. That's my kind of news and that's some fish.

stories and birthdays

We went to Patrick's tonight with some friends to celebrate their 20th anniversary. Patrick's anniversary, that is. Betty and Uncle Tom, Young Regis and Amber, Regis and Teresa, and Peter made a good table of lots of stories and laughs.

We got home and there was a messy pile of debris under our birch tree. You could see it was the remains of a nest and there was a small blue spotted egg in it. It had to be a grackle. It's exactly the kind of nest you'd expect from a beady-eyed bird like the grackle: woody stems and no structure. If you've ever seen the nest of say, a chipping sparrow or a finch, there is a world of difference. Those are birds that take nest building seriously.

We were going to babysit the Hynes/McGraw dogs this weekend but apparently they are going to accompany T&B on the trip to Wisconsin. Our job has been eliminated. We've been downsized. Thank goodness the benefits have been preserved intact: access to the bar, the gazebo, and the pool. It's a tough economy. We'll have to wait and see if the market (for dog sitting) has legs.

We have a six-inch piece of sidewalk in front of our house that has been identified by the city as hazardous because it sticks up higher than the rest of the sidewalk. It's painted white to alert us. There are maybe 20 of these hazards on ours and the neighbor's sidewalks. What to do? I called a couple of cement people today and they laughed. They only deal with big jobs like malls and storefronts and they said they have to rent the equipment to do that. It's a mystery. I thought a cheap fix would be to get a wire brush and scrub the white paint off. Ta da!

I looked in the Home Magazine and there is a company that does something called slab jacking or mud slabbing or something like that. From the ad, I got the idea that they pumped something under the sidewalk to encourage it to align with the rest of the sidewalk pieces. What the hell kind of machine would you need to do that I wonder. It just doesn't sound very scientific. It could open up a chasm the size of the San Andreas fault.

If you read my blog, you know I don't pretend to deal in fact but I don't want to look like a complete dope either so sometimes I look things up. (I only remember "the market has legs" because Mr. Butler said it once.) I checked it out on wikipedia and what worries me about the future is that some middle school kid could do a google search for "economy" or "market" and write down some of the crap I've written here and put it in a report thinking it's true. The possibility for perpetuating BS is just endless.

It's my mom's birthday today. She went out for lunch, out for dinner tonight, and has a breakfast party tomorrow. I think she has a more active social life than we do.

I know from my own kids that the gene pools of our parents take a pretty good hit when it comes to blaming someone or something for our bad traits. It's in magazines all the time: this is genetic and that is genetic and they never talk about things like sense of humor or being good with numbers. I'd just like to say that all my good traits come from the gene pool of either my mom or my dad and the bad traits are anomalies. Who's to say that there aren't free-floating genes out there that land on you and take root like pollen or dust. Little alien bits of selfishness or laziness or gluttony.

Parenting is a very hard job that you think will be sort of over except for the good parts once your kids are adults. Not so. It's a lifelong miasma of fun and joy but also work and worry and pain. You don't appreciate the job your own parents did until you're old. I appreciate it today. Happy birthday to my mom.

the unbearable hotness of being

Cool title, eh? I stole it.

I'm sitting on the porch and it's hotter than hell so it isn't a lie. Just a stolen subject line.

Ella was over this afternoon. Peter and I took her to lunch and then to Target. I asked her if she had a swimming pool at home and she said no. So we bought a little blow-up one. Peter spent 45 minutes blowing it up and another 15 putting water in it. She played in it for about 5 minutes. And when Emily came to pick her up, she said that was just like their pool at home. Ha! Way to go, Nana. We had a good time. Whenever Peter's phone would ring she asked who was calling. Good girl! No secret girlfriends here!

I picked Ella up at the home of her mama's friend who is about 9.3 month's pregnant. Ella pointed at her when I came in the door and said, "That baby wants to come out." Yes, indeed, I bet it does.

The temperature is going to take a big spike tomorrow and will cause heads to sweat all over town. 88 degrees. We've hardly had any days over 80 this year. Regis hates the cool weather and wants to bask in the hot sun. There's something wrong with his thermostat.

Annie, I haven't seen any abandoned gas stations that have been turned into fireworks stands but if you tell me where they are, I'll take a new route to avoid them. That seems like double trouble, right there. What if there was an explosion of the fireworks and the gas tanks ignited? It would be like a terminator movie. I just voiced this concern to the men here and they scoffed. Peter says the fireworks in Minnesota don't explode they just hiss and smoke and the worst you would have is a giant sparkler.

I went somewhere once...now there's a generality...and they had fireworks stands right off the freeways. You could scoot right off the freeway and stop and buy your M80's and Black Cats. Could that be true? Maybe it was Elvis museums. I bet it was Missouri. Where I went. Missouri.

I saw a program on PBS once about fireworks factories. They had the buildings surrounded by sand bunkers so if they blew up, bystanders wouldn't be killed by shrapnel and all the little buildings were separated so that if one started on fire they all wouldn't ignite in a giant conflagration. How's that for work stress? I guess action plans and non-negotiable diagrams aren't so bad.

let the fireworks begin

I forgot this part of the 4th of July. Now that they sell those damn fireworks everywhere, even in Minnesota, you hear them for weeks before and a few days after. I've never liked fireworks. I like the color and the lights but not the noise. Some kids on the next block must have saved their allowance and spent it all on firecrackers.

I don't know if they still sell these but when I was a kid, they sold a little firecracker thing with strings on both ends so they could be tied to doors, etc. and when the unsuspecting person opened the door, bang, you get the crap scared out of you. My brothers tied them to the toilet seat (which was forever in the up position) so when I put it down in the middle of the night, bang. They tied my jeans to the foot of the bed. They tied them on doors and cabinet handles and I don't remember ever getting suspicious. I must have been a very easy target.

Peter just walked in and I asked him if he liked fireworks. He got a big grin on his face and said, "Who doesn't? Loud noises? Fire? Shit that blows up?" It must be a male thing.

If you look at my blog last year for around this time of the year, I probably wrote about this same thing. This and my fear of the fireworks tents.

The reason for my slothfulness this afternoon is that I made a pizza and we're waiting for it to get done. Normally I would be up scrubbing a floor or cleaning out a closet.

one gripe and the rest miss sunshine

That yappy dog next door is the last thing I hear at night and the first thing I hear in the morning. The yappy dog and the power implements. Urban noise pollution, I guess.

Regis made this delicious pork loin on the grill yesterday. I tried to copy the recipe into this post but there was an html problem. Whatever that means. Google Herb and Honey Grilled Pork Roast if you want to see it. (We also had Mexican tabouleh, Cuban bread, picnic potato salad, and peach pie.) Tom and Betty came down and we had a great time sitting in the garage out of the rain, smelling the smoke from our grill, and watching the smoke drift up from Paul's BBQ across the street. The rain came down hard for a while and Regis was unhappy that it was such a cold day. I prefer a summer like this when you can have the windows open. There are so many nice summer sounds that you miss when you have the AC on: mourning doves, crickets, cardinals, baseball.

Our garage is an interesting structure. I think it was moved here from a farm. It looks like a shed inside, old oily boards and at the far end there's a nose extension for a long car like a 62 Chrysler. (I got this information from someone else. I wouldn't know a 62 Chrysler from a spaceship. My college roommate knew cars so well she could tell a 67 something from a 68 something and she thought it was hilarious that I categorized cars only by short and long. I didn't even know the kind unless I could read it on the back.) This little extension is only about four feet tall but it has a shingled roof and walls just like the rest of the garage. Our little Toyota fits in their nicely but they must have had to crawl out the trunk of a bigger car.

We watched Juno after dinner. I cried as I laughed out loud. It was a sweet movie with some surprises and some very good acting. I loved the mom and dad. Bless their hearts. The Next movie on our queue is No Country for Old Men. I have a feeling I may not watch it through. It got lots of accolades but every review mentions the violence and I'm a pansy when it comes to that.

I started Pillars of the Earth last night. It's a good story but a big heavy book. When I'm done with it, I'm going to open the window and heave it at that yappy little dog. Big book, small dog. I ought to be able to inflict an injury that will silence him for a few days. Little bastard.

a day without work

I decided not to work today. Nice to have that option, I know. I slept in until 8, worked on my menus and grocery list, then took a nap. When I got up, I cleaned the house in my nightgown. There's something relaxing about that because I don't feel like I have to hurry. We had an early delivered dinner and now we're watching Pollock. It's painful to watch; he's a tortured figure, but the acting and the story are very good. Good Tom Waits song at the end, too.

I suppose this sounds unsophisticated but art that looks like something I could do doesn't seem like much to admire.

We were sitting out in the yard last night when our young neighbors stopped by with their baby. We visited for a while over the grill and we told them we had thought about moving our chairs and grill to the backyard this summer because it seems kind of trashy to sit in the front yard and eat right off the grill. No, they protested loudly. They said they love to see us out there every night...it's so old school, like a front porch. Hmmm. Old farts on the porch.

Betty and Tom are coming for pork loin on the grill tomorrow, weather permitting. I'm going to make a Mexican taboulleh salad that I used to make from a Jane Brody cookbook. I don't usually like taboulleh; it tastes like bird seed, but this recipe has enough vegetables in it that it just has a nice nutty texture. Blah blah blah. I sound like some old food critic.

Speaking of menus and grocery lists, I'm still writing a weekly menu and making a list from it. It's had lots of benefits: less eating out because I can't think of what to make, less food thrown away, more economical list because we look at the ad and the coupons, less time spent going to the store. Now I wonder how I did it all those years just buying random stuff here and there. It's amazing I ever got a meal together.

I made an error last week though and had two burger meals and only bought enough burger for one meal. When I went the Hynes/McGraw Gym and Grocery Emporium, the took pity and gave me a package of burger to save me a trip to the store.

I read in the paper today that one of the hospital cafeterias is taking drastic cost-cutting measure: no lemons in ice water, no tomatoes in the burger line, for example. The loss of tomatoes is not a big loss, I bet. Most tomatoes you get in a restaurant taste like styrofoam.

Another thing I learned today on Talk of the Nation, and I'll try to report this delicately. A scientist said that the gas passed by women is smellier that the gas passed by men. But men win in volume so he said it was a draw. I wonder how they measure both of those: smell and volume. Hey, it was on public radio. I didn't make this up.

There's a small storm cell moving through. There are big fat raindrops bouncing off the roof of the car but it looks like the sun is coming out at the same time.

I abandoned another book in the middle last night: Lady Moses. I had a mild interest in it but not enough to keep going. Not even enough to read random pages to find out how it ends. It's very frustrating.

is this an oblivious man thing or what?

We're sitting out in the yard after work and my husband announces that he invited a woman from work to stop by later. What? Is this for dinner? A drink? Is she coming in the house? Do I take out a lawn chair? He acts like this is not a big deal. So, about 5:30 this woman shows up and she's very nice and she visits and meanwhile I make dinner on the grill (but she won't eat) and she still visits and now it's 7:30 and she's still here and I'm tired of her. I don't know her. I've talked about everything I have to say and I'm done. So I pick up the tray and come in to do dishes. If you are a young man or know one, warn them against this kind of entertaining. It's too nebulous for most women and they will kick your ass at some point in the future because you've put them in this situation.

I'm sorry I put those random capital P's in my post last night. Jill uses capital letters creatively and they look cool so I thought I could do it, too, but it looks dumb in my post. I'm not going to edit the post and change them, though. It's a reminder.

Regis took the dog in the front yard. We have an anti-social dog who bites other dogs and is half, no mostly, blind. He's accustomed to the fenced back yard but not to the freedom of the front year where people walk by with their dogs. This is another reason I came into the house. Regis will get distracted and forget he has a dog attached to his wrist. It will result in a dog fight or an injury. If you think he's going to read all of this and get annoyed, don't worry. He thinks he can intuit how I feel and doesn't need to see it in writing. Laugh out loud. I'll let you know about the dog fight later.

I went up to Betty's house to pump iron this afternoon. I told her I had a book that I downloaded from the CDC called Strength Training for Older Americans. I'm not sure what they mean by older Americans. The pictures, actually drawings, are of young people but the descriptions sound like older people. It doesn't say anywhere that you should be 60 or 80 to attempt these exercises but they use cans of soups for weights and talk about balance which so far, has not been a problem for me.

My friend, Retired Larry (he's a chemist) had this to say about plastic bottles:
Concerning plastic bottles, it depends on the type of plastic. Polycarbonate bottles (clear and hard) can give off bisphenol A over time and this is implicated as a hormone mimicking compound. Studies are still underway. Vinyl bottles (PVC) and others can have plasticizers (softening agents, so they're not brittle) like dioctylphthalate. Still unsure about the possible toxicity of these materials, also. Mylar ( polyethylene terepthalate, PET)bottles like those 2-liter Coke and those of most bottled water have been studied quite thoroughly. I would not hesitate to use them.

We made it through the evening with no dog fight. The dishes are done. I'm going to bed to read.

sitting in the dark and cool watching a movie

That's a nice subject line but it didn't last long. Regis hollered at me from the front yard and we sat in our lawn chairs for a while and watched the turkey vultures float overhead. It's an unbelievably beautiful night. Some front must have moved through because the air is drier, it's cooler, and there isn't a cloud in the sky.

You know how pigeons walk down the roof shingles? I watched one that got going too fast. It reminded me of a person walking downhill and how they go faster and faster. Poor little pigeon. Must not have had a lot of experience with roof walking. When Peter was little he had a book by Louise Erdrich with pigeon in the title. He called them pig-eons.

First of all, if you haven't responded to my plea for book recommendations, please do. I'm really desperate. I've lost my ability to pick something off the shelf and find it satisfying. I've reread more books in the last year than I've read new books.

We've had the movie Pollock for a week now but we still haven't watched it. The weather is so nice we want to take advantage of it. Usually it's hotter than hell and humid this time of year. The movie can wait.

This is a water bottle Regis got from his place of employment. The bottle is upside down because it's crumpled up and won't sit right-side-up anymore. This morning I decided to make iced coffee so I poured some coffee from the thermos into this bottle thinking I would let it cool and then add ice. It melted right before my eyes. God forbid someone should put it into the microwave. It's hard plastic so I didn't expect this level of disintegration from coffee that was not even very hot. I poured the coffee down the drain because you can't trust a bottle that will do this. Imagine the chemicals that were given off. Retired Larry, do plastic bottles really give off toxic substances?

I'm not too much given to drinking from big bottles anyway so it was probably divine intervention that this one melted. I hate that when people walk around or sit in meetings sucking on giant beverage bottles like calves. Hell, even calves get weaned eventually. I remember my grandma used to rant about putting the gallon of milk on the table. She wouldn't be a fan of the water bottle craze.

I made an easy summer pie. Here's how you do it. Buy a graham cracker crust. The biggest one. Buy a big tub of cool-whip, a can of sweetened condensed milk, and 6 ounces of lime juice. Mix it all together. Add some lime zest if you like. Put it into the crust and refrigerate for two hours. Simple.

I looked at a pint of cream at the grocery store today. I don't usually notice the prices of things but this baby was $3.98 for a pint. Is that what I've always paid for cream? That's about as much as a gallon of milk. I opted for the chemical version in the freezer section. A guy has to cut back somewhere.

Need book recommendations!

If you've read anything good lately (or even in the past), please leave a comment and let me know the author and title. A few words about the book would be helpful, too, but don't worry if you can't or don't feel like it...author and title are enough. I'm desperate!

that's good chicken

Regis and I have never been real fans of chicken on the grill. Usually it's dried out or the outside is charred and the inside is raw. This summer, we've been cooking it on the Weber with hickory chips and it's delicious. We buy legs and thighs, rub them with a little olive oil, and season them with salt and pepper. Indirect heat, my friend, is the secret. And a meat thermometer.

I did my favorite google image search for chicken. I think I would prefer to believe that chicken comes in plastic wrapped packages from the grocery store and is not a real live animal at any point. If I think too much about those chicken trucks that I see drive through town, I would convert to vegetarianism pretty fast. Even a chicken deserves better...they deserve to be free-range, for example. They should have a little yard and a place to peck the ground.

It was warm today but a beautiful afternoon to sit in the yard. We watched the bunnies across the street chase each other from shrub to shrub. They're so cute but I hope a couple of them pack their suitcases and migrate to another part of town.

I don't know if you read my mom's comment about the varmint under our porch. She said my dad would have had a trap set at one hole and he would have been sitting in a lawn chair with a shotgun across his lap watching the other hole. He might have blown the cement steps into a million pieces but the varmint would have been dead. My dad was a true character.

After work I went up to Betty's and we pumped iron. We have a work-out schedule that we've been doing three times a week for three weeks. Sometimes I walk on the treadmill and Betty does the ab-buster (not the thigh master) so we can visit a little. Then we do the iron pumping thing. I have three pound weights don't laugh. I'm quite sure we won't ever make it to the world's strongest man contest but maybe our wing flab will be a little bit less unsightly.

Dogs at the Dump Night. My brother lives in a small town where they built a new waste treatment facility and bought a new one-man garbage truck. In order to get people out to see it, they offered tours, rides in the garbage truck, and free hot dogs. I'm not making this up.

there's a varmint living under our steps

We've had trouble with moles over the years but I won't trap them so we've just learned to live with them. Once in a while they make the side yard feel like something from the movie Tremors but most of the time they don't bother me. They don't eat much.

Yesterday I saw mole tracks in the garden for the first time this year.

Linda's cats used to ravage the bunny nests and I hated it when it happened but it did control the rabbit population.

Tonight I looked out the window and saw three little bunnies about the size of a fist playing on the sidewalk. They don't bother me because they don't eat much.

There is a point here. Hang with me.

Regis took the trash out tonight and yelled at me to come and look at something. Under the front step, right in the corner, is a BIG HOLE going under the step. There are a few very large kernels of corn in the path down to the BIG HOLE. Regis asked if this was my handiwork. LOL. Yes, I've taken to making a hideout under the front step. He makes a motion like he's going to stick his hand down the hole. SCREAM. I picture the TREMORS WORM...or the little bunnies. He wants to flush the hole with water (There is an identical hole on the other side...like a back door.) but no....I don't want him to do that and the best reason I can come up with is that the soil might be unstable and the step will sink. There you go.

I don't think rabbits would burrow into dirt like that to make a home, do you? This hole is big enough to stick your hand into so it's bigger than a mole. More the size of a prairie dog. Uh oh.

summer food

My husband has this weird affinity for winter food this summer. Last week he wanted meatloaf and of course I said, that's winter food and nobody eats that in the summer. But I made it anyway. Good wife. This week he wanted beef commercials. Somebody check out pica for me. Normally (ha) people with pica eat non-edibles or ingredients that wouldn't be considered food by themselves like starch, raw potatoes, or ice cubes. The name comes from the bird magpie which will apparently eat anything. I'm not sure that medical books would consider the eating of winter foods in the summer to be pica but I think I could make a case for it. It's just not done. It's like wearing black socks with sandals. Notice I did not say wool socks with sandals which is a Minnesota fashion and quite acceptable.

I saw an old friend this weekend. She talks a lot and I mean a lot. I decided to try and keep up but it's like a fusillade. I tried to match her story for story but she just kept going, firing volley after volley across my bow. It was a barrage of stories. Once in a while she'd slip two in if I wasn't ready. Bam...bam bam...bam bam bam. After a while, I just gave up and came home.

I went to B&N today to look at Pillars of the Earth. I thought maybe it would be on sale. I never used to think twice about dropping money on books I might not like but lately, maybe too many have piled up in my house, I won't do it. I'll buy copies of favorite authors but I use the library for recreational reading.

The neighborhood dogs are going berserk. I don't mean the dogs across the street or even the dogs right next door. The dogs a street or two away. They sound like the damn Hounds of the Baskervilles. Last night when I was going to sleep they were barking like there was a murder being committed. I tell you things are going to hell. Between dogs and sirens and constant lawn mowing a guy hardly has a nerve left. I'm trying to stay true to my commitment to have a better disposition but it's tough.

I just checked my favorite image cache for berserk and there is a lot of violence pictured...swords and guns and implements of destruction. I try to limit my intake of stuff like that so I don't know what the deal is but maybe it's a punk band or something. I don't see violence when I think of berserk.

On a positive note, I got a haircut today after work. Patrick always ask what I want done and I always say you're the artiste, Patrick. Just no old lady do's. He did me right today...I have spikes and loop de loops. I just looked up the word esthetician on google. Check out this page if you think you know anything. DISAMBIGUATION. What the...???

Well, here I go to make mashed potatoes when it's 85 degrees outside.

Butt dragging

Sometimes I do google image searches for pictures for my blog. I worry about things like this. Some person did this art work and I use it to illustrate my dragging ass after a full day in the garden. I wonder if people copyright things like this. I always change the name of the image so it's harder to track me down and less likely I will wind up in jail for jacking someone's art. It's a great picture. Poor person dragging the tired ass down the sidewalk.

I went out early to use Round-Up on the weeds that had gotten beyond control. To my chagrin, I hadn't emptied the sprayer last fall so of course, something was amiss and nothing would come out. Regis and I decided to go to Men-R-Nerds to get a new contraption for defoliation, one of those fold-up tables, and a couple sections of little fence for my basil garden. Nothing like Menards on Sunday morning. The smell of sawdust and two-cycle engine oil hangs heavy in the air. It's almost an aphrodisiac.

Mission accomplished. I spent the rest of the day on my garden scooter with a pail for weeds and the gallon of Round-Up. What I couldn't pull easily got sprayed. I hope that's not a terrible evil environmentally. I got an early start in the garden (for me) but then the rain started and we had a couple busy weekends and all of a sudden holy crap it's a jungle out there. It looks much better now but I could hardly navigate by the time I was done.

It's like time goes at warp speed in the summer. I buy a couple pots of something at the garden center and all of a sudden two weeks have gone by and the little plants look like something from the desert. It's shameful. My garden looks nice from the street now, and less nice when you walk into it. I like things to overlap, sort of a Monet effect, so my plants are not separated by much space. Sometimes it's hard to identify what's what. I've gotten better about pulling out the things I don't want. Today a whole bunch of daisies went in the bag. A couple of cone flowers. A false sunflower. And forty miles of something with white foliage of which I can't recall the name...

I did a google search (google is a good substitute for a bad memory as well as being a source for good art) for "white foliage". I didn't find the name of the plant but I did find that there is an indie rock band called White Foliage. I shouldn't be surprised. Last night at Betty and Tom's we were laughing about the names of bands from the 60s and 70s. Names like the Dave Clark Five and Herman's Hermits. I always tease my kids that the bands of today should have good names like that instead of Accidental Goat Sodomy, Lawn Smell, and Pancakes for Penguin. Peter says that obviously the good names were taken decades ago leaving bands with only names like this. Yes, um hmmmm.

Re: the weekend lawn warrior in the previous post. It seems like someone in the neighborhood had a gas-powered implement going every second. Here are the ones I remember: several lawn mowers, a sidewalk edger, a power washer, a blower, and a weed whacker. Nobody was wearing the suit of armor and the helmet.

Regis stopped over to see Ella today while I was laboring in the garden. He said she wanted to call her mom but they explained that mama was at work. Then she wanted to call her nana so they called me and left a message. Then she said, "Well, I want to talk to somebody!" Ha!

Monday again tomorrow. Warp speed...

4th Street Under Attack!

Velvet has the same insulating properties as thermal underwear

When I started to write a title for this post, the above popped in as a choice. I really wrote a post once with that as a title, I wondered? Does google just put random words together as if it they make sense? Then the light came on. Oh...hahahaha...I read it as Velveeta has the same insulating properties as thermal underwear. Now, that's funny. I do remember the velvet post. And I think the answer is no to the insulating properties question but it would be a good chemical experiment for Retired Larry.

I was doing dishes about 3:30, staring out the kitchen window and all of a sudden there was a cyclone-like activity in the back yard. I hollered to Regis to check the weather and it was just a front going through. It sure looked wicked there for a minute but it moved on just as suddenly as it came, leaving cooler and breezier weather in its wake.

I'm trying to decide if I should put the book The Pillars of the Earth on hold at the library or stop at Barnes and Noble tomorrow and pick it up. I know it seems like it should be an easy decision but it isn't because there are lots of factors. The book I'm currently reading, and I won't disparage the author by naming it, is getting tiresome. One of the main characters in this book and the last one I read by this author just died and it doesn't matter. I just want to get to the end. If I had something better on hand to read, this book would be a goner.

I have the new Allison Krause and Robert Plant CD. It's a winner. I'll post the youtube video here just because I think it's cool that you can do that. I'm not sure what html is just as I'm not sure how planes lift up and fly into the sky just as I'm always amazed that I can call my cousin in Phoenix when I'm out in the cornfields of southwestern Minnesota. Amazing stuff.

There's a town team baseball game going on over at the park as there is most nights in the summer. It would never interest me to go there and watch it but I love hearing it when we sit on the porch. It's such a summer sound. It makes me think of the summers on the porch when I was a kid. Sometimes we slept there when it was too hot upstairs and Dad listened to ball games on the radio. At least that's how I remember it.

If the wind is right and we can hear the words and not just the sound, we can hear the names. Corky Watson is up to bat. Small town people often keep their nicknames into their adult years. I looked in the local paper to see if I could find more funny names but no luck. I did find an article on a sport with a really bad case of journalistic license. Or lack of license. It's not a direct quote that will impact history, so what the hell. Clean up those run-on sentences, pal. Hahahaha.

We planned to move our grill and chairs to the backyard this summer but we decided we like being in the front so we can visit with neighbors and see what goes on in the hood. Hahahaha.

Well, I've rambled on long enough for tonight. Probably too long.

terrier

work is for the drinking classes

This is the Oscar that my friend Jill sent me. I love it!

Speaking of Oscar, work is for the drinking classes according to the title of this post. I didn't make that up. I have some cocktail napkins with the quote...Oscar Wilde's words. We went down to our favorite local establishment today after work; Peter, Regis, and me...and ran into Uncle Tom. We had a pitcher of beer and a couple baskets of heart attack and told stories. Since we were about the only customers in the place, it was far from wild, but it was fun. Not quite a hootenany but fun and relaxing. Tom and Regis are good story tellers and Peter is learning.

I think Retired Larry is trying to engage me in a political argument. I'm not very good at that because I can hardly remember what came out of my own mouth last much less the mouth of someone who pays a bazillion dollars to run off at the mouth so it gets put in the paper. While I know it makes a difference in the end because I think the quality of life is different for lots of folks depending on who's in power, I have a hard time working up the enthusiasm for it on a personal level. I'm glad some people can, but I can't. So, I don't care what any of them said. They have far too much money to be honest about anything. The whole dang bunch.

Regis cut the tops off our oxygen producers today. I think since Neighbor started cutting our lawn, Regis has been more self-conscious about the shaggy condition of our pasture. I'd be in favor of getting goats but I think we'd have a hard time confining them. My garden is an abomination. There are weeds everywhere. I know about the time I usually start contending with weeds, some news announcement came out that Preen was being recalled. Tree-hugger that I am, I probably decided to forego it and this is the ugly result. My garden is full of weeds, insects, and moles. Regis would be sort of in favor of a more direct approach for eradication but I won't allow it. The mole trap is in the garage. That is a violent implement for a garden.

I told Neighbor that we would take care of the lawn maintenance on our side of the driveway. He was surprised but seemed to accept it since I asked for a chemical to kill the milkweed. I have embraced milkweed up until this year. The first year I had one milkweed plant. Then four. Now forty-five. It's apparently exponential. The butterflies like it but they can't have it in this number. Not in my garden anyway.

So, almost on to the weekend.

lawn care and public speaking

The weather here has been so beautiful that we spend every afternoon and evening it enjoying it as much as we can. I don’t have much energy for blogging when we finally come back in the house. Blogging and texting. Ha!

I think if someone would invent a soundproof screen room it would be very popular in Minnesota. The last two nights when we were sitting in the yard, several of our neighbors started up their two-cycle engines to sheer off parts of their vegetation and greatly disturbed the peace and quiet of the summer evening. I sympathize with their need for order and short grass, but do we have to suffer?

I think if our grass gets long, we’re just making oxygen.

I watched, with great interest, the memorial for Tim Russert. I noticed that while most people had notes or written comments, not all of them used them as much as others. I wonder if that indicates a difference between people whose preference for communication is speaking and those whose preference is writing. If I ever have to speak in public, I have to have most of the words written down and I usually have to use my written text. That’s why interviews are so painful. Of course, many of the people who spoke are professional journalists and that would give them an edge.

Yesterday on my way home, I thought of a topic I wanted to write about and even started composing it in my head. By the time I got to it, it had floated over the horizon like a big balloon and damn it, I can’t recall it. The other night I read a great essay by Ian Frazier called, If Memory Doesn’t Serve. He talks about how it’s cruel that your brain is less fresh as you get older and your life is more complicated. You have the freshest brain in your early years when you don’t have much to remember. When I told Regis about it, he said, “Oh yeah, Ian Frazier the movie star”. Or something like that. Which is exactly the point of the essay.

There's a cardinal outside my window that is expressing utter exuberance. You can hear it here if you aren't familiar. Once you know it, you'll never forget it.

barking dog and T9

Our neighbor down the street must have a new dog. It has a bark that would shatter glass. They have quite a menagerie of strange looking dogs so maybe they rescue them or something. One got away the other day...did I mention this before?...and the guy marched down the street cussing Bertha out at the top of his lungs. I mean real cussing.

Today I learned about T9 text messaging. It's a way that the phone predicts the word you're going to write so you don't have to hit the key three times, for example. It's very weird. If you want to write a word with -ing at the end, you hit the side arrow to the left key and then type -ing. It's a lot of work when you could really just call someone with the phone that you already have in your hand.

Regis and I went to the library because last night I read the last book in the house that I haven't read and I already read the ones I got from Betty. The only thing left I could possibly read tonight besides road maps is the copy of Rolling Stone that came in the mail today and it's the every other week lame issue. I wanted to read Ken Follett's Pillars of Fire. It's a novel about the building of the pyramids and I think it weighs twenty seven pounds because the sequel does. Pillars of Fire wasn't on the shelf but I hoisted the sequel and commented to the librarian who was there shelving books that it was pretty heavy. She said, "Yes, hard to read in bed." My thoughts exactly. So, I picked out a couple of paperbacks and went home.

I love to read but I have a terrible time picking out books. These are just a few of my rules:

1. I won't read a book that mentions "sexual politics" anywhere on the cover.
2. I won't read a book that has a partially clothed couple embracing on the cover. Fabio books.
   
3. I won't read anything that's described as a spine-tingling thriller. I'm not fond of murder and mayhem most of the time.
   
4. I don't like books that are too heavy. As in poundage.
   
5. I don't like books about catastrophes, natural or otherwise. Regis and Betty like to read about plagues and nuclear disaster and leprosy. Not me.
6. The only fantasy books I've ever liked are the ones by the author of Wicked. I resisted that for a long time, but loved it in the end. I didn't like Watership Down or God forbid, the Lord of the Rings. I was interested in the hobbits but right away they get into all that sword fighting and crap. Who needs that?
   

You know, I used to be funnier. I read some of my old posts this morning, looking for a poem about being awake and anxious at 3 a.m. I laughed and thought, man, this is funny stuff. Maybe what I'm writing today will get funnier with time. Then again, maybe not.

I just checked. This is my 497th post.

More tomorrow.

morning

Amazing what a good night's sleep will do for you. Regis took these pictures last night in the back yard. They're wild phlox. We have a row of rangy shrubs and wild flowers that grows between our house and the neighbors. We like it because all kinds of weird stuff grows and lives there. There's a catbird with a nest, hummingbirds,raspberries, jack-in-the-pulpit, and one time we saw a raccoon in a tree. I called the police because it seemed strange to see a raccoon in town during the day since they're mostly nocturnal. He wasn't too concerned, at least not enough to wrestle that raccoon into the squad car.

whew whew and double whew

The portfolio review went very well despite my anxiety and lack of motivation. I had one of those out-of-body experiences where the words are coming out, from where I am not sure. It was comfortable and not at all like being in front of a firing squad which is how I envisioned it. My advisor joked that I should get the last license and I said I'm not buying one more damn binder. We laughed. She encouraged me to keep looking for the right job because there's one out there for me. I said, yeah at about the 27th parallel in a raccoon camp by a big lake where the ice doesn't go out until the 4th of July. Ha. I crack myself up.

I learned to text message yesterday. I'm not very good and it takes me a long time to write anything. My theory about that, as I've said here before, is that you can't let technology pass you by or pretty soon you can't set a digital clock or program a VCR. Regis set my phone to do T9 which I don't get at all. I type W and the phone types X. What's up with that? I love that text is a verb now. I texted, he texted, we all text. It's the growing edge of language as Harry Foster used to say.

Regis and I sat in the yard after work but the little seed things from the birch tree drove us nuts. Every time we came back int he house they were all over us and inside our clothes and in our hair. We finally hid out in the porch. It's a beautiful day here and would be perfect for sleeping on the porch if we had a bed there. I think we're too old for couch sleeping much less floor sleeping.

Since I woke up at 3 this morning, I can barely make it to bedtime. If I had any gumption, I'd scan my new license but that would involve learning another new thing this week and I think I've reached my limit. Tomorrow. I took a picture of the weird directional signs in Armstrong Hall but I don't know how to send a picture from my phone to my computer either.

poppies

I wanted to post some pictures of my poppies blooming. I don't take very good pictures so I asked my weary husband to do it and of course, he jumped up and grabbed the camera. Most good photos you see here are his work...or if they're mine, they're an accident. I think these are gorgeous. He gives credit to the evening sun but I think it's a good eye, too. The first one reminds me of an Andy Warhol painting that I saw at the MC last week. I got this plant from my Auntie Vi so it's always been a favorite. Poppies are so fragile, too, like tissue paper...a hard wind or driving rain and they disintegrate.

We had a nice time at Bob and Emily's house at a Father's Day cook-out. It was warm and breezy and the bugs weren't too bothersome. Ella and I played ball. She ran over and rang the wind chime every time I kicked it. Then she would kick it and say, "Go get it, Nana!" By the time we left, she had watermelon and ketchup and Oreo's pretty much everywhere. She wanted to "hug my shoulders" and how can you say no to that. It just makes your heart hurt.

I've been fascinated with the coverage of Tim Russert's death this weekend. I wasn't a regular viewer of Meet The Press but I liked his book Big Russ and Me. The stories about him are very poignant and uplifting. This morning's episode is very much worth watching. It's almost like a president died. It seems like everyone knew him and loved him. It seems like he made people want to be better because he had such a big heart.

All weekend when we sat in the porch we heard this weird sound, like a bear rummaging in a garbage can next door. Since we live in town, that didn't seem likely but every time I stood up, the sound would stop. I finally solved the mystery...kids on the corner with a skate board ramp. Ah, a skate board ramp. Better than a bear.

Tomorrow morning, I do my final presentation of my portfolio. So, say a prayer or lift a glass or do whatever is your act of blessing. I'm going to need it. The next voice you hear....

Happy Father's Day!

Regis and his boys














Tiffany with Grandma and Grandpa














Me with my Dad























Peter with his Dad












Ella with her Popop on her birthday




















Regis and his Dad

end-o-week

It's a good thing I have stopped watching the news. The amount I get by reading is almost enough to put a guy over the edge some days. I was reading about the floods today and caught a site that had pictures of the tornado in Parkersburg. Great story about a dog named Chance who was reunited with his owner after nine days. They found him sitting behind the wheel of a Pontiac Bonneville in the line of wrecked cars. He was very happy to see them. Then the news of the death of Tim Russert and the clip of Tom Brokaw announcing it.

On my way home from work today I was moved to do some yard chores. By the time I got here, thankfully, the mood had passed. Peter put the furniture back after the carpet cleaning so you can walk through the house now instead of leaping things in a series of single bounds. Is that a ragged segue?

We stopped at MGM this afternoon and noticed that the price of craft beers has gone way up, thanks in part to the price of hops which has quadrupled in price in the last year. Barley's gone up, too. Harp is almost ten bucks a six pack. Good thing we like Schell's.

We haven't done our weekly shopping for a while so tonight Regis perused the HyVee ad while I made the menu and the list. We're trying to eat healthier so we have more chicken than pork and beef.

I better post this before I forget what I'm doing. On to the weekend...

assman

We went to the MC in Rochester today so Regis could have a "procedure" as they delicately call it. I sat in the waiting room and listened to CNN for more hours than I care to count. Man, everything is outrageous to those folks on CNN. I suppose if you have to provide news for 24 hours, eventually you have to scrape the bottom of the barrel and act excited about it.

One of their journalists (is that what they're called?) continued all afternoon to say that they had "pitchers" of the devastation in Iowa. That may be a colloquialism but it sounds pretty rube-ish on CNN.

I finally went in the hall and sat there because it was quieter and the people coming off the elevator were entertaining.

I was amazed at how fluent in English the people are who don't speak it as a first language. If I had to go to a foreign country to see a doctor, I'd be drawing pictures to communicate.

Everything went fine for Regis and they used less of the drugs so he was coherent when he came out instead of zombie-like. I gave him a ride to the parking ramp in a wheelchair but after he got his land legs he was fine, awake all the way home, and hungry. Always a good sign.

There is water standing everywhere near Rochester. It looks like rice paddies instead of corn fields. I talked to a farmer in the E room who told me all about how crops survive in wet years or dry years depending on the land's elevation. He was a character.

All in all, not a bad day considering. The MC is really a beautiful place and so accommodating to visitors. I recommend again, Helen Clapesattle's book The Doctors Mayo.

floods

I talked to my old friend, Jane, just a few minutes ago. She lives near Cedar Rapids, Iowa where they're experiencing horrible flooding. She was evacuated from work today, the schools are full of flood refugees, and all the bridges going into downtown Cedar Rapids are closed. They're also having historic flooding in Des Moines and other towns along the Cedar River. Her voice brought back memories of the tornado and one of my most vivid images...the sight of people sleeping on cots at the Armory. So much bad weather this spring.

There is a report on one of the state newspaper's websites of cows flying through the air on 94 by Fergus Falls. That seems a little preposterous but it happened in Twister so how do I know. It could happen. All I do know is that on Sunday, I drove on that road. Uh oh. I think those Dakotans make their vodka out of potatoes and maybe that's the explanation.

Regis and I rarely undertake home improvement projects. They just don't interest us much which is probably why the neighbor (not the neighbor with the red trailer) wants to paint our garage. Today we ordered a new kitchen light fixture. Since we moved in here, we've had the two round fluorescent bulbs that have probably been there since the 50s when the house was built. I wouldn't have had any great desire to change that except they burned out and we can get a 15 dollar energy star rebate from smmpa on a new one. I did a google search and I can't believe there aren't pictures of those fixtures on the web. Those are antiques!

Regis tried driving 65 mph all the way home on Sunday and saved 15% on our gas mileage. I know we sound cheap but that's not it. It just seems to make sense to conserve resources when we can. I talked to Arvin, our trusty mechanic, today and he said 55 is about the optimum speed. He's noticed lots more people driving slower on 169 between St. Peter and Mankato since the price of gas went up. thanks to Jimmy Carter for that.

I read this headline in the paper today:

40 rude traveling salespeople evicted from Moorhead motel

but I read it as:

40 nude traveling salespeople evicted from Moorhead motel

That's enough for today. Tomorrow we motor to Rochester so I'll be OOT for a while.

a happening in the neighborhood

In an attempt to document significant happenings in the neighborhood, Regis has photographed, through the picture window, the maiden voyage of my neighbor's lunch wagon going off to serve homemade fare to the masses.

Will this artifact fit in a plastic sleeve?

thinking

I've been sitting here thinking about how knowing you have an audience changes the way you write. I put a counter on my blog (way down at the bottom) about the 1st of May and since then, I've had about 1800 readers. Of course, some of them were me. Smile. But I didn't drive it up that far, believe me. I just make lots of editorial changes after the fact. Back when this was just a personal rant, I didn't think about it much. It was just a place to write. Now that people mention once in a while that they read this or that, or I start telling a story and someone will say, "I read that on your blog," it's a little weird. It's like the internal censor. The monkey mind. The little guy that sits on your shoulder: Don't write about this. Don't say this about that. I've always been, let's say circumspect, but this feels different.

I heard someone on the radio the other day talking about how people in the midst of life troubles, air their dirty laundry in their blogs. God forbid. Some things you just don't talk about in public. But how do you talk about anything important in your life without being too personal?

I see that the two women who claim to have had intimate relations with a former president, are making their tawdry tales available on the internet for a buck 99 a pop. I would think the price would tell you something about the quality. Hell, you can't buy a comic book for that price. That is just too tacky. Of course, they claim they want to get the truth out there. Uh huh. I bet.

flogging my brain cells

This is a picture of me on Monday. At 8 a.m., I'll do the presentation for my portfolio. Someone has written competencies that are pretty broad and things I'm sure I can do, but I can't for the life of me, think of "artifacts" to demonstrate it. I feel like I get dumber as this goes on and I'm sure that on Monday it will be like a parakeet trying to get a license to be a director of special education. Tweet tweet. I worked on my portfolio for hours this afternoon and finally, that was it. My brain cells were flogged.

Regis is having a procedure done at the MC on Thursday so he's on a clear liquid diet all week. As if that's not restrictive enough, he can't even eat red or purple clear liquid. No red Jello, no orange Popsicles, no grape Kool-Aid. I think by the end of the day on Thursday, he ought to be ready to send all the green Jello and beef broth on the planet into space. We're going to leave early to make a stop at Cabela's on 35 to pick up a couple of weird folding chairs. After a week of this kind of eating, it would take something more than a lawn chair to get me to stop anywhere.

We had a dry day today which means the lawn mower armies are out. We're going to compensate for that with warnings of torrential rain in the next two days with warnings of flash flooding. Oh great. So we not only have current long-grass mowing but we have preventative mowing. My little battery-powered lawn mower purrs like a kitten. A couple kids walked by the other day and gave it the funniest look. I guess they couldn't figure out why it wasn't belching black smoke.

I was driving to work today on Minnesota Avenue, taking my time and trying to remember to call in the gas prices. More on that below. At the police station corner, a red car came onto the highway with a police car close behind. The red car passed the cars by going into the north bound lane, followed soon by another police car. Lights and sirens. They disappeared down 169. I've seen COPS and I'm sure this was going to be a full felony stop.

Regis checks gas prices daily and enters them into a database on minnesotagasprices.com. They give points for logging in and reporting and so far, he has 502,000 points and is in 51st place. It's like a community...people leave messages, report life events of members, and compete for points. Everybody needs a hobby and when gas costs $4.00 a gallon, this is an interesting one.

We're watching National Treasure (the second one). I gave it 3 stars about half an hour ago and it just keeps going and going. I might lower it to 2 stars if it doesn't get over soon. Endless action, or all hat and no head as they say in Texas.

mowing grass

My exercising friend was out of town yesterday so I decided to thwart the riding lawnmower neighbor and mow with my own little mower. It didn't really need cutting in most places so it was hard to tell where I had been, so I kind of went in gentle circles. Except for the places where I vacuumed. I realize this is not the acceptable gas-cutting form. The new grass in the back yard is coming up nicely. It's more like woods back there than lawn, though, so it's hard to keep grass growing in the shade.

I'm going to have to get back to this later. I have too many things in my head to write.

yikes

I looked out the bedroom window to the south this afternoon. Since my neighbor has been cutting a wide swath through our front yard with his wide-deck rider, we don't even look over there. I haven't had much time to worry about weeding and the mosquitoes are a deterrent to going anywhere outside so all in all there has been some yard neglect. Today I get a look and the grass is about knee-high and has gone to seed. Lovely. Thanks to all the rain and the little bit of sun we've had for this nice crop of sheep-worthy grass. Apartment living is looking better all the time.

I have one week to finish my last and final portfolio for my last and final license. I've been taking classes at MSU for 38 years and frankly, I'm about done in with that BS. I'm ready to abandon that perch and let the horse out of the barn. The true fact is that I've spent a lot of money on education that hasn't really gotten me too far. I've grieved in different ways over the last three years about my inability to get a different job and I'm ready to let that balloon go, too. Harrumph and all of that. I think I'll celebrate on the 16th...finished my new license before I retired.

I'm reading a book by Katherine McMahon that's kind of a 16th century bodice ripper: The Alchemist's Daughter. A great dark and gothic sort of background and the bodice ripping is entertaining, but I wouldn't recommend it too highly. The main character is a bit of a dolt. I've been hard to please lately so I'd appreciate recommendations.

Off to bed.

weekend with the family

After all the anxiety about the long trip, all the failed travel plans, and all the angst, Regis and I made it to Otter Tail Lake about 6 on Friday and we had a good time. Here's a list of the attendees and their place of origin:
Mom- Canby
Bruce (brother) and Jody- Fargo
Cybil (daughter of Bruce) and Shawn- Ohio
two daughters of Shawn and Cybil- Ohio
Evynn and Darby (daughters of Cybil and Shawn)- Ohio
Pat (brother) and Helen- Luverne
Amanda (daughter of Pat)- St. Paul
Teresa and Regis
David (brother) and Joan- St. Paul
Tiernen (son of David)- St. Paul
Jeremy (son of David)- Fargo
Deb (cousin) and Larry- Arizona
Steve (brother)and Michelle- Fargo
Nicole (daughter of Steve) and Jason- Moorhead
Caleb, Duncan, Ian, Ezra, and Chloe (Steve's)- Fargo
That's a total of 28. Pretty good turn-out and the resort, Barky's, was lovely. We managed a few hours in the sun, a potluck, a few fishing outings, a pontoon ride, a trip to the candy store in Battle Lake, and a ride around the lake. We had breakfast at Betty's Pantry (potato pancakes and wild rice omelets) this morning and we all headed our separate ways. A good time was had by all.

I thought I had learned my lesson when it comes to sunburn. Yesterday morning was cool, breezy, and only partly cloudy. I should not have been in the sun that long because today I have a rousing sunburn on the top of my head, my face, and my chest. I feel like I burned my eyeballs. Ouch.

We left home in such a hurry on Friday that we made several mistakes in packing. Regis only brought the pants he was wearing, I didn't have sunglasses or sunscreen (who knew you'd need THAT stuff?), and we forgot the camera. So, no pictures. Mom will send some later, maybe, and I'll post those.

Back to work tomorrow. Ugh.