Blogrilla

On Saturday I spent the morning getting ready for our cookout. Our first guests arrived at about 10:45am, which was good. I think I told people we were starting around 11am. They drove up from NJ and I think their kids were eager to stretch their legs. In total I think we had eight adults, eleven kids and five dogs. The last guest left around 8:45pm – so it was a long and very good day.

The kids all got along well and ranged in age from about six months to 11 years. The dogs chased each other all over the yard and we all sat around eating and drinking and talking. It was good catching up with everyone and I’m happy with how the event turned out. I would do it again. In fact, I think we’re planning on having another one in August for our local friends.

We were wiped out on Saturday evening so we left most of the cleaning for Sunday morning. After that I started getting ready for the Memorial Day parade. Ben had been selected to lead the parade by holding the parade-banner with another boy scout. Previously he was going to help me set up and dish out the “slush”. But when he got the offer to lead the parade he jumped at it, which was fine. My other helper, a cub scout mother had already bailed due to a family committment. Suddenly I was all alone! Which turned out to be fine. It wasn’t a problem. My job was to get the slush, set up a shelter/tent-thing, set up a table, set up a water cooler and serve the slush.

Gabriel got to walk in the parade and hold the banner for the cub scouts while Chloe walked with the Brownies and waved to all the on-lookers.

It turned out well. Everything worked out great. We had too much slush so we gave away the remainder to people who didn’t have any. All the other groups had provided just a “water-station”. we were the only ones to give away slush to our kids. And once our kids had finished their share we fed the rest of the marchers too. We had a really good time.

Then I think we rested for the remainder of the day. Whew!

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Flickr: pvt_idaho’s photos tagged with fishing

On Friday afternoon I came home from work early and brought about two-dozen of my wriggliest friends with me. Yes, I stopped at the bait shop on the way home and Grace thought a box of wriggly little wormy-friends was about the coolest thing ever. We went to Spot Pond in Stoneham and found it deserted. Perfect. As we arrived at our spot I saw what looked like a two-foot brown trout swimming by! I was thrilled! I thought this might be our lucky day!

It wasn’t.

That was the last full-sized fish we saw all day. None even deigned to nibble our meager bait. We got not even a nibble all day. Well, we were only there for an hour or so. But none of the fishes were interested in us. I don’t mean to point the finger here, but it might have had something to do with all the cackling coming from my colleague, Grace. She also managed to go through two bobbers. One she broke with her unique casting style (she slammed it on the rocks in front of her while she was getting used to casting) and the other one… well… it floated away.

I don’t know how. I tried to fish some too, but Grace needed some tending. She did, however manage to put several of her wormy-friends on the hooks. She was completely unphased by the gore of killing the worms and putting them on a hook.

In the end, a good time was had by all. Admittedly, less of a good time was had by our wormy-friends.

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