Vacation Edition
11/09/22 08:28
Good morning, world! We made it! We’re here in Lake George, New York. Thanks to all the hard work by the missus, we got er done. And all of that talk about needing an extra something on top of the car just to bring the necessary bedding was, at the end of the day, unnecessary. The Ev man carried most of it from the house, and I packed the car one thing at a time. I even ended up with a clear view out of the car, so I could keep an eye on the bicycles. That’s how you do it.
The Ev man needs and deserves a vacation as well. No? You bet your ass he does. Imagine not being able to get away from your place every so often. I wouldn’t like it, and neither would you. We all need that change of scenery to refresh this or that in the space between our ears. As soon as we arrived at the place on the lake, we all went for a swim. Staying at a place on the lake means walking out your front door and walking into the lake. Staying at a place on Sandy Bay means you have sand underfoot and between your toes for as far as the eye can see.
Is there a better time of the year to be here in the Adirondacks? You can “see” the leaves changing color even though that’s a few weeks away yet. Nighttime temperatures can tip into the forties, so you’ll need that extra blanket. Did I mention that there are no blankets in this place? How do you offer a rental without blankets? I can understand not offering sheets and towels, but blankets? This rental just happens to be a converted restaurant that we used to frequent as a family when I was just a child. We were just a boat ride and a bay away if we needed a pizza in a pinch.
The Ev man and I were initially concerned that there was no WI-FI in the place. We had my brother from another mother open the place up due to our anticipated late arrival, and he texted us something to the effect that he didn’t think we had any WI-FI. The Ev man nailed it down when he discovered the router in his bedroom. I think this place even has air conditioning, although we’ll likely not need it during our stay, knowing what we know about the forecast. If I had to guess, I’d say that we’ll go swimming more often than not if we have any issues with the heat.
I’m a bit of a news junkie, so I would not have been happy had there been no WI-FI on the premises. I think I speak for the Ev man as well when I say that we would have had to adjust this or that to get our WI-FI fix. If that means spending two hours a day at the local Starbucks, then that is what you do. Starbucks isn’t exactly local, so that should tell you something about the depth of our collective addictions when it comes to the internet. To put it more plainly, we would have crawled over broken glass just to get two bars on our handheld devices. Oh, and cellular data seems to be non-existent here. Just total fuckery.
The floors are very uneven in this place. I was a little worried that when going to bed that the missus and I would be rolling over on each other, given the tilt in the flooring. As I said, this place has been around for a few years. Thankfully, the bed was nice and firm, and we had no such problem. I also don’t know what size that bed is, but it seems to be short of a queen by a bit, both lengthwise and widthwise. I couldn’t turn over during the night without getting up in the missus’s grille. She was fast asleep, so she would have been none the wiser, but, to me, it seemed a bit constraining. She had the luxury of using every last square inch of the real estate while I had to worry about being squeezed off the side of the bed. You have to be awake to worry, so there’s that.
It’s 7:38 am here on Sandy Bay, and the missus informs me that there are already two boats moored out on the bay. It’s Sunday morning of a three-day Labor Day weekend, so maybe that shouldn’t surprise us. It also tells us something about the level of insanity that we can expect as the day gets underway. I don’t know precisely how many buoys there are out there on Sandy Bay, but I’m guessing that most, if not all, will be taken by the time the noon hour comes around. The hotter it gets today, the sooner the buoys will be taken. You grab them while you can because this location is heaven on earth for boaters and, yes, especially people who like to get sand between their toes when they go in the water.
I’d hoped to have something for breakfast for the fam, but I think I’ve fallen flat where that is concerned. We stopped at Stewarts before we arrived here at the camp as we always do for the customary gallon of milk and a dozen eggs, but I couldn’t bring myself to pay $8 a pound for what appeared to be less than a pound of bacon. I don’t know if it will be any cheaper when we go to the supermarket but here’s hoping. I suppose I could make Ev an egg sandwich with the eggs we bought and some nice sourdough bread that we brought from home. It’s the best we have to offer for now. We also have some oatmeal and some cereal, but that about does it.
For maybe the first time ever here at the lake, we don’t have a boat to use. We’ve come to Sandy Bay over the years by boat, but this year, we’re renting a place right on the bay so there really is no need for a boat. Well, no need for a boat to come here anyway. Do we love to cruise the lake when we do have a boat? Of course, we do. We’ll look at boat rentals in a couple of days when the summer crowds have gone back to wherever they came from. The lake will be less crowded, and, if the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise, rental prices will be off-peak season if that even exists. That’s a whole lot of wishful thinking on my part. But, the fam is worth it, so I’ll pay the piper if and when the time comes.
I have a good mind to put the prices of everything I’m talking about down on paper just so I can look back sometime in the future and see how crazy things were way back when. It’s not just the price of bacon. It’s the price of the rental we’re staying at. It’s the price of the boat we’re wanting to rent. It’s the price of a gallon of gasoline we’ll need to buy if we want to go boating. It’s the price of gas that we need to put in the car to go from point A to point B. If we had plans to go fishing, which we don’t, I’d be telling you about the price we paid for a dozen night crawlers. I’m a little embarrassed to talk about any of it because it all seems so outrageous.
I watched Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania last night on my iPad. He was in a kick-ass mood, and he was in town to boost the prospects of both Dr. Oz and Doug Mastriano. They are running for Pennsylvania’s Senate and Governor’s seat, respectively. There had to be ten to fifteen thousand people in the auditorium. Compare that to a measly 250-300 people that were in attendance at Biden’s “rally” earlier in the week. It was a raucous crowd, and they loved every minute of what Trump was serving up. As Trump always puts it, “is there any better place to be than a Trump rally?” He still looks and sounds like a candidate who’s running in 2024, so, for anyone still on the sidelines, it’s all hands on deck. Oh, and Trump still maintains that he won the 2020 election. He’ll get no argument from me.
Debbie Rah-Rah is on her way. Did I mention that she and her main squeeze, Wille, planned to pay us a visit today? It’s always good to see Deb and Willie, so we’ll roll out the welcome carpet. We don’t have a lot to offer them in the way of refreshments since we’ve not been to the store, so we’ll have to make it up as we go along. Deb is a huge fan of Sandy Bay, so once she goes into the lake, we might not see her for a while. You can walk across the end of the bay here at the shoreline, and you’d still only be waist-deep in the water. That’s neither here nor there, but I thought I might just mention it. I’m not sure about Wille and water, but he’s free to follow his inner Wille whenever and wherever that takes him.
I can already feel myself getting a little long-winded when it comes to writing in my journal. Vacations tend to do that to me. I just go on and on for no particular reason, and there’s no end to the gibberish I write about. I made Evan a nice egg sandwich when he got up, so I’m happy he was receptive to having me make it. That isn’t always the case. As it is, there aren’t a lot of choices without going out to a store, so it is what it is. Would he have preferred a little ketchup with his eggs? No doubt. Would he have liked a sausage or two with his eggs? You betcha. Would he have liked his egg sandwich with cheese? Unquestionably. Maybe a little melted cheddar on his sourdough toast and eggs? My God, yes. This is only day one of seven. Strap in.
Happy Labor Day, fam! What the hell was I thinking? I didn’t even bring a bloody pair of socks to this place? I have a sweater on because it’s a rainy and cold early September morning here on the shores of the lake. It was stormy as hell last night when we went to bed. Is there anything cozier on God’s good earth than hitting the sack when the world is turning upside down out of doors? The wind was howling, the waves were lashing our bay-facing windows, and the dock lights up and down the shore were fuzzy and ill-defined as we faded off to sleep under an ever-worsening storm. It wasn’t a three-dog night, but it was close.
This is in contrast to yesterday, which was beautiful. It was sunny and warm, and there was a nice cool breeze coming down the bay out of the north. Everybody who wanted to swim went swimming, and my brother from another mother was good enough to stop by with lunch for everybody. I called in the order to Beans, and it was all good. To keep things simple, I ordered the same sandwich for Willie, the Ev man, and me. The missus had a nice garden salad, Debbie Rah-Rah had a nice Italian sandwich, and Rollie had what I think was an Italian sub of sorts. Rollie also brought a nice berry pie from the Cleverdale Country store, which was more than decent of him.
The lot of us sat lakeside for the better part of the day and enjoyed watching the activities taking place out on the bay. It’s really the last weekend to enjoy the lake since it just gets cooler and less hospitable as we get further into the month of September. The leaves haven’t started to change yet, but it won’t be long now. The lot of us debated whether it would rain or not, and it became less and less of a debate as the day went on since you could see the rain coming over the mountains some ten miles or so to the north. Those of us who didn’t want the rain saw one trajectory, and those following the local forecast knew all too well what we had in store for us saw an entirely different trajectory. The die, as they say, was cast.
It was good to see everyone enjoying themselves. The Ev man went swimming once or twice, as did Debbie Rah-Rah and the missus. Every buoy in the bay was taken by noon, and boats drifted in and out of the bay into the early afternoon looking for a buoy to tie up to, but pickings were slim to none. There is no better place to bring your fam on the entire lake than Sandy Bay. You need a boat to get here unless you’re fortunate enough to live in a house along the shore. Oh, I almost forgot. Then there are renters like us who come and go throughout the summer months looking for our own slice of the pie. We’re here three days now, and we still haven’t been food shopping.
I’m a little distracted now since the electricity has gone off, and we’re all sitting around wondering how long it will be before we get our electricity back. I don’t know how long I can stay focused on doing what I’m doing at this keyboard while the family frets over this, that, and the other thing. We can’t open the refrigerator door since we don’t know how long we’ll be without electricity. If we can’t open the refrigerator door, we can’t get any of our leftover pizza if that is what we wanted to have for breakfast.
The weekend is over. Yesterday was a complete washout. It rained all day, and as I woke up this morning, it’s still raining. So what is what I say? I mean, who cares? It’s not like we had planned to go hiking or anything. We can still go swimming if we want. Yes, you can go swimming in the rain. If I had to guess, I’d say temperatures are probably in the sixties, so that doesn’t bode well for water sports. I asked the missus if she had any plans to go to the museum while we were in town, and she said that she did not. I take from that that there are no exhibits on tap that she’s interested in seeing. That’s fine. We’ll do something else.
One good thing about this rental is that there are tables for everyone. We usually have to fight for table space, given that the missus needs room to do her vacation puzzle. The Ev man and I refer to the table that she’s using as the kid’s table, given its size. I think that the table is used precisely for the kids. You know, give them their own space and let them have at it, whatever that is. If they want to make a mess of whatever, they can do that too. Pipe down, you little bastards. I can hear my father now as I sit here writing in this here journal. Those aren’t his words, just so you know, but the sentiment is close to being on target. He’s been gone since 1995. RIP pops.
I’m always mindful when cooking something for the fam that I balance carbs with protein. That is especially true when it comes to cooking for the Ev man. That means making a nice meat sauce to go with spaghetti sauce. That means adding a rash of bacon to any BLT and not that turkey substitute stuff, although turkey is protein as well. I made a nice spaghetti dinner last night for the fam. I was a little surprised when the missus said that she wasn’t going to have any, so I think I shamed her into having a forkful or two just to appease me. She didn’t have the meat sauce, which meant more meat sauce for the Ev man and me. There is a God.
I bought the kind of Parmesan cheese that the Ev man likes so that he could have more than his share of wood shavings if that is what he wanted to do. Ever since they came out with the studies showing that Parmesan cheese had fillers like wood shavings, we’ve usually tried to avoid the cheaper brands to stay away from the shavings. Not the Ev man, though. He doubled down. The more shavings, the better. That has been his mindset. I’m not sure where that comes from, but it is what it is. I do worry that he goes through the Parmesan cheese a little too fast, though, which means that he gets more than the average bear when it comes to the shavings. Maybe I’ll call him Woody, or Woodrow from now on. I think that won’t be lost on him.
It’s the Ev man’s vacation too. Right? It’s his time away from however he refers to his existence. It’s a nice break from this or that. Maybe it just means that it’s a change of scenery. I noticed that the empty bottles and cans were piling up on the table next to his bed here at the rental, and I had a good mind to sweep the lot of it into an empty trash bin. But, I thought to myself, if this is what he wants, if this is what he prefers, then who the hell am I to suggest that he do anything any differently? Sometimes, you need to stop being a dad and just let the children do what the children want to do. If that means letting them sit at the children’s table while throwing spaghetti at each other, then fuck it, that’s what you do. Did I mention the clothes on the floor in his bedroom? Do we need to go there? We do not.
I was telling the fam that we should have stopped to buy more milk and maybe a couple of tomatoes when we were out food shopping yesterday. I wanted to buy milk from the store down the road here and not at the supermarket where we were making other purchases. We bought ice at the supermarket, so there was some urgency in getting back to the rental as quickly as possible. I also didn’t want tomatoes from the supermarket, so thought we might want to stop at a local roadside stand. Despite passing a rather robust-looking farmers market roadside thingy, the missus insisted that just keep going. But, ma, they have watermelons there! I don’t call her “ma,” just so you know, but you get my drift. She wasn’t buying any of it. I don’t want to tell you how much we spent at the supermarket. That was without buying milk and watermelon!
We all went down to the Cleverdale store yesterday morning for breakfast sandwiches. It was the first of two rainy days on our vacation, and, needless to say, we weren’t the only people at the store. I don’t know that we were expecting to order sandwiches, but that is what we ended up doing, so it was all good. Ev loved his Mexican burrito breakfast, and the missus and I had bagel sandwiches which we found to be a bit too bready, if that’s a word. Ev was wanting to return the next morning for another nice breakfast, but the place had weird hours, so was closed for the next two days.
It looks like we’re going to pass on renting a boat. It was all about the Ev man for me, so when he said that he was fine with not renting a boat, then I was okay with it as well. The logistics of renting a boat on this lake, not to mention the expense, are enough to have you rethinking any plans you might have made in the days and weeks leading up to our time here at the lake. Can you imagine the noobs running through their doors wanting to rent a boat when they don’t know the first thing about using a boat? I think the agencies hereabouts are trying to implement some kind of licensing for boaters, so we’ll see how that works out. Here’s hoping that it saves a life or two.
I’ve only seen one of my peeps now that we’re here at the lake for some three-plus days. I’ll need to reach out and see if any of them want to come up for a swim or maybe just hang out for a bit. My brother from another mother was good enough to o spring for lunch for the lot of us the other day, so I’ll want to return that favor one way or another. I’m happy to report that we might get to see a little bit of sun today after two straight days of rain, so that should lift our spirits. We’re on the shores of Lake George, the queen of American lakes, for chrissakes. We owe it to ourselves to get our rear ends into the lake and let Mother Nature decide where we go from there.
Wait one fucking minute! I thought that the judge overseeing the Trump case where the DOJ raided Mar-a-Lago told them that one of the reasons that she was appointing a Special Master was because she couldn’t trust the DOJ when it came to leaking documents and such to the media. Well, as Ronald Reagan used to say, “there they go again.” And the compliant media just goes along with the charade when they amplify the story, again and again, ad nauseam. Now they have him. Now they have what they need not only to indict Trump but to lock him up. The DOJ has now leaked documents to the Washington Post showing that Trump had top-secret information concerning the nuclear capability on some yet-to-be-identified country. As Jeff Kushner puts it, it’s Russia-gate 2.0. It’s laughable, is what it is.
We have a water dispenser here at this rental that we’re kind of liking. You know what I’m talking about. Right? It’s one of those 20-gallon jugs that sits atop a base that both heats and cools the water. We’ve emptied one already, and we set about trying to get a replacement with some success. Not because our rental agent was very helpful in getting that to happen, but because she wasn’t. This fellow who seems to be involved with the maintenance of the joint one way or another was around the other day, and he was good enough to drop off two replacement jugs for us. Sometimes, you just need to know whom to ask. The rental agent, as a matter of fact, told us that we were on our own when it came to getting a water refill. Bollocks!
Did I mention that I made the Ev man sloppy Joe’s last night for dinner? He bought a can of Manwich the other day when we went food shopping. It’s one of those deals where you cook the hamburger separately, and then you throw in the Manwich sauce before mixing it all together. It’s not my cup of tea, but the Ev man seemed to like it, so that’s all that matters. I made enough so he can have seconds and maybe even thirds over the course of the next day or two. Oh, and I scooped it onto a couple of nice hamburger buns that Ev picked up. The missus settled for an ear of corn, and I didn’t have anything for whatever reason. I take that back. I had a lemon poppyseed muffin. Who’s your daddy?
Anyway, the Ev man said something about getting one of these water dispenser things in his apartment. He seems to think that he has just the spot for it, so this might be something we want to give a little more thought to. Can we buy these jugs and replace them ourselves, or does he need to contract with a supplier in order to get the water up to his apartment? Is it something that he likes now but might tire of as time goes on? The water in his town is shite, so this might be one way around that problem. I used to cart up gallon jugs of spring water which kept him for a while, but he stopped asking for those deliveries, and I didn’t push back. I’m not happy knowing what I know about what he’s drinking when it comes to the water coming through his tap. I think it’s something that we can and should remedy. Food for thought.
It’s been a wicked year thus far for people looking to make a few shekels in the stock market. I was sure that the Biden Administration was going to cook the books so that Americans going to the polls in November to vote in the Mid Term elections would look favorably on the party in power in Washington (Democrats) that was wholly or partially responsible for making it all happen. But returns for those Americans in the stock markets have been abysmal. The NASDAQ is down some 27% YTD, and the S&P is down some 17% YTD. If the democrats lose a lot of seats in Congress because of their constituent’s leaky or sinking 401k’s, then maybe that’s a good thing. Then again, maybe there will be a run-up in the markets between now and November. We’ve seen a good bear market rally here and there, so hope springs eternal, as they say. I’ll take the losses if it means we conservatives take back the House and the Senate. FJB
It’s Friday, the last full day of our vacation here in Sandy Bay. We’ve had a good mix of weather, and it looks like we’re going to end the week on a high note. The missus and the Ev man have had their time swimming, so that’s good. I could care less about swimming, so I’m good as well. The Bay has been predictably quiet in this week after Labor Day, and whatever passed for raucous up until now has since gone elsewhere for better or worse. We’re not that insulated that we didn’t hear about the passing of Queen Elizabeth, but, for all intents and purposes, it was in one ear and out the other. Her stooge of a son is taking over as king, so there’s that. I’m all for dismantling the monarchy and turning over the castles to the people, just so you know where I’m coming from.
Man, you can’t go anywhere hereabouts without seeing deer. We came so close to one last night on our way into town that the Ev man referred to it as a “National Geographic” moment. It was just standing on the side of the road doing whatever the hell deer do. I drove slowly, thinking that it might at any moment dart out into the road ahead of me or, worse yet, leap over the hood of my car, giving us all a fright. It never budged from its spot and what that told me is that they’ve become totally habituated to living within city limits as it were, and they are here to fucking stay. Deer hunting is probably not possible, given the laws that say you cannot discharge a weapon within city limits. Well, within proximity to local housing anyway.
We never did rent a boat. I think I lost my desire to do that as days came and went here at the cottage. If the week hadn’t started out as rainy as it did, I might have been able to sustain whatever it was that had me on track to rent a boat. I thought it might be good for the Ev man to get behind the wheel, but the logistics of putting him behind the wheel was too much for even me to overcome. I made the mistake of not planning other things in the event that the boating thing didn’t work out. That left me feeling a bit flat-footed, and the ripple effects of that failure played out in a rather predictable fashion over the last couple of days. I was nearly bedridden and uninterested in anything and everything requiring my involvement. I was down for the count, as they say. Thankfully, I was not on anyone’s dance card, so the Ev man and the missus got along just fine without me.
There is always this thing about who I am reaching out to while staying here at the lake for the week. I’m talking about my extended family, just to be clear. There are some vacations where I just want to do my own thing, and the family be damned. Who says that I need to reach out to anyone? Is that too anti-social of me? And, am I so self-centered that I think people are even interested in coming around to see me and my fam? I assume nothing, of course. That said, I think I feel a little bad about not reaching out because I think it sends the wrong message. Sometimes, I could give two fucks about sending the wrong message. The backdrop to all of this is that I’m close to my brothers and sisters, so my wanting to do my own thing would seem fairly counter-intuitive. If any of this sounds confusing, it is because it is.
I should get around to making the BLTs that I promised the fam that I would make. I’ll have to do it today since we’ll not have time to do it tomorrow. We need to be out of this joint by 10 tomorrow morning. That is god-awful early by anyone’s standards. We still have a couple of peaches sitting here on the dining room table, so I’m hoping the Ev man will eat them before we leave tomorrow. I even bought some turkey bacon for the missus since she’s not a consumer of red meat. The missus asked me if I was interested in returning to this spot in the future. I think I responded with a “maybe.” For all I know, the prices of rentals on the lake here might well price us out of future vacations. It’s sad to think that, but it’s true. I just cannot in good conscience pay half a year’s wages just to vacation here. It’s nice, but it’s not that nice.
We tried to drive into the village of Lake George last night, but we got jammed up in the road leading into town. I should have known. There is this muscle car convention or something every year post-Labor Day that creates a mess on the roads and makes it difficult to get from point A to point B, especially if your travel plans have you going into the Village of lake George. We exited stage left, and in doing so, it gave the Ev man a fright. All he saw was the “Do not enter” signage. He thought I was going off the reservation by bucking local laws and going up a one-way street the wrong way. He quickly realized that I knew what I was doing and that I was not, in fact, going up a one-way street the wrong way. It was clear sailing from there, although we were heading out of town and away from what appeared to be hellacious night on the town if you were a muscle car lover.
If I thought I could have gotten the Ev man out of the car to take a walk around the village streets where we could get a closer look at some of the cars, I would have tried harder to do just that. Not because he has no interest in seeing the cars, I would hasten to add, but rather because he’s not inclined to do that sort of thing. Getting out and walking about, I mean. Generally speaking, he’s more inclined to take in the world from the comfort of wherever he’s sitting in the car than to be about and about. He’s just not that guy who’s out there grabbing the world by the balls while his peers are sitting on the sidelines. It’s just the opposite. We push him here and there around the edges, but, limitations being what they are, we defer to his judgment.
The New Hampshire primary is this coming Tuesday. I’ll be casting my votes for the two MAGA candidates, General Bolduc and Karoline Leavitt. Our RINO governor, Sununu, has already endorsed the Morse guy to run against Maggie Hassan in November. The Morse guy strikes me as a dweeb and an establishment guy, so, in my humble opinion, that is not what we need in Congress. We need a couple of damn fighters. We need more Marjorie Taylor Greens and fewer fucking Hassans. And, for God’s sake, we need to get rid of that damn flake, Chris Pappas. Both Hassan and Pappas have been kissing Biden’s ass since they got into office. We need to run those fucks out of office on a rail. If we can stop the democrats from stealing our election in November, my guys might have a chance.
I don’t know that the Ev man is doing all that well. I think he’s a bit distressed that vacation is over, and we’re heading on home today. I tried to get him to take a shower, but he’s not wanting any part of taking a shower. I told him that he’ll feel better, but that went nowhere. He just digs his heels in deeper. I wish he would listen to his old man. I have his best interests at heart, but he may not see it that way. He asked that I make him eggs and bacon for breakfast, so I’ll add that to my list of things to do this morning. That request came in yesterday afternoon. We’ll see how it holds up this morning.
I took my first shower of the week last night after being here for 6 days. When you’re swimming every other day in one of the cleanest lakes in the world, you can take certain breaks along the way, even when it includes things like showering. I was telling the missus yesterday that I didn’t think that the Ev man was all that keen on going over to my brother from another mother’s house when I suggested that we drop by there to return his fishing equipment. He went along anyway but hunkered down in the back seat of the car and hoped, and I was reading between the lines as I always do when it comes to the Ev man, that he wouldn’t have to get out of his seat once we arrived at the house. As fortune would have it, we saw no one around, so left the poles and such in the garage and went on our way.
Our vacation is over now, so I’ll need to put this journal stuff away and help the missus get our stuff squared away. The missus expressed a desire to return to this spot, so that is what we’ll probably do next year around this time. I don’t have a good reason one way or another to push back on her preferences, so sometimes you just go along to get along. The attraction is, and will always be, the beautiful bay just outside our windows here on the lake. The missus tells me that the boats have already begun to arrive for the day, and, not surprisingly, they come in early and leave late. If we had a boat and no house on the lake to go to, we might well consider joining the lot of them. As it is, we have neither, so we’re leaving them all to their own devices. As you were, mateys.
The Ev man needs and deserves a vacation as well. No? You bet your ass he does. Imagine not being able to get away from your place every so often. I wouldn’t like it, and neither would you. We all need that change of scenery to refresh this or that in the space between our ears. As soon as we arrived at the place on the lake, we all went for a swim. Staying at a place on the lake means walking out your front door and walking into the lake. Staying at a place on Sandy Bay means you have sand underfoot and between your toes for as far as the eye can see.
Is there a better time of the year to be here in the Adirondacks? You can “see” the leaves changing color even though that’s a few weeks away yet. Nighttime temperatures can tip into the forties, so you’ll need that extra blanket. Did I mention that there are no blankets in this place? How do you offer a rental without blankets? I can understand not offering sheets and towels, but blankets? This rental just happens to be a converted restaurant that we used to frequent as a family when I was just a child. We were just a boat ride and a bay away if we needed a pizza in a pinch.
The Ev man and I were initially concerned that there was no WI-FI in the place. We had my brother from another mother open the place up due to our anticipated late arrival, and he texted us something to the effect that he didn’t think we had any WI-FI. The Ev man nailed it down when he discovered the router in his bedroom. I think this place even has air conditioning, although we’ll likely not need it during our stay, knowing what we know about the forecast. If I had to guess, I’d say that we’ll go swimming more often than not if we have any issues with the heat.
I’m a bit of a news junkie, so I would not have been happy had there been no WI-FI on the premises. I think I speak for the Ev man as well when I say that we would have had to adjust this or that to get our WI-FI fix. If that means spending two hours a day at the local Starbucks, then that is what you do. Starbucks isn’t exactly local, so that should tell you something about the depth of our collective addictions when it comes to the internet. To put it more plainly, we would have crawled over broken glass just to get two bars on our handheld devices. Oh, and cellular data seems to be non-existent here. Just total fuckery.
The floors are very uneven in this place. I was a little worried that when going to bed that the missus and I would be rolling over on each other, given the tilt in the flooring. As I said, this place has been around for a few years. Thankfully, the bed was nice and firm, and we had no such problem. I also don’t know what size that bed is, but it seems to be short of a queen by a bit, both lengthwise and widthwise. I couldn’t turn over during the night without getting up in the missus’s grille. She was fast asleep, so she would have been none the wiser, but, to me, it seemed a bit constraining. She had the luxury of using every last square inch of the real estate while I had to worry about being squeezed off the side of the bed. You have to be awake to worry, so there’s that.
It’s 7:38 am here on Sandy Bay, and the missus informs me that there are already two boats moored out on the bay. It’s Sunday morning of a three-day Labor Day weekend, so maybe that shouldn’t surprise us. It also tells us something about the level of insanity that we can expect as the day gets underway. I don’t know precisely how many buoys there are out there on Sandy Bay, but I’m guessing that most, if not all, will be taken by the time the noon hour comes around. The hotter it gets today, the sooner the buoys will be taken. You grab them while you can because this location is heaven on earth for boaters and, yes, especially people who like to get sand between their toes when they go in the water.
I’d hoped to have something for breakfast for the fam, but I think I’ve fallen flat where that is concerned. We stopped at Stewarts before we arrived here at the camp as we always do for the customary gallon of milk and a dozen eggs, but I couldn’t bring myself to pay $8 a pound for what appeared to be less than a pound of bacon. I don’t know if it will be any cheaper when we go to the supermarket but here’s hoping. I suppose I could make Ev an egg sandwich with the eggs we bought and some nice sourdough bread that we brought from home. It’s the best we have to offer for now. We also have some oatmeal and some cereal, but that about does it.
For maybe the first time ever here at the lake, we don’t have a boat to use. We’ve come to Sandy Bay over the years by boat, but this year, we’re renting a place right on the bay so there really is no need for a boat. Well, no need for a boat to come here anyway. Do we love to cruise the lake when we do have a boat? Of course, we do. We’ll look at boat rentals in a couple of days when the summer crowds have gone back to wherever they came from. The lake will be less crowded, and, if the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise, rental prices will be off-peak season if that even exists. That’s a whole lot of wishful thinking on my part. But, the fam is worth it, so I’ll pay the piper if and when the time comes.
I have a good mind to put the prices of everything I’m talking about down on paper just so I can look back sometime in the future and see how crazy things were way back when. It’s not just the price of bacon. It’s the price of the rental we’re staying at. It’s the price of the boat we’re wanting to rent. It’s the price of a gallon of gasoline we’ll need to buy if we want to go boating. It’s the price of gas that we need to put in the car to go from point A to point B. If we had plans to go fishing, which we don’t, I’d be telling you about the price we paid for a dozen night crawlers. I’m a little embarrassed to talk about any of it because it all seems so outrageous.
I watched Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania last night on my iPad. He was in a kick-ass mood, and he was in town to boost the prospects of both Dr. Oz and Doug Mastriano. They are running for Pennsylvania’s Senate and Governor’s seat, respectively. There had to be ten to fifteen thousand people in the auditorium. Compare that to a measly 250-300 people that were in attendance at Biden’s “rally” earlier in the week. It was a raucous crowd, and they loved every minute of what Trump was serving up. As Trump always puts it, “is there any better place to be than a Trump rally?” He still looks and sounds like a candidate who’s running in 2024, so, for anyone still on the sidelines, it’s all hands on deck. Oh, and Trump still maintains that he won the 2020 election. He’ll get no argument from me.
Debbie Rah-Rah is on her way. Did I mention that she and her main squeeze, Wille, planned to pay us a visit today? It’s always good to see Deb and Willie, so we’ll roll out the welcome carpet. We don’t have a lot to offer them in the way of refreshments since we’ve not been to the store, so we’ll have to make it up as we go along. Deb is a huge fan of Sandy Bay, so once she goes into the lake, we might not see her for a while. You can walk across the end of the bay here at the shoreline, and you’d still only be waist-deep in the water. That’s neither here nor there, but I thought I might just mention it. I’m not sure about Wille and water, but he’s free to follow his inner Wille whenever and wherever that takes him.
I can already feel myself getting a little long-winded when it comes to writing in my journal. Vacations tend to do that to me. I just go on and on for no particular reason, and there’s no end to the gibberish I write about. I made Evan a nice egg sandwich when he got up, so I’m happy he was receptive to having me make it. That isn’t always the case. As it is, there aren’t a lot of choices without going out to a store, so it is what it is. Would he have preferred a little ketchup with his eggs? No doubt. Would he have liked a sausage or two with his eggs? You betcha. Would he have liked his egg sandwich with cheese? Unquestionably. Maybe a little melted cheddar on his sourdough toast and eggs? My God, yes. This is only day one of seven. Strap in.
Happy Labor Day, fam! What the hell was I thinking? I didn’t even bring a bloody pair of socks to this place? I have a sweater on because it’s a rainy and cold early September morning here on the shores of the lake. It was stormy as hell last night when we went to bed. Is there anything cozier on God’s good earth than hitting the sack when the world is turning upside down out of doors? The wind was howling, the waves were lashing our bay-facing windows, and the dock lights up and down the shore were fuzzy and ill-defined as we faded off to sleep under an ever-worsening storm. It wasn’t a three-dog night, but it was close.
This is in contrast to yesterday, which was beautiful. It was sunny and warm, and there was a nice cool breeze coming down the bay out of the north. Everybody who wanted to swim went swimming, and my brother from another mother was good enough to stop by with lunch for everybody. I called in the order to Beans, and it was all good. To keep things simple, I ordered the same sandwich for Willie, the Ev man, and me. The missus had a nice garden salad, Debbie Rah-Rah had a nice Italian sandwich, and Rollie had what I think was an Italian sub of sorts. Rollie also brought a nice berry pie from the Cleverdale Country store, which was more than decent of him.
The lot of us sat lakeside for the better part of the day and enjoyed watching the activities taking place out on the bay. It’s really the last weekend to enjoy the lake since it just gets cooler and less hospitable as we get further into the month of September. The leaves haven’t started to change yet, but it won’t be long now. The lot of us debated whether it would rain or not, and it became less and less of a debate as the day went on since you could see the rain coming over the mountains some ten miles or so to the north. Those of us who didn’t want the rain saw one trajectory, and those following the local forecast knew all too well what we had in store for us saw an entirely different trajectory. The die, as they say, was cast.
It was good to see everyone enjoying themselves. The Ev man went swimming once or twice, as did Debbie Rah-Rah and the missus. Every buoy in the bay was taken by noon, and boats drifted in and out of the bay into the early afternoon looking for a buoy to tie up to, but pickings were slim to none. There is no better place to bring your fam on the entire lake than Sandy Bay. You need a boat to get here unless you’re fortunate enough to live in a house along the shore. Oh, I almost forgot. Then there are renters like us who come and go throughout the summer months looking for our own slice of the pie. We’re here three days now, and we still haven’t been food shopping.
I’m a little distracted now since the electricity has gone off, and we’re all sitting around wondering how long it will be before we get our electricity back. I don’t know how long I can stay focused on doing what I’m doing at this keyboard while the family frets over this, that, and the other thing. We can’t open the refrigerator door since we don’t know how long we’ll be without electricity. If we can’t open the refrigerator door, we can’t get any of our leftover pizza if that is what we wanted to have for breakfast.
The weekend is over. Yesterday was a complete washout. It rained all day, and as I woke up this morning, it’s still raining. So what is what I say? I mean, who cares? It’s not like we had planned to go hiking or anything. We can still go swimming if we want. Yes, you can go swimming in the rain. If I had to guess, I’d say temperatures are probably in the sixties, so that doesn’t bode well for water sports. I asked the missus if she had any plans to go to the museum while we were in town, and she said that she did not. I take from that that there are no exhibits on tap that she’s interested in seeing. That’s fine. We’ll do something else.
One good thing about this rental is that there are tables for everyone. We usually have to fight for table space, given that the missus needs room to do her vacation puzzle. The Ev man and I refer to the table that she’s using as the kid’s table, given its size. I think that the table is used precisely for the kids. You know, give them their own space and let them have at it, whatever that is. If they want to make a mess of whatever, they can do that too. Pipe down, you little bastards. I can hear my father now as I sit here writing in this here journal. Those aren’t his words, just so you know, but the sentiment is close to being on target. He’s been gone since 1995. RIP pops.
I’m always mindful when cooking something for the fam that I balance carbs with protein. That is especially true when it comes to cooking for the Ev man. That means making a nice meat sauce to go with spaghetti sauce. That means adding a rash of bacon to any BLT and not that turkey substitute stuff, although turkey is protein as well. I made a nice spaghetti dinner last night for the fam. I was a little surprised when the missus said that she wasn’t going to have any, so I think I shamed her into having a forkful or two just to appease me. She didn’t have the meat sauce, which meant more meat sauce for the Ev man and me. There is a God.
I bought the kind of Parmesan cheese that the Ev man likes so that he could have more than his share of wood shavings if that is what he wanted to do. Ever since they came out with the studies showing that Parmesan cheese had fillers like wood shavings, we’ve usually tried to avoid the cheaper brands to stay away from the shavings. Not the Ev man, though. He doubled down. The more shavings, the better. That has been his mindset. I’m not sure where that comes from, but it is what it is. I do worry that he goes through the Parmesan cheese a little too fast, though, which means that he gets more than the average bear when it comes to the shavings. Maybe I’ll call him Woody, or Woodrow from now on. I think that won’t be lost on him.
It’s the Ev man’s vacation too. Right? It’s his time away from however he refers to his existence. It’s a nice break from this or that. Maybe it just means that it’s a change of scenery. I noticed that the empty bottles and cans were piling up on the table next to his bed here at the rental, and I had a good mind to sweep the lot of it into an empty trash bin. But, I thought to myself, if this is what he wants, if this is what he prefers, then who the hell am I to suggest that he do anything any differently? Sometimes, you need to stop being a dad and just let the children do what the children want to do. If that means letting them sit at the children’s table while throwing spaghetti at each other, then fuck it, that’s what you do. Did I mention the clothes on the floor in his bedroom? Do we need to go there? We do not.
I was telling the fam that we should have stopped to buy more milk and maybe a couple of tomatoes when we were out food shopping yesterday. I wanted to buy milk from the store down the road here and not at the supermarket where we were making other purchases. We bought ice at the supermarket, so there was some urgency in getting back to the rental as quickly as possible. I also didn’t want tomatoes from the supermarket, so thought we might want to stop at a local roadside stand. Despite passing a rather robust-looking farmers market roadside thingy, the missus insisted that just keep going. But, ma, they have watermelons there! I don’t call her “ma,” just so you know, but you get my drift. She wasn’t buying any of it. I don’t want to tell you how much we spent at the supermarket. That was without buying milk and watermelon!
We all went down to the Cleverdale store yesterday morning for breakfast sandwiches. It was the first of two rainy days on our vacation, and, needless to say, we weren’t the only people at the store. I don’t know that we were expecting to order sandwiches, but that is what we ended up doing, so it was all good. Ev loved his Mexican burrito breakfast, and the missus and I had bagel sandwiches which we found to be a bit too bready, if that’s a word. Ev was wanting to return the next morning for another nice breakfast, but the place had weird hours, so was closed for the next two days.
It looks like we’re going to pass on renting a boat. It was all about the Ev man for me, so when he said that he was fine with not renting a boat, then I was okay with it as well. The logistics of renting a boat on this lake, not to mention the expense, are enough to have you rethinking any plans you might have made in the days and weeks leading up to our time here at the lake. Can you imagine the noobs running through their doors wanting to rent a boat when they don’t know the first thing about using a boat? I think the agencies hereabouts are trying to implement some kind of licensing for boaters, so we’ll see how that works out. Here’s hoping that it saves a life or two.
I’ve only seen one of my peeps now that we’re here at the lake for some three-plus days. I’ll need to reach out and see if any of them want to come up for a swim or maybe just hang out for a bit. My brother from another mother was good enough to o spring for lunch for the lot of us the other day, so I’ll want to return that favor one way or another. I’m happy to report that we might get to see a little bit of sun today after two straight days of rain, so that should lift our spirits. We’re on the shores of Lake George, the queen of American lakes, for chrissakes. We owe it to ourselves to get our rear ends into the lake and let Mother Nature decide where we go from there.
Wait one fucking minute! I thought that the judge overseeing the Trump case where the DOJ raided Mar-a-Lago told them that one of the reasons that she was appointing a Special Master was because she couldn’t trust the DOJ when it came to leaking documents and such to the media. Well, as Ronald Reagan used to say, “there they go again.” And the compliant media just goes along with the charade when they amplify the story, again and again, ad nauseam. Now they have him. Now they have what they need not only to indict Trump but to lock him up. The DOJ has now leaked documents to the Washington Post showing that Trump had top-secret information concerning the nuclear capability on some yet-to-be-identified country. As Jeff Kushner puts it, it’s Russia-gate 2.0. It’s laughable, is what it is.
We have a water dispenser here at this rental that we’re kind of liking. You know what I’m talking about. Right? It’s one of those 20-gallon jugs that sits atop a base that both heats and cools the water. We’ve emptied one already, and we set about trying to get a replacement with some success. Not because our rental agent was very helpful in getting that to happen, but because she wasn’t. This fellow who seems to be involved with the maintenance of the joint one way or another was around the other day, and he was good enough to drop off two replacement jugs for us. Sometimes, you just need to know whom to ask. The rental agent, as a matter of fact, told us that we were on our own when it came to getting a water refill. Bollocks!
Did I mention that I made the Ev man sloppy Joe’s last night for dinner? He bought a can of Manwich the other day when we went food shopping. It’s one of those deals where you cook the hamburger separately, and then you throw in the Manwich sauce before mixing it all together. It’s not my cup of tea, but the Ev man seemed to like it, so that’s all that matters. I made enough so he can have seconds and maybe even thirds over the course of the next day or two. Oh, and I scooped it onto a couple of nice hamburger buns that Ev picked up. The missus settled for an ear of corn, and I didn’t have anything for whatever reason. I take that back. I had a lemon poppyseed muffin. Who’s your daddy?
Anyway, the Ev man said something about getting one of these water dispenser things in his apartment. He seems to think that he has just the spot for it, so this might be something we want to give a little more thought to. Can we buy these jugs and replace them ourselves, or does he need to contract with a supplier in order to get the water up to his apartment? Is it something that he likes now but might tire of as time goes on? The water in his town is shite, so this might be one way around that problem. I used to cart up gallon jugs of spring water which kept him for a while, but he stopped asking for those deliveries, and I didn’t push back. I’m not happy knowing what I know about what he’s drinking when it comes to the water coming through his tap. I think it’s something that we can and should remedy. Food for thought.
It’s been a wicked year thus far for people looking to make a few shekels in the stock market. I was sure that the Biden Administration was going to cook the books so that Americans going to the polls in November to vote in the Mid Term elections would look favorably on the party in power in Washington (Democrats) that was wholly or partially responsible for making it all happen. But returns for those Americans in the stock markets have been abysmal. The NASDAQ is down some 27% YTD, and the S&P is down some 17% YTD. If the democrats lose a lot of seats in Congress because of their constituent’s leaky or sinking 401k’s, then maybe that’s a good thing. Then again, maybe there will be a run-up in the markets between now and November. We’ve seen a good bear market rally here and there, so hope springs eternal, as they say. I’ll take the losses if it means we conservatives take back the House and the Senate. FJB
It’s Friday, the last full day of our vacation here in Sandy Bay. We’ve had a good mix of weather, and it looks like we’re going to end the week on a high note. The missus and the Ev man have had their time swimming, so that’s good. I could care less about swimming, so I’m good as well. The Bay has been predictably quiet in this week after Labor Day, and whatever passed for raucous up until now has since gone elsewhere for better or worse. We’re not that insulated that we didn’t hear about the passing of Queen Elizabeth, but, for all intents and purposes, it was in one ear and out the other. Her stooge of a son is taking over as king, so there’s that. I’m all for dismantling the monarchy and turning over the castles to the people, just so you know where I’m coming from.
Man, you can’t go anywhere hereabouts without seeing deer. We came so close to one last night on our way into town that the Ev man referred to it as a “National Geographic” moment. It was just standing on the side of the road doing whatever the hell deer do. I drove slowly, thinking that it might at any moment dart out into the road ahead of me or, worse yet, leap over the hood of my car, giving us all a fright. It never budged from its spot and what that told me is that they’ve become totally habituated to living within city limits as it were, and they are here to fucking stay. Deer hunting is probably not possible, given the laws that say you cannot discharge a weapon within city limits. Well, within proximity to local housing anyway.
We never did rent a boat. I think I lost my desire to do that as days came and went here at the cottage. If the week hadn’t started out as rainy as it did, I might have been able to sustain whatever it was that had me on track to rent a boat. I thought it might be good for the Ev man to get behind the wheel, but the logistics of putting him behind the wheel was too much for even me to overcome. I made the mistake of not planning other things in the event that the boating thing didn’t work out. That left me feeling a bit flat-footed, and the ripple effects of that failure played out in a rather predictable fashion over the last couple of days. I was nearly bedridden and uninterested in anything and everything requiring my involvement. I was down for the count, as they say. Thankfully, I was not on anyone’s dance card, so the Ev man and the missus got along just fine without me.
There is always this thing about who I am reaching out to while staying here at the lake for the week. I’m talking about my extended family, just to be clear. There are some vacations where I just want to do my own thing, and the family be damned. Who says that I need to reach out to anyone? Is that too anti-social of me? And, am I so self-centered that I think people are even interested in coming around to see me and my fam? I assume nothing, of course. That said, I think I feel a little bad about not reaching out because I think it sends the wrong message. Sometimes, I could give two fucks about sending the wrong message. The backdrop to all of this is that I’m close to my brothers and sisters, so my wanting to do my own thing would seem fairly counter-intuitive. If any of this sounds confusing, it is because it is.
I should get around to making the BLTs that I promised the fam that I would make. I’ll have to do it today since we’ll not have time to do it tomorrow. We need to be out of this joint by 10 tomorrow morning. That is god-awful early by anyone’s standards. We still have a couple of peaches sitting here on the dining room table, so I’m hoping the Ev man will eat them before we leave tomorrow. I even bought some turkey bacon for the missus since she’s not a consumer of red meat. The missus asked me if I was interested in returning to this spot in the future. I think I responded with a “maybe.” For all I know, the prices of rentals on the lake here might well price us out of future vacations. It’s sad to think that, but it’s true. I just cannot in good conscience pay half a year’s wages just to vacation here. It’s nice, but it’s not that nice.
We tried to drive into the village of Lake George last night, but we got jammed up in the road leading into town. I should have known. There is this muscle car convention or something every year post-Labor Day that creates a mess on the roads and makes it difficult to get from point A to point B, especially if your travel plans have you going into the Village of lake George. We exited stage left, and in doing so, it gave the Ev man a fright. All he saw was the “Do not enter” signage. He thought I was going off the reservation by bucking local laws and going up a one-way street the wrong way. He quickly realized that I knew what I was doing and that I was not, in fact, going up a one-way street the wrong way. It was clear sailing from there, although we were heading out of town and away from what appeared to be hellacious night on the town if you were a muscle car lover.
If I thought I could have gotten the Ev man out of the car to take a walk around the village streets where we could get a closer look at some of the cars, I would have tried harder to do just that. Not because he has no interest in seeing the cars, I would hasten to add, but rather because he’s not inclined to do that sort of thing. Getting out and walking about, I mean. Generally speaking, he’s more inclined to take in the world from the comfort of wherever he’s sitting in the car than to be about and about. He’s just not that guy who’s out there grabbing the world by the balls while his peers are sitting on the sidelines. It’s just the opposite. We push him here and there around the edges, but, limitations being what they are, we defer to his judgment.
The New Hampshire primary is this coming Tuesday. I’ll be casting my votes for the two MAGA candidates, General Bolduc and Karoline Leavitt. Our RINO governor, Sununu, has already endorsed the Morse guy to run against Maggie Hassan in November. The Morse guy strikes me as a dweeb and an establishment guy, so, in my humble opinion, that is not what we need in Congress. We need a couple of damn fighters. We need more Marjorie Taylor Greens and fewer fucking Hassans. And, for God’s sake, we need to get rid of that damn flake, Chris Pappas. Both Hassan and Pappas have been kissing Biden’s ass since they got into office. We need to run those fucks out of office on a rail. If we can stop the democrats from stealing our election in November, my guys might have a chance.
I don’t know that the Ev man is doing all that well. I think he’s a bit distressed that vacation is over, and we’re heading on home today. I tried to get him to take a shower, but he’s not wanting any part of taking a shower. I told him that he’ll feel better, but that went nowhere. He just digs his heels in deeper. I wish he would listen to his old man. I have his best interests at heart, but he may not see it that way. He asked that I make him eggs and bacon for breakfast, so I’ll add that to my list of things to do this morning. That request came in yesterday afternoon. We’ll see how it holds up this morning.
I took my first shower of the week last night after being here for 6 days. When you’re swimming every other day in one of the cleanest lakes in the world, you can take certain breaks along the way, even when it includes things like showering. I was telling the missus yesterday that I didn’t think that the Ev man was all that keen on going over to my brother from another mother’s house when I suggested that we drop by there to return his fishing equipment. He went along anyway but hunkered down in the back seat of the car and hoped, and I was reading between the lines as I always do when it comes to the Ev man, that he wouldn’t have to get out of his seat once we arrived at the house. As fortune would have it, we saw no one around, so left the poles and such in the garage and went on our way.
Our vacation is over now, so I’ll need to put this journal stuff away and help the missus get our stuff squared away. The missus expressed a desire to return to this spot, so that is what we’ll probably do next year around this time. I don’t have a good reason one way or another to push back on her preferences, so sometimes you just go along to get along. The attraction is, and will always be, the beautiful bay just outside our windows here on the lake. The missus tells me that the boats have already begun to arrive for the day, and, not surprisingly, they come in early and leave late. If we had a boat and no house on the lake to go to, we might well consider joining the lot of them. As it is, we have neither, so we’re leaving them all to their own devices. As you were, mateys.