Welcome Summer and all of your radiant, sweat-inducing glory! This time last year we were busy furnishing/setting up one house while selling another. Now that we're all settled in and the list of projects a bit thinner, we had a chance to actually enjoy the outdoors properly this year.
Our porch babies were ready for the nice weather, as well.
In early June just before her birthday, Deb started going to physical therapy for a work-related injury. She'll be alright (it's her wrist/elbow), but it put the breaks on the dirt-shoveling and any kayaking in the near future. Her birthday fell in the middle of a week, so we went out to dinner to celebrate, then did whatever she wanted the following weekend. She decided on a trip to the Lehigh Valley Zoo on Friday afternoon.
Deb celebrates another 29th.
We're kind of regretting not getting 5 acres so we could have farm animals.
The weekend continued with a hike up the eastern bank of Lake Nockamixon. It had been over a year since we moved in, and we had yet to check out the paths on our side of the lake. The weather held out on our 12-mile round trip up to the Spillway and back. The series of horse trails running along the lake meander and crisscross, and the condition of the path varied from trail to trail. Challenging as it was, the privacy and solitude was appreciated and it felt good being outside, actually getting some exercise.
Intrepid hikers.
The weekend following we found ourselves at home, and something as simple as sitting out on the back step with a cup of coffee early on a Saturday morning turned into an all-day event. We lit up the fire pit and grabbed some hammock time. I worked through a portion of the back half of The Return of the King while drinking a few cold ones from the cooler. That night, we drug the TV out to the pit and started on a new season of OITNB on Netflix. The next morning, Deb and I took the 10 mile drive to the Frenchtown bridge for the first tubing trip of the year. There were only four of us this time around - Tracy and her friend Amethyst - and we had a relaxing 4.5 hour run. That same evening was Father's Day, and we took Umaro-Dad out to dinner at Country Place.
I'd really like to get one of those big projector screens, but this'll do for now.
As I drew closer and closer to the end of my third readthrough of the Lord of the Rings saga, and the regularity of my afternoons of reading in the hammock after work started picking up. Near the end of June, I had finished the story and was working my way into the appendices. I had never read them before, and having enjoyed how much they enriched Tolkien's world, I plan on making it my goal to read The Simarillion. I quickly transitioned over to another series I had been wanting to tackle - The Hunger Games - and finished all three books very quickly.
The weekend following our tubing trip was our annual trek up to Knoebels. Bryan and Jen reserved a campsite, so we joined them and Eea for a weekend of tenting and eating. It's difficult to acknowledge that had been the first time we had gone camping in almost a year, but our group's Markland attendance has been down and a Spring full of yardwork didn't leave us many opportunities. We're planning on an RV vacation later this season, and while not technically camping, it'll be close enough. Anyways, our visit to Knoebel's meant waking up early and getting breakfast in the park before opening, lots and lots of ice cream, and food. on. a. stick. I focused particularly on the stick-based diet this time around - fried cheese, corn dog, pork chop, etc.
Most things in life are better on a stick.
Deb always Janes out when she encounters inflatable things or bananas. Still a couple months until therapy begins.
Big men ride tiny flume log. Tiny flume log wins.
Between the weekends outside, the work weeks were particularly difficult over the past couple months. Deb with her injury and regular appointments, and I with a dry spell in casework. So we relished those weekends a little more than we normally would.
Seriously. Fridays were heaven-sent.
The end of the month also came with a re-org at work. Our group ended up trading one of our members for a couple new ones. I'm still doing CF work, but I'll be swinging back into unknown ID investigations like I did back in 2010. This explains why the company sprung for me to specialize on the SEM/EDX. During June I joined a team on a project focused on the handheld Raman spectrometers, and also had the opportunity to use the new UPLC on a counterfeit case. So I guess it wasn't all hand-sitting. But there was a lot of that, too.
Summer continued into the long 4th of July weekend, where we found ourselves at home this year. So naturally, we spent most of it out around the firepit and hammocks once again. I hung up a new birdhouse, then we went out and finally found a replacement for our old grill. That night, we threw some chicken on the new grill BBQ'd it up. The next morning we met with friends for brunch at the Red Cedar, then met Eea up in Kutztown to walk around the folk festival. We watched a sheep shearing demo, browsed through arts and crafts, drank sasparilla, and ate lots of PA German food. I picked up another wooden folding camp chair for around the firepit. After the festival, we took a driving tour around the campus of my old school. There is a lot of new student housing - much more than my old days in Spruce/Camp Crystal Cave. As for the Fourth itself, we stayed at home. On Sunday night we were treated to some natural fireworks thanks to a few hundred fireflies.
July was moving right along into its second weekend with a couple 3D print commissions and a few more of those damned haunted mansion stencils - I still need 30+ more until the bathroom wall is finished. I cracked open the latest Hackerbox and toyed with a programmable LED display, and I also took some time to transcribe programming notes into my notebook. That same weekend we hit the Delaware once again; this time there was 14 of us. Ice cream followed. Oh, and we played some Battlestar with Cliff and Jill - and would you believe it, humanity actually won a game. Poor Cliffy, he has the worst luck when he's a cylon.
The series returns.
The next weekend we drove up to the Mahoning drive-in to meet with friends and catch a retro double feature of Labyrinth and Legend. We didn't camp this time around. Maybe next time. The next day was Umaro-Dad's 74th (!!!) birthday, so once again we took him out to dinner. He wants to visit Ireland again, so I put some traveling money into his birthday card. Sounds like a nice plan, renting a car and hopping between bed and breakfasts on the Emerald Isle. I'm hoping he can pull that trip off. It would be good for him.
So, if you happened to have been trapped in a closet through the month of July, you might not have heard about this popular new cellphone game called 'Pokemon Go'. It's a GPS-enabled app that sends you all over the place, chasing (sometimes literally) virtual monsters that you exploit to claim landmarks for your team. It released amid a slew of terrible world news and nonstop acrimony from the presidential campaign, so naturally the nice little bit of escapism took the country by storm (and most of our friends with it). Having a little knowledge of Pokemon (it came 'after' my time), I was slow to take it up, but it had the bite of novelty that Geocaching did for me 10 years prior. It didn't take much to grab both myself as well as Deb - the game is an enabling excuse to get out of the house and go places, meet people, and aggressively stake your territory with cute creatures. So we dove in together. At first, we took a couple small walks after work along lake Galena, Nockamixon, and Doylestown, because the game is best played in towns and parks. Rural areas like Bedminster won't get you very far in-game. On a few occasions, we'd meet with friends to hang out and play the game. At night, we raid gyms and mark our territory. It's hilarious when you drive up on a car full of people from another team doing the same thing. As we found ourselves playing more often, we threw the bikes on the back of the truck and started taking rides at Peace Valley, stopping every now and again when we encountered a Pokemon. One afternoon, we rode completely around the lake. Last Sunday, we rode our bikes along the D&R canal near Frenchtown. On Tuesday, we climbed up a half-mile long hill just to check out some new scenery. Did I mention that the temperature has been 90+ degrees for the past couple weeks? Never have I gotten so much exercise out of a video game. It's remarkable. Go Team Potato! (Instinct)
All aboard the Incubator Express!
That about sums up June and July. The weather has been beautiful and we've been getting out to enjoy it. Our Pennhurst applications have been submitted and we have a -real- vacation coming up in the next month or two, so it's time to enjoy the second half Summer. See you in September/October!
Lake Galena, viewed from the dam.
Housing birds and feeding squirrlies.