Vacation Finale and Recap

Well, my annual vacation to wild, wonderful, Whitehouse Ohio is now but another memory.  I made it home safely and without incident, although we did get bounced around during our Baltimore approach.  It was probably just turbulence emanating from Washington DC.

Still, I can’t help but feel like I left with some work left undone.

You can see my leftover Myles Pizza box in there too, but that made the trip home with me.

I’ve never left that much beer behind.  We seriously overbought for the party and then barely put a dent on the leftover beer.  We kept one batch on ice for 3-4 days and I worked on it every night, but it seemed like it never got any emptier.  Between the leftover beer and the leftover BBQ, it was like staying at a theme park dedicated to the Seven Deadly Sins.

The Sloth and Gluttony were givens.  It there would have been an actual sloth in the garage, he’d be like, “Damn, dude, get going…”

For Wrath, Rik was still pretty pissed that all his bar-sluts never showed up for the party.  For Greed, we really didn’t need two Myles Pizzas, but I wanted to be sure I had plenty to bring home with me.  For Envy, I was certainly envious of my buddy’s neighbor that had the great house and hot wife.  For Lust, see “Envy.”

The only one I think we’re lacking is Pride.  When you’re this slothful and gluttonous, it’s hard to be very proud.  Sitting out there in the Dad Cave, surrounded by beer and meat, I can’t imagine I would seem like much of a ‘catch’ to any passing hotties.  I suppose I can settle for being proud of how much water I can displace, sitting in the tub.

Fortunately, there’s one benefit to growing older…

Our last ‘big’ event was Friday when John and I did a little fishing in the local quarry. 

Whitehouse Quarry

Back when I lived there, it used to be a great place to swim, but that’s forbidden now.  In fact, it had been all closed up for years.  Recently opened, I was sure that it would be packed with fish and that we would be out catching dinner.  But I was wrong.

The fish were out there, but apparently had held a meeting to discuss how best to annoy us.  In fact, I’m sure they held that meeting directly surrounding every piece of bait I threw out there.  I could see them in the clear water, encircling my drowning worm and discussing which one of them should take the tiniest peck at it and then disappear.

Little fuckers made me look like Carl Spackler in Caddyshack.

“License to kill bluegills, by the Government of the United Nations.  Man free to catch bluegills at will.”

For over 5 hours I sat out there on my perch, gazing into the blue water.  It really was a pretty cool spot.  I had a nice place up on the top of a 6-foot rock wall.

I was pretty sure that the only reason they kept pecking the worm was so that I’d have to replace it frequently, which meant I’d poke my finger with the hook about 7000 times.

Most of the perimeter was made up of rock-wall so you had to be on your toes, so to not accidentally tumble in.  The fact that you couldn't take any beer there, helped my odds of staying dry immensely. 

Well, dry from the quarry water, sure.  While the temperature was pretty comfy in the mid-80s, the sun beating down on my back was still troublesome.  Luckily, I had some sun block with me so I was able to protect my arms, legs and neck.  Unfortunately, I forgot about one spot.  I’d figured my ball cap would keep my melon from getting scorched and it pretty much did… except for that open half-moon space in the back, over the adjustable band.  If I still had the hair up there that I did when I was a teenager, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but alas, that’s a long way behind me.  So for the next couple days, I had a nice half-moon shaped sunburned patch on the back of my head.  Nice.

During our last hour, I finally got a fish on the line… a little rock bass.

Ernest Hemmingway, I ain’t.

John had caught two earlier, so I was glad to at least get on the board, but none of our prized catches were keepers.  We went home as empty-handed as we’d come.

So for about the 4^th or 5^th time, we went out to Shawn’s Irish Tavern for a meal.  (It had been a frequent stop for mid-day beers and lunches.)  Honestly, if the food weren’t so good (and cheap) we wouldn’t have kept going back.

After that, we stopped by the ‘other’ bar in town, Mad Anthony’s.  Unfortunately, it was karaoke night.  Did you feel that breeze Friday night?  That was the corpse of Elvis, spinning rapidly in his grave.

You know, when a karaoke business in set up in a place that houses very few people that can carry a tune, they really ought to have a special playlist of songs that don’t require actual singing.  Like “instrumentals” would be good… songs like “Green Onions” “Frankenstein” or “One Step Beyond.”  Or you could use “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” the Blues Brothers “Rubber Biscuit” or any song by Johnny Cash.

I told the bartender that she must have the best seat in the bar, because she gets to look at the faces of everyone there as they cringe during the painful parts.

One thing I saw in the Dad Cave sent me straight into a painful flashback:

My dad used to have one just like this when I was a small boy.  He’d cut the grass and my job would be to clip along the fence where the mower couldn’t quite reach.  I don’t think he really cared about the grass; he was actually trying to turn me into an 8-year old ringer at a Lumberjack Arm-Wrestling Contest.  Man, I hated that thing.  I’d be out there clipping and snipping until my arm fell off and my hand applied for asylum on someone else’s body. 

He probably just wanted to build some character.  And guess what?  I am one now.

So while I was happy to get back to my own comfy, queen-sized bed, I always hated leaving those tranquil evenings.  That far from a city, you can really see the stars and hear the quiet.  As we sat in the garage, it could be hours between cars driving by.  A guy enjoying a couple of beers out there can go pee on the lawn without any chance of being seen.

There’s nothing like simple country living.

Director's DVD Commentary: I wasn't sure I was even going to be able to do any posts while I was away; that's why I set up the reruns to post.  My concern was getting my new camera to work on my buddy's Mac, without having to install any software.  I usually just remove the memory card and stick it in the slot on my PC, but I knew his Mac didn't have that slot.

As it turned out, he'd just gotten a new printer, that DID have the memory card slot, so I was back in business.  But wait... the pictures were straight from my camera, so they'd be about 2 MB each.  I didn't want to load that much weight on my blog-use photo album (lest I run out of space) and among all his fancy Mac photo gizmos, I didn't see anything to reduce photo size.

But!  I figured out that I could load the shots I wanted to use from his Mac to my Flickr account, then reference the html code from the blog.  That way I could use all the pictures I wanted, without housing the large files.  I know that might be 'everyday' procedure for you, but it was new to me and I was happy that I figured it out.  

You may have even noticed that my traditional format was broken on those posts... the pictures and captions were all left-justified.  I always center them, like with this post.  Still, I was glad just to be able to bang out those updates for you in a timely manner.  Apologies for overloading your senses with 5 posts in 5 days.  I think that's a record for me.