Memorial Day 09

Just got back from our mini-Memorial Day vacation. It was good, very, very good. Well-deserved rest and relaxation. I’m almost sorry to be back home, except that I now have a renewed vigor and am currently cleaning the house and getting our family affairs in order for the start of business Tuesday morning.

We drove to visit my wife’s father, BK, down at the Jersey shore on Saturday morning. No traffic, blue skies, a slight chill to the air. After some wraps for lunch and a tour of his new apartment he took my wife and the girls to the nearby beach for a couple of hours. I stayed behind and got a lot accomplished. Read over half of When Worlds Collide, worked on my three websites, took care of some email business, did a lot of brainstorming, and overall chilled for five hours without hearing the plaintive phrase, “Hey Daddy …”

It looked rainy and a thick fog bank had rolled in from the Atlantic, so our hopes of going to a fair walking-distance away faded. Instead, we went to a relatively inexpensive but nice Italian restaurant. My daughters were charming as usual with the staff. Got to the old bungalow which we now had all to ourselves, put the children to bed, stretched out and crashed.

Unfortunately, I woke the next morning at 4 and couldn’t get back to bed. So I read some more of my little paperback and watched the sun rise. Later, the girls went out for coffee and muffins. Went to church with BK, then brunch afterwards. Returned to the bungalow, read George Bernard Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell while the girls napped. Played Frisbee golf with the Little One. BK put together a box kite and we all took it to the park but it refused to go airborne. Motored down with it to the beach and the kite did go about fifty feet straight vertical, only to reverse trajectory and crash down hard, breaking. Me and the little chickens then went to the ocean’s edge and dipped feet in. The ice cold salt water chased us back, but we kept going after it, defying the tide, playing a little game. Lots of pictures; I’ll post one later.

Me and BK purchased some supplies from Shop Rite, then returned and had a Memorial Day feast of rotisserie chicken and potato salad (too late to barbecue). BK and C had a couple of screwdrivers and got very chatty. The girls were wiped out and went to bed early, on their own accord. I put away about thirty pages of a neat little physics book a bit before bed. Slept like the dead until our daughter woke us at 5 coughing. Read more of When Worlds Collide and helped her draw cars and dinosaurs. Tidied up the bungalow while the girls watched the parade a couple blocks down. Loaded the car and said our goodbyes around 11:30. Sat in traffic for an hour – the remnants of a terrible accident on the Garden State Parkway – and got home about two hours ago.

Not much to report, except this: That was my picture-perfect definition of an awesome good weekend.