Sunday, July 10, 2005

Sunday evening in the backyard

Right now I am sitting on my back yard deck, trying to be productive with some work on the laptop.

This might be the highpoint of my brief laptop ownership right now--sitting in the cool evening of early July, listening to the Robert Shaw Chamber Singers perform O Magnum Mysterium in conjunction with the birds.

It certainly is productive, but not in the original sense with which I ventured out here. Tegan was desperately trying to conquer a bad patch of millet grass that has sprung up in the little gravel box that the kid's sandbox is in. The girls were wandering about, playing with dolls and messing with stuff. So, I decided to be mobile and try to come up with some more geography GN ideas tonight. I worked on them earlier today, but I am not very proud of the ideas that I pounded out. Maybe Shirtless, Stretch, and I can refine them more adequately tomorrow.

So, as you can see, I sort of abandoned that pursuit to pursue a blog entry, encouraged by Robert Shaw and the birds.

So, you can see that it was productive in a spiritual sense, if not in a monetary sense.


What happened this weekend? Well, Friday night Tegan and I left the kids in babysitter's hands and went to eat celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary. The dinner was nice. Then we tried to think of something to do. There weren't any movies we were dying to see, so we tried to think of something new to do. We settled on miniature golf--a fun and very "datelike" experience. Unfortunately, we got stuck behind four slow players and we knew that we were going to get rained on. (We could see the clouds rolling towards us and lightning flashes.) We only made it through four holes before the rains began and we were forced to collect our raincheck. (But, its not so bad. T was kicking my butt. She aced the third hole and I quadrupled number four.)

We then tried to regroup. Bowling? No. Comedy club? Didn't have reservations (who knew?). So, we decided to rent some movies and head home. It wasn't exactly the perfect evening, but as Tegan pointed out, someone else fed, bathed, and bedded the kids. At this point in our family life, that can be enough. (Besides, we'll make up for it all next month in our week long trip to San Francisco. That's the REAL anniversary gift.)

Saturday we went to the local music and arts festival. VG, EH, Flipper, and Spec were there to hear Tim Easton. Me and the family didn't stay long enough for that (Ruth was groggily signaling naptime) but we did spend a few hours outside and experienced some community with others.

Today, we went to the pool in the late afternoon for about an hour or so. Ariel made her strongest strides towards swimming yet. She actually started coordinating the arms, legs, floating, and breath-holding into a unified purpose. Best of all, she had some fun doing it and genuinely responded to the success and the positive praise. So, that was an excellent development.

The grass got cut, and some preparations were made (in my head at least) for the big farewell party for Spec that is coming up next Saturday. It should be a fun, if slightly sad affair. Well, we'll be sad to see him go, but hopefully the party itself won't be sad (i.e. lame). Course, when was the last time I threw a lame party?

(Don't answer that . . .)

[11:30 pm]

Go read my Omnimedia post on the movies we rented, if you haven't already been there.

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