Category Archives: vacation

Wilderness State Park – 2024

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As the title would imply, I’m at Wilderness State Park in Petosky, MI, this week. I arrived yesterday afternoon, late enough to take everything out of the car, put it in my cabin (the Sturgeon Cabin), drink some bourbon, and go to bed.

This morning, after a breakfast of granola and berries (I’m hillbilly like that), I drove to the Walmart in Cheboygan and picked up 3 new lanterns. The cabin is DARK. Got back, got things organized, and I guess my vacation can now REALLY begin. On Election Day, no less.

Wilderness State Park? I found this place last year, when I was trying to book a week at Pictured Rocks and discovered that Michigan is now closing a lot of its parks (yes, Pictured Rocks is a national park, but I group them all together) on October 15th. This did not sit well with me, since I like for my Michigan sojourns to be at least a bit chilly, so I went on the hunt for the northern-most park in Michigan that I could reserve in November. I found Wilderness. And I spent a week last November living at the park in a tent.

It was glorious.

On one of my walks last year, I stumbled upon the Sturgeon Cabin, and instantly fell in love with it. It’s a log cabin that’s about 3 miles from anywhere, right on the shore of Lake Michigan. No power. Hand-pumped (tannin-filled) water out front. A vault toilet about 100 yards away. Wood crib that holds about a two cords of wood. So secluded that you almost don’t see it if you drive past on the “road” (literally a couple of dirt ruts) that goes past it. When I saw that I could reserve it for the second week of November, it was a no-brainer to grab it. I’ll have some pictures up in a future post.

This is smaller than the cabins I’ve stayed in at Cheboygan State Park. It’s probably 18×22 inside, with two bunk beds and another single bed, a table and benches, a counter with two shelves, and a wonderful little wood stove. Behind the stove is a stonework that looks like it may have been an actual fireplace at one time, but it is now just a great place to store wood – and whoever was here before me left me a good supply, so I probably won’t have to go to the wood crib before I leave.

Behind the cabin is a short path through some trees and shrubs to a private beach on Lake Michigan. I say “private” because – due to the way the land lies – you’d have to REALLY want to get to this beach from anyplace other than the cabin. On the other three sides of the cabin are fairly thick woods. This is the type of place that I’ve fantasized about retiring to for the last 30 years. I may never (let’s face it, I’ll never) get to realize that dream, but I can live it a couple of weeks every year.

So that’s a description of where I am. Over the next week, I’ll try to get daily entries in – with photos – so I can remember what I did this week in November of 2024.

Merry Christmas

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It seems as if every time I sit down to write something here, two things are true: My dad’s reminded me that I’m a complete slacker about updating my stuff, and at least two months have gone by since I last did so.

So, in response to an email that I got from Dad last night, I shall now update this tome…after a four-month hiatus this time.

I did not make it to Michigan for my fall sojourn this year. Throughout September and October, I kept wavering on whether or not to do it, given that I’d booked my time off for the week before and of Thanksgiving, which would be the latest I’ve headed to the uncivilized part of the north (Vermont is not uncivilized). I was concerned not about the cold, but with the possibility that I’d get my car to the cabin and not be able to get it back out to a road – the cabins at Cheboygan are 1-2 miles from the parking lot, reachable on dirt tracks that are navigable in the Subaru as long as there aren’t two feet of snow on the ground, and that was a distinct possibility in late November.

So I opted for a staycation – improved the setup of the tarp on my deck and spent a week and a half doing basically nothing. Sat on the deck, drank beer and bourbon, listened to podcasts…hung out inside with the cats, did some laundry, etc.

I think it turned out to be a fairly wise decision. The weather in northern Michigan was crappy, to put it mildly. Looks like they had at least rain every day, some snow, some bitterly-cold days – and wind-driven flooding along the Mackinaw Straits, which almost certainly would’ve made 10 days in the cabin (100 feet from the water in normal conditions) pretty miserable. It would have been relaxing, however; I’ve got to admit that I didn’t feel nearly as chill after 10 days at home as I did after 7 days in Michigan each of the last couple of years.

I saved some money, though. That’s a good thing.

I made an appearance at the company Christmas party this year. It was a couple of weeks ago, and it marked the first time in my entire career that I’ve gone to an office party. I did so at the request/command of my boss, who has decided that I need to, I guess, be more approachable as a normal person to the other departments at work. I’m not describing that very well, but I sort of get what he’s pushing. I tend to focus on my direct reports, along with one or two key contacts in other departments, and I don’t socialize with many other people in the office. Although I’ve achieved (and encouraged) a reputation as a go-to technical guy, I’m still learning the hands-off, administrative, style of management; and making small talk with the big bosses from New Hampshire and heads of other departments is part of that, I suppose. I didn’t stay long. I had a couple of drinks, ate dinner, talked with a few folks, and left. I didn’t hang around for the post-dinner festivities (a game of musical chairs that has become somewhat legendary in the company over the last 15 years), and I missed seeing, apparently, half of my team get shit-faced. That’s probably a good thing – and is also one of the reasons that I don’t do office parties. I’ve been known to, um, inebriate myself on occasion.

This past week, I led a project in Statesville, NC. This is not the project that I mentioned in my previous post (August), which was in Winston-Salem, NC, but a small setup for a 23-person office that I handled along with one of the newer kids on my team. I was curious to see how she’d do on her first project, and was pleased to see that she performed very well, as I’d believed she would. She was a hire that I had mild reservations about making earlier this year, but her ability to work with people – and good critical-thinking skills in spite of a lack of technical background – is serving her well on my team. She’s not ready to step into a leadership position yet, but she will be once she gets over her insecurity and figures out that she knows as much or more than most of her peers.

The project, for the most part, went well. Started out very poorly – equipment that was sent via FedEx from Montana 10 days earlier had not arrived, and we also had some problems with an anti-virus software that had been installed by the client’s previous IT company – but by the middle of the third day I was breathing easier, and by the end of the fifth I was able to sit down with the firm administrator and others central to the project and determine that everybody was pretty happy and we looked good going forward. That’s a bonus because I also learned that my team will be the primary technical support for this particular client. That doesn’t happen a lot – normally, I have to run clean-up for 2 months for firms that other teams have on-boarded, and it’s a real pain.

I don’t have any big plans for Christmas, the title of this post notwithstanding. I’m guessing that Jenny will probably invite me over for dinner at some point – if so, I’ll go. Other than that, I plan to sleep for a couple of days. Beginning in January, I’m going to try to start walking in the mornings again. I’ve completely gotten out of that habit. I’m not entirely sure why that is, but I need to get back into it. I’m getting basically no exercise these days. I might try to stop smoking again at the same time. I’d quit for probably 6 months before Mom died, then started up again immediately after (stupid, I know). Kept it pretty much under control until I got my notice from AT&T, at which point I turned into a heavy smoker. I know I need to cut it out, but it’s a habit like a vice grip at this point. I know it’s a mental thing, however…just need to decide I want to quit again and do it. I know a couple of kitties who’ll probably be happy when I do.

That’s pretty much all the stuff that I can remember for now, so I’ll end this here. I hope everyone has a happy Christmas, festive New Year, and fewer fireworks than I’m sure my neighbors will have.

Cold Snap

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I woke up early this morning, and quickly discovered – on my way to the latrine – that it had gotten markedly colder than it was yesterday. The temperature itself wasn’t terrible, having only dropped a few degrees into the mid-twenties, but the wind was back with a vengeance. Not sure what the wind chill actually is (I used to have a chart for that), but I’ll just say that it has been COLD all day.

That being the case, I’ve spent most of the day inside the cabin, reading, snoozing, and listening to podcasts. I did bundle up and take a walk this afternoon – explored some of the Duncan Bay side of the point, and got in a bit more than 2 miles of exercise. Was forced to wear a gaiter than Cy gave me several years ago or my face would have frozen off; and I had on a tee, flannel shirt, windbreaker, gloves, and flannel-lined pants to keep the rest of me warm.

Today was pasta day at the old cabin. Made some ravioli on the wood stove for brunch and had some dehydrated spaghetti and meat sauce about an hour ago. Both were pretty good, but I’ll give the nod to the spaghetti. Mountain House makes some good dehydrated food.

It has also been snowing off-and-on for most of the day, although I got a couple hours of sunny clear skies during and just after my walk. No accumulation to speak of, but the sidewalk that I so carefully shoveled could probably use another scraping. That won’t happen today, as it’s already dark.

For some reason, the picture that I keep trying to attach to this post (a shot of my cabin kitchen) won’t upload, and my email doesn’t seem to be updating, either. That being the case, this post might not publish – but I’m going to click the “Publish” button now anyway.

Snow Day!

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I woke up this morning to a beautiful Lake Huron sunrise, strong winds, and a couple of inches of the white stuff. As I sit here at the table in my cabin, listening to a Furman football game, I’m looking out at something I’m pretty sure that I’ve never seen before: snow in the foreground and the lake, with huge white caps, in the back. The wood stove in the cabin is doing an amazing job – I’m in my underwear and have cracked a window, both to cool things down a little bit and to let me hear the wind, which is constant and incredibly soothing. I played my wind game for about an hour earlier this morning, which I haven’t been able to do for several years.

Wind game: try to find a spot outside that allows me to simultaneously be in and out of the wind. I invented it as a small child in Shoreham – the perfect spot was behind the berry bush between the roots of the Elm tree in the front yard. The best spot I found today was in a Cedar Grove near the beach.

Took two fairly long walks today. The first one took me to Cheboygan Point, about a mile from here. I wandered around there for a while, then walked east on the beach back past my cabin to the edge of the park. Came back to the cabin for a lunch of chicken and dumplings, then opted to walk over to the campsite on the southern edge of the park rather than take a nap.

I’d just arrived back at the cabin after that trek when one of the rangers showed up to give me some rock salt and – you called it, Dad! – a snow shovel. I shoveled off the front of the cabin, where I have my “settin’ outside” chair, before coming back in to listen to the game. Later today, I might get enough energy to shovel off the walkway that leads to the latrine.

A bit about the cabins here at Cheboygan State Park: there are three of them, all available year-round, and all basically the same. I stayed in the Poe Reef cabin last year. This time, I’m at 14-Foot Shoals, which is about a mile further off the main road than Poe. A quarter-mile further along is Lighthouse Cabin. 14-Foot Shoals has a “porch” of sorts, which is missing in the other two cabins. It’s just a little 3-foot overhang across the front of the cabin, but it’s a great place to sit outside without being completely exposed to the elements.

Other than that, the cabins are all pretty much the same. They’re square buildings – I’d guess about 20 feet per side – with a single room under a peaked roof. Each wall has at least one window (2 on the lake-facing wall), and there is a small counter in one of the lakeside corners. Each building also has a wood stove, 4 sets of bunk beds, a table with two benches, and a number of wooden chairs. Hooks in the rafters provide a good place to hang a lantern (there is no electricity). Each cabin also has two out-buildings: a vault toilet and a large woodshed. Water is available from a hand pump outside (kind of yellow this year, but seems to taste alright), and there are two picnic tables and two firepits – one set at the forest side of the cabin and the other on the beach.

I’m sure that, during the summer, the beaches here get crowded. In late October/early November, however, I’ve had the place pretty much to myself. Yes, there are people staying in the other two cabins, but they are distant enough to not exist, basically. Solitude is what I like, and this place has it.

A Home in the Woods

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I have arrived at Cheboygan State Park in Michigan.

Actually, I arrived at just after 2 this afternoon, and it is now about 3:30. In the 90 minutes between, I unloaded my car of about a week’s worth of supplies, stocked the cabin with firewood (there’s plenty more in the wood shed), put on my boots, walked on the beach, and have drunk exactly one beer (more will be consumed, I predict).

It was snowing when I left Perrysburg, OH, this morning, and it’s threatening to do the same here in Cheboygan before the day is over, but right now it’s just overcast and a little chilly (about 36 degrees, according to the cabins thermometer). In the cabin itself, I’m guessing that it’s in the 50s, but I did get a fire started (forgot to mention that), and I expect that it’ll be up closer to 70 before too much longer).

The week in Perrysburg went pretty well. We had some network trouble on Sunday night, but got that cleared up on Monday, got all of the workstations set up, and were able to leave the office by about 6:30. Tuesday-Thursday went smoothly. Not too many people had trouble, so it was mainly a case of making sure printers worked okay, explaining how multiple monitors have to be configured, easy stuff. There was a system-wide outage on Wednesday morning, which was not cool at all, but nothing we could do about it. My mind was in Michigan anyway.

The plan for the rest of the day is to get the temperature up in the cabin, drink a bit of beer and bourbon, heat up some water for a sponge bath in the morning, maybe take a walk, watch a movie (I brought six of them on my phone), and sleep like a dead man. Between the breeze in the woods and the sound of the surf, about 100 feet from where I’m sitting, that last should be no problem at all.

Still Alive!

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So it’s been a while. Figured I’d try to catch up on things while I’m sitting at Tires Plus waiting for new tires. Also testing out a WordPress app on my phone, which may allow me to post more often and, hopefully, will work well enough so that I can use it when I’m in Michigan in a few weeks.

I guess that’s the big news for now. I rented a cabin at Cheboygan State Park again this year, and I’m planning to stay there from November 9th to the 16th. It’s a lovely spot and I’m really looking forward to having a week by myself in the middle of nowhere to decompress and think about things. That week will come immediately on the heels of a week in Toledo, where I’ll be on a project for work. Not looking as forward to that, but it works nicely financially, as I’ll be reimbursed for mileage for around 1300 miles out of my entire trip.

Work has been somewhat exhausting as of late. The X-Company really built up the numbers in L1 support staff this year, and I’ve now got 10 direct reports and am expecting 1 or 2 more by the end of the year. Having been back in the management gig for nearly a year now (the last time I had directs was around 2006), I’ve sort of settled in to it. Managing people is, for me at least, much more stressful than just dealing with misbehaving computers. I get particularly annoyed when one of my people feels the need to take an emergency day off because, “My kid threw up,” but I guess I’m not allowed to admit that. I also have a few scenarios every day when I’m deep in the heart of working a problem which has been escalated to me and I get interrupted by someone who needs help with something that, to me, seems incredibly obvious. Maybe not the solution, but definitely the troubleshooting steps required to find it.

I haven’t gotten to get out much this year. Did go up to Whigg Meadow two more times since that weekend when Brett and I discovered it. Both trips were really nice (I hiked up both times, rather than subjecting my car to the terrible drive), though I did get absolutely soaked the first time – caught on the trail in a downpour with no rain gear.

I’m still looking for the perfect place to buy some land for a tiny cabin to live in in my old age. Have not found it yet, and I’m again wondering when I’ll be able to actually do this. I looked at my 401k yesterday and see that in the last 2 weeks I’ve lost everything that I gained during the first nine months of the year. Wouldn’t call it depressing, but it’s certainly not encouraging.

…

And now it’s the next day. I did get my tires put on, and had the front end aligned, which makes my car feel like a new car. Very nice. Jenny and I went to a Gladiators hockey game last night. Once again, we saw them playing the Orlando Sun Bears, which I think is the team that we’ve seen play every time we’ve gone. And once again, the Gladiators lost. We have a bad hockey team.

After I got home last night, I saw that I had an email from Dad. It had been written while I was sitting at the tires place, and it mentioned that he misses seeing updates to my blog. Well, here you go, Dad!

I guess the last little bit of news is that I’ve got a concert with the Gwinnett Wind Symphony later this afternoon. We’re performing the Suite from West Side Story, the Candice Suite and something else that I don’t recall right now. The band has been sounding pretty good for the rehearsals, which is different for this group.

So, we’ll call this test over. This app appears to do a pretty good job of allowing me to update my blog on-the-fly. The Voice Control isn’t all that great, but it’s faster than typing on the little phone keyboard. I do have to go back and correct things fairly often.

I don’t know how it will do with inserting pictures, which will be important when I’m in Michigan, but I’ll try that out later.

beach weekend

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Coming to you live from sunny Waukegan, IL, it’s the newest entry into the soon-to-be world-famous Frowsy Noise!

Yes, it’s a dreary Sunday afternoon and I’m writing this from the Illinois Beach Resort in Zion, IL, which is actually about 10 minutes north of the aforementioned Waukegan.  I got here at about 6:30 Friday night and have spent the last couple of days walking around taking pictures of the snowy beach along the western shore of Lake Michigan, spending time with Amy (and, to a lesser extent, her folks), playing with her dog, and generally enjoying a few days away from work.

Went for a walk yesterday and found three deer looking for
food in the snow.

The weekend did not start we’ll for Amy’s mom, who fell sometime Friday afternoon and, after visiting a dentist to check the damage, learned that she’d broken her jaw.  The poor lady subsequently had her jaw wired shut and will be eating through straws for the next month and a half.

That didn’t keep her from attending church this morning, where Amy and I joined her, but it did rule out any choral performances.  I believe she did stay after the service for hand bell practice, however.

Amy and I went to see a movie, Oz, The Great and Powerful, last night.  I had high hopes for the flick, but it failed to live up to them.  Might have been fun for kids, but it totally failed to engage me; and the 3D effects, while occasionally very good, did not justify the time spent in the theatre fighting to stay awake.  Live and learn.

After church today, Amy and I had lunch at a diner near her house, and then went our separate ways – she to do some trumpet exercises and me to walk in the rain, maybe take some pictures, update this little blog, and see what’s going on with the NCAA basketball brackets.  We’ll get together later today for a movie or something and tomorrow morning, early, I’ll hit the road for home.

It’s been a great couple of days, overall.  I always like the time I spend with Amy and it’s also nice to see some actual snow on the ground! Makes me miss my life as a Yankee.

TWD

 

year’s end…world’s end?

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So two weeks has passed and I am once again in bed and have once again spent the last 20 minutes playing with my paint program working on “The Cypress Swamp,” which is sure to garner world-wide interest among artistic circles.  The lines, the colors, the…swampiness of it simply cannot be understated.

It is a Saturday morning, but the cats didn’t really care about that and rousted me from a most delightful slumber at 5:45 this morning.  Little bastards have really got to figure out the whole “day of rest” thing at some point, but I’m not holding my breath.  So, after feeding them and the outdoor critters (Buddy and Brooks are still regulars, though I haven’t seen Daphne in quite some time), I put on some shorts and a jacket and set out for a walk.  Got about 8.5 miles in and came up with a new path that has potential – though I was certain that I was going to be road kill during one mile-long stretch with neither sidewalks nor shoulders.

That took a couple of hours and I got back to the house and back in bed by about 9:00 (for those of you doing the math, yes – I killed an hour watching television between the cat feeding and the walk); and I’ve spend the intervening 3 hours catching up on email, booking a hotel in Waukegan for next week, reading my messageboards, and – of course – painting “The Cypress Swamp.”

The last couple of weeks at work haven’t been half bad, actually.  I finished up with my year-end review stuff (didn’t have the actual review, but wrote down all the stuff that I think I accomplished in the last 12 months and sent it to my boss) and spent most of my time working on my automation projects – one of which will be used by me tonight when I go in (at midnight) for yet another upgrade procedure.  The last time I did this, I didn’t get out of the office until 9 in the morning.  Here’s hoping that tonight is not a repeat of that fiasco.

A lot of my effort for the automation stuff has been focused on trying to connect to and get information from a number of UNIX servers.  So far, I’ve managed to connect to the things and send a few simple commands; but I’m still having trouble with more advanced stuff that, while extremely simple to type at a terminal, is proving to be a real bugger to program.  I have a few ideas about the problems, though, and will no doubt spend most of tonight’s upgrade session trying them out.  I think I mentioned in my blog post on the night of the last upgrade that, no matter how long the whole thing takes, my part – thanks largely to my automation – lasts all of about 5 minutes.  The rest of the time, I’m just sitting there on the phone, amusing myself in whatever way possible, and waiting to see if I’m going to have to roll back my five minutes worth of changes because the people taking 9 hours have screwed something up.

I played the last of three Red Kettle gigs last night and was extremely disappointed in the other 4 people who were playing with me.  I’m not a world class musician or anything, but I find it hard to believe that any supposedly talented person can get lost – and stay lost – while reading Christmas carols that, on average, last for about 45 seconds.  Time after time last night, however, one or more of the people in the quintet missed repeats and became hopelessly confused.  Not to toot my own horn (both because I’m not that good at tooting it and because it’s kind of like bragging for not falling over when taking a step), but I was the only one of the 5 who didn’t get lost….and even had I done so, I wouldn’t have wasted the rest of the tune floundering around trying to “fit in” to a carol that any 4-year-old can recognize.

The RK gigs, at any rate, are over for another year.

The Cypress Swamp

Did I mention that my work schedule is changing again as of tomorrow?  Yeah.  It is.  I’ll be going M-F, 8-5 now. This won’t last long.  Word is that the schedule will change AGAIN in mid-late January.  For the record, yes, I *did* bitch on my year-end stuff about the complete lack of a standard (or even non-standard, but at least long-lasting) schedule over the last year…and I don’t particularly care if my boss takes offense at the fact that I blamed the lack of such on his leadership skills.  The year-end stuff is supposed to be when you let your boss know if you have any problems with him.  I’ve never had any before, but this schedule thing is really chapping my ass.

Waukegan next week?  Yes indeedy.  I still had a couple of vacation days to take, so I burned next Thursday and Friday (Friday being 12/21/12) and am planning on driving up Thursday morning and spending a few days with Amy.  Still not sure if I’m working on Christmas or New Year’s day, but the early word is that the call center will be closed – which means that I won’t be.

Not that it matters, of course; because, according to the ancient Mayans, the world will end on 12/21/12.  So at least I’ll get to die in a northern state.

That’s a good thing, right?

TWD

vacation 2012: part 6

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Yesterday being Saturday, we all piled into one of the boats shortly after breakfast and headed in to town to do some shopping at the weekend farmers market.  Lots of people apparently had the same idea – the place was packed.  I picked up 4 or 5 zucchinis and then walked to the hardware store, where I bought a new tarp in anticipation of camping in Illinois in a few more days.  Shortly thereafter, the rest of the group wandered back to the center of town and we all came back to the camp.

Dr. Peddy prepares to fish

The afternoon was a quiet one.  I practiced the tuba a bit more while just about everyone else hung out on the dock and read.  At around 3:00, Cy and I hit the tennis court and played 10 games before we both got too hot to play more and headed for the lake.  The score when we stopped was 5-5.  This is not surprising.  So far, Cy and I have played on three days.  After the three sessions, our scores are deadlocked.  I won the first set, 7-6.  Cy won the second, 7-6.  And the third stands at 5 games each.  Maybe we’ll finish the match today.  It is a beautiful day for tennis.

John and Marcia Ramsey came to Ulvik at around 5:00 for cocktails and conversation.  I let the older crowd do most of that.  It was my turn to cook, so I pretty much stayed in the kitchen and made chicken pot pie.  Not to pat myself on the back too awful much, but it was great.

Unfortunately, Karl developed a toothache at some point yesterday.  That, combined with the overzealous cocktail houring by many in the group, led to a mass exodus back to individual cabins shortly after dinner.  I took a dip in the lake, returned to the main cabin for a video call with Amy, then went back to the lake – and then to bed – at around 11:00.

Karl didn’t feel much better today, so he and Diane hit the road for home this morning – a day or two earlier than planned.

Don and I putted around on the lake for an hour or so this morning – ostensibly so he could fish.  Everyone else has been on the dock all day.  As I mentioned, it is a gorgeous Ahmic day, with a nice breeze coming off the lake, spotty sunshine, and temps in the high 70s.

Perfection.

TWD

vacation 2012: part 5

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There were plans made yesterday to visit Echo rock.  I’ve never been there.  Have heard a lot about it, but have never actually seen it.  So I was sort of looking forward to it.

At the last minute, however, the rest of the clan made the decision to go to Huntsville and buy groceries.  Yay.
Not a lot of Curling Clubs in Atlanta…..
Actually, it wasn’t a bad trip.  For one thing, Diane let me drive her car – a new Subaru Outback.  Since the Outback is on my extremely short list of cars that I’m considering (to replace my aging and expensive Audi), I was really rather pleased to be able to drive one for an extended period and on a few different road types. It drove really well and remains at the top of my list.  On the highway – with the A/C at max – it cruised along at about 30 MPG, and it did a great job smoothing out the bumps when I took an alternate way home along the (dirt and gravel) Midlothian Road.  Had to brake hard twice when I got on the Nippissing Road – once for a quail (which was wholly unimpressed with the car’s horn) and again when the Thompson Road driveway suddenly appeared on my left before I was ready for it.
I’m a bit baffled why it doesn’t have a temperature gauge (it has, instead, a needle that swings wildly and is supposed to tell you how economically you’re driving); but other than that, it’s a nice car.  Now I just have to decide when I’m actually going to commit myself to 3-5 more years of car payments.
While in Huntsville, we ate at a river on the docks (I believe the restaurant is called “On the Docks”).  I had a burger, served to me by a young woman who looks exactly like the Olson twins.  
Upon our return to Camp Ulvik, we immediately hopped into quiet mode.  For me, that meant practicing the big horn for a couple of hours.  I read a number of different etudes from my Arban’s Cornet Method – nearly broke my fingers (and my chops) on variations of Yankee Doodle, Blue Bells of Scotland, and America.  Fun pieces all, though.  I might try to concentrate on one of more of them today.
Dinner last night was prepared by Diane and Don and consisted of flank steak, baked beans, and salad.  Great stuff.  
Nellie the amazing wonder puppy
The after-dinner gaming hour turned into an extended bullshit session – I played with the dog and listened to my iPod – until everyone agreed that bed sounded really good at around 10:30.  That being the case, I fell into the lake a few times, took some pictures of Indian Point (it’s really not getting dark here at all this year….at least not before midnight), splurged on a cell phone call to Amy, and finally drifted off to sleep listening to the water slapping against the boats downstairs.
What a great way to fall asleep.
TWD