Havin’ a Wild Weekend

As the Dave Clark Five would have said. Too much weekend, and it even ended early. Highlights:

• An afternoon spent at younger daughter’s archaeology camp, which was digging at the Ten Broeck Mansion, a lovely (though relatively new — 1798) historic home on what was once the outer edge of Albany.
• A troll — yes, like those trolls from the ’60s — showed up during the regular cleaning of the unneeded toys last week, and spent the weekend turning up in unexpected places: in sleeping bags, on the dashboard, inside pants. He’s now resting above our bathroom mirror.
• The girls recited, from memory, ALL the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues.” Now, I knew me some lyrics in my day, that really — that’s an impressive feat.
• Camping trip without destructive storms. Well, that’s not entirely true, but all the destruction happened at home, where power was apparently out for hours and limbs were down all over the place. We were happily in our tent, just sitting out the rain.
• There was paddling, there were s’mores, we made a sand dinosaur — what more do you need?
• Of course, we missed two stages of the Tour — critical stages — so when we got back yesterday we sat down hard for a three-stage Tour de France marathon. It hurt to watch Cadel Evans, in yellow and without a team, attacked over and over and over again on the Prato Nevoso. He lost it but perhaps not forever, and Vandevelde lost his third-place spot, too. But there are two more days in the mountains and a time trial.
• Had I mentioned that if he wins, I’m changing my name to Cadel? Not because he’s an awesome rider, though well he may be, but because he has the same crease between his eyebrows and I just like his name better.