Updates
- Once again, summer feels like it’s over before it’s even begun. In a whirl of travel, end-of-the-school-year events and rain, I’ve missed the lengthening of days (or feel like I have), and it’s only downhill from here. There will be camping but not much of it, and if it doesn’t stop pouring our only canoeing may have been in April.
- My incredible string of good fortune in the health arena continues (coming, I must say, after a very sickly childhood, so I feel like I’m owed). After months of inadequate healing, swelling and general pain in my knee, I finally took it to a surgeon, who took one look at it and, despite being a surgeon, had no interest in cutting it open. Told me to keep doing what I was doing and it would get better. And he was right, it has. Quite extraordinary, though, since I presume that surgeons are pretty much like beavers — always gonna see the need for a dam.
- Life without cable (or any broadcast TV, for that matter) is going pretty swimmingly. The Playstation seems to want to be restarted every couple of times before it’ll give me Netflix, but in general I’m enjoying a much more conscious choosing of my entertainment. (And, in particular, Rebekah’s having introduced us to Doctor Who, which I could never previously get into but which we’re now completely hooked on. The David Tennant episodes, at least.) Also, despite my trepidations, NBC Universal’s on-line Tour de France package is working spectacularly well, with flawless streaming, very high-def pictures (we could read the washing instructions on Thor’s shorts), ability to slide up and down the timestream without causing streaming panic, and no commercials, stupid promotions or anything else that detracts from the perfection that is the Tour. So, highly recommended.
- Light riding, again because of the awayness, the raininess, and the desire to get out with Rebekah as she’s starting to enjoy road biking. Hard to beat that feeling of effortless riding that comes with a road bike.
- Took in fireworks in Scotia, having found a fantastic location for viewing them. The little village gets hella-crowded for the fireworks, and the general tenor of drunken crowds doesn’t sit well with me, but I still feel it’s my duty as a parent to get my kids to fireworks at least once a summer, and that’s the surest place for me to do it. Absolutely nothing could ever convince me to try to see the fireworks at the Empire State Plaza again — it’s the most horrible place in the world to put on a fireworks show. A select couple of thousand people get a good view, and the rest of the world tries to see through the surrounding buildings. It’s insane, and I can’t understand why anyone goes.