Memorial Day Weekend '13

’Twas okay.

First two days rained hard and cold. We stayed home, didn’t do much but whatever was necessary. Ran errands. Took the Little One with me to Confession. Mom took both girls out to Color Me Mine, an arts-n-crafts place for pre-tweens. Did some laundry. Blah blah blah.

Watched Jesse James Saturday night, an old flick DVR’d from TCM. Not the best Western I ever saw; certainly not the most historically accurate. Only thing worthwhile was something I read on the IMDB – a horse was (possibly purposefully) killed doing a stunt-jump off a 75-foot cliff. I saw it during the film and while the height didn’t seem that high, the poor thing landed nearly on its back. Cringe-inducing. It was one of the things which led to major reforms of the way animals are treated in films.

Sunday and Monday were absolutely beautiful – sunny, blue skies, warm, no humidity. Woke up at 7 on Sunday, went to the garage, lifted some weights and rode the bike. I’m starting my third week of workouts in the garage. Hopefully, it’ll take as a habit. Afterwards, I took the girls to mass while the wife stayed home and packed us all up. We left around 11 to drive down the Jersey shore, to visit with the girls’ grandfather, my father-in-law.

Very windy and cool, too cool to swim, at the beach. The girls had a blast on the playground. Me, I read in the shade. Later on we took two cars out to drive to a restaurant in Neptune, NJ. My father-in-law pointed out that one of my headlights was out, of which I was unaware. We had a fun evening. The girls were quite entertaining. The food was good. I had crab cakes and a Sam Adams Summer Ale.

On the way home I was pulled over by the 5-0.

He was a very young trooper, and extremely apologetic. Yes, he stopped me for having a headlight out. And gave me a $54 ticket. “I’m very sorry sir,” he said, “but my hands are tied. I have to report this.”

Yeah, right.

My $54 contribution to the post-Sandy Jersey shore, stronger than ever.

Anyway, we took the girls out for ice cream, then went back to my father-in-law’s apartment to sleep – five of us in a two-bedroom apartment. Cramped but uneventful.

Next morning we brought chairs and flags to local Memorial Day parade. The girls wore their stars-n-stripes outfits. For some reason, the marchers in this parade (as well as the passengers in the fire trucks and ambulances) toss out candies to the spectators. My girls were in heaven. Their haul was probably close to a hundred pieces of candy each.

The wife, the girls, and their grandpa went down to the beach to lay on the sand. I stayed at the apartment for six hours … utterly and seriously relaxing. Read/listened to 95 pages of Anathem (I doubled my reading goal for the weekend) among other books. Did those blog entries from yesterday. Drank some soda and ate some chips watching some really, really bad Syfy. I was in paradise, and that ain’t no exaggeration.

They got back around 5 and we packed everything up quickly, expecting bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Parkway – but it was smooth sailing. Not sure why, but we got back home by 6:30. Unloaded the car, showered all the beach out of the girls’ hair, had a nice healthy dinner. A great way to end an okay Memorial Day weekend.