So yeah, come the end of the week we'll be off on our annual week-long beach house vacation on Long Beach Island. I doubt anyone will notice anything different about my presence on the board, because as has been the case for the past decade or so, the house has wifi, but it's gotten traditional for me give a heads-up to the usership.
So... yeah.
Happy vacation, Bob!
Our vacations will be overlapping this year. I'm not planning on going anywhere that doesn't have wi-fi, so the same disclaimer applies to me.
Have fun! It's looking pretty rainy hereabouts, but hopefully you'll have some better vacation weather for your stay.
It's pretty damned rainy off and on around us right now, in sharp contrast to the way the weather has run for the past month or so, but it should clear up by the end of the week. Then again, LBI has its own microclimate somewhat disconnected from the mainland, and it's not uncommon for a thunderstorm to whip up, speed through, and leave sun behind all in the course of about two hours.
It's also the time of year for a particular wish...
Happy Birthday, Bob!
Oh? Well, best wishes from me too, and many happy returns.
As I like to tell people at this point in their years, hipy papy bthuthdth thuthda bthuthdy!
I have no problem admitting it was my 61st birthday. It's just that it feels weird, knowing that I started these boards when I was in my early forties, some twenty years or so ago. It doesn't feel that long. (Then again, as I was telling my sister on the phone yesterday, the whole of the pandemic period feels like it spanned only a couple weeks in my memory, so...)
Well... yesterday was Interesting, for certain values of "interesting". Peggy took off on a bike ride, and about three miles down the island took a tumble that left her with a couple scratches and a heavily bleeding cut just over the outer end of her left eyebrow. Her brother and I took off to pick her and her bike up, and then I took her to get treated. The local urgent care wouldn't touch her without a CAT scan to make sure she wasn't more severely hurt, so we ended up in the local hospital's ER for the entire afternoon. She's fine, no injuries to brain or skull, with just a few bandaids and steristrips to show for her adventure.
Okay, last full day. After we have breakfast (currently being prepared by my nephew Tom) I'll be taking Peg to an optician nearby to get her glasses, which were bent a bit in the tumble, put back in shape. After that, it's cramming a last few things in before a dinner out and then back to the beach house for packing.
Okay, and we've been back more than 24 hours now, and I just realized I never shared something funny that happened a week ago tonight.
We'd gone out to dinner to celebrate my birthday a few days late, and the restaurant was a few hundred yards west of a Shell gas station that had a big Shell logo sign on a tower about a hundred feet or so tall. When we came out of the restaurant, the moon was rising, and was big and orange. We were parked on the east side of the restaurant, and there was a narrow strip of trees separating the parking lot from the next business along. As we walked to the car, the trees blocked the moon, but I tried to bring it to the attention of my in-laws, pointing out where it was peeking through the trees.
Only when we got to the cars, there was an opening in the trees, and I realized I had been pointing everyone at the Shell sign, which was about the same size and color as the rising moon and, for the moment, at about the same angle up from the horizon. I sheepishly admitted my error, and after some teasing from family members, I had a moment of inspiration and pointed up at it. "That's no moon! That's a Shell station!"
Which got me groans. (And my sister in law Nancy adding that this was probably the only time you could use that sentence in the real world.)