Last weekend, my folks and my sister and her family decided to go camping. Since it was also Father’s Dad Weekend and I wanted to see my dad, I went along too. I’m not much of a camper, but I had fun – though getting there was a challenge.
I left early Saturday morning and headed to West Virginia and the state park they had picked out. I had a printed map to get me started and switched over to the GPS when I got into WV. It was terribly foggy most of the way and made for a really surreal drive. At one point I looked ahead and saw a barn coming out at me out of the fog. It was just a shed being transported by a truck slower than I was going, but still weird.
The GPS took me down a long, one lane road with the river on one side and houses and fences on the other. When it finally cleared, the GPS told me I was at the campground – but my brother-in-law had given me some supplemental directions that took me the rest of the way. So, I had The Mist and Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut. One more Stephen King reference and I would have turned around, but I made it to the campsite and met up with my family.
We got a tent set up for me and had some lunch, then played games and enjoyed the quiet of the day. My nieces needed naps and the river was too wild anyway, so we mostly just stayed near the camp that afternoon. Dad fixed chicken over the fire for dinner and my nieces played on the playground equipment. For Father’s Day, I got my Dad a copy of Fahrenheit 451, that I hid in a fake book that I decorated to look like Fahrenheit 451. Yeah, I’m a little silly. I headed to bed around 10 and had a little trouble settling in. I woke up around 4:30 and made my way to the restrooms – and nearly ran into my Mom coming back from there. I must have heard her get up from the other tent and that woke me enough that I needed to get up.
In the morning, I went to put on my shoes that had been sitting outside the test (mistake!) and a spider the size of a chicken crawled out of one of them. I yelped loud enough to wake up my dad and startle my mom and managed to get rid of it – I hope.
We had french toast for breakfast and were just starting to break camp when the rain started. I had already packed up my few things in my car and I tried to help my brother-in-law with their pop-up camper. Mostly, though, I held my youngest niece and kept her out of the rain since I didn’t know where anything went. The rain settled down just as we were finishing up packing and instead of trying to get lunch there, we headed out and stopped at Eat-n-Park. From there, we said our goodbyes and I fired up the GPS again. This time, it took me through PA and still more odd roads before I got back to Ohio and familiar ground.
Still not really a camper, but I had a nice time.
This past week, one of the committees I’m on had a meeting with the president of the university. We were all pretty nervous and tried to come up with questions to ask. Since we didn’t really have enough, I suggested that the chair of the group set the tone and guide us through the questions we did have for the president. That didn’t really work as he went around the table anyway. I had enough time to prep a serious question – about the state higher education funding model – and then a not serious one. I told him I liked the changes to the campus, especially the labyrinth – but I was wondering if we were going to get a Minotaur?
He laughed out loud (yea, me!) and someone near me asked “what is a Minotaur?”. Then the president suggested I send an email to the VP for Facilities planning.
It was a good tension breaker since we were all kinda down about the budget issues the university has had recently.
This weekend, I did some work around the house – mostly just organizing and some cleaning. I got a lot done – though you can’t really tell it from looking. I ran some more errands today and then decided to take myself out to dinner. I was by myself with a good book and even in the raucous crowd of people near me, I managed to carve out a little peace and quiet – even if just in my own head.
Finally, my last big project for the weekend has been to attempt to replace the air cleaner in my heating/cooling system since it’s been about a billion degrees today. I’ve never done this before, but the instructions looked reasonable and I picked up with I thought/hoped would be the right one. I got it home, started to install it, and… it doesn’t fit. Of course. And it’s really no wonder – I was guessing at the correct size. And they had tons of different options and sizes. How about this, consumer product engineers, how about you quit screwing around and stop inventing new sizes for things that don’t need to be special? If you wanna put magic gossamer pixie mucus in there and change 10x as much – go for it. But make it the same freaking size as all the other ones – okay?
I’ve got my receipt and I’ll return it tomorrow, but it’s going to be a little toasty in here tonight.
Oh, and one last story about Thunder(cat). He’s a playful cat, but he does like to attack me still – his version of ‘play’ I guess. Recently, while I was making dinner, he came up and clawed at my ankle. He startled and hurt me, so I yelped and jumped. Which in turn freaked him out and he jumped too. And hit his head on the cabinet door. I heard the “thunk” and then he walked a few steps and stopped, then shook his head. I could almost hear him say, “just shake it off, thunder, you meant to do that. Be cool,”
tom
hehehe thunder cat hooooo!!!!