Happy Belated Memorial Day

(Editor's Note: Thanks, Gene, for the hard drive data transfer hardware... it looks like the drive was Merlot-proof, even if I am not.)

The United States is divided into two groups (isn't it always?). One half celebrates Memorial Day weekend with parades and cookouts and maybe even a trip to the beach. The other group sees the long weekend as a chance to trade the usual day-to-day grind for 72 hours of straight up “toil” and jealously curses the ground upon which the first group walks. Primarily because we just got through mowing, aerating, and fertilizing it, and there they go tromping all over it with their horseshoes and their coolers full of sweet, sweet beer...

Oh. Did I say “we”? Hell, yeah, I did.

I got the yard mowed, the deck and both porches stripped and bleached, the hedges trimmed, and the shed stained and sealed. The mailbox post was reconditioned, as was the boy's sandbox. I put down fertilizer in some places, and Triazicide and non-specific plant killer where peaceful coexistence with the indigenous lifeforms was no longer an option. All in 95 degree heat. This might just be the sunstroke talking but qhulif pancake brushnog loffin kooj-a-riffic snorkalooz.

As Homer Simpson would say “My feet hurt. All this fresh air is making my hair move, and I don't know how much longer I can complain.”

Fine. It wasn't all weapons-grade suck.

I finished reading the Albert Brooks novel 2030 (more on that later), cooked out twice, played around with the Lego Digital Designer (free, cool), and went to the gym. I found out where the turtle in my yard lives (near the porch), where the rabbits in my yard are coming from (the woods behind my house near the tree stump), and learned that the Eyed Click Beetle prefers to fly directly into the side of a grill rather than around it. Heck, I even played in the sprinkler you see above for half an hour today, which is something that was frowned upon by my more conservative neighbors before I became a father.

It was a good weekend. So, even though I am literally falling asleep at the keyboard here the grumpy old man routine doesn't quite cut it...

What was that? Yeah, buddy, you can have your Frisbee back when you pry it out of my dehydrated, too-tired-to-resist fingers... heeeey... give that back...