Not with a bang, but a whimper. The lake looks beautiful! The mannequin—not so much. Hope you feel better soon.

Hope you feel better!

As for how my summer is ending, I saw the kiddo off to her first day of MIDDLE SCHOOL today. (sob) Don’t get me wrong—I look forward to the 1st day of school each year as much as that guy on the Staples commercial (“It’s the most wonderful time of the year…”).

But MIDDLE SCHOOL! It conjures up such horrid images of bully Bubbas and hallway Heathers, etc.

I sent her off with my favorite Shakespeare quote: “Be just and fear not,” which is far more useful than anything in the bible, in my opinion. But not even the Bard is adequate to such an occasion.

Betty, my mom used to say “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.” Oh wait—that’s what she said about spiders. Then one bit me.

So—don’t do drugs, kids, and stay in school!

Holy shit! Why in the world would you go back to Brooklyn?!

Great to have you back, Kevin.

We’re intermittently drowning over here in the traditional August sub-tropical storms. We’re used to that, but they’ve been a wee bit more vicious this year, hence a more of an online presence from me than is usual in the summer months.

But it’s always sunny in Rumperland, what with the rainbows and ponies and such on the horizon.

Since me and the Mrs. have recently gone crazy with our shiny new kayaks we’ve been talking about a road trip to Montana next Summer.

I’m back too!

I just returned from spending a week with my mom in beautiful and remote Sitka, AK.  My parents retired there some 20 years ago, dad passed away, mom remarried, that one passed away too, and now she has a home full of accumulated stuff on the market and plans to move in with relatives.

I needed to go visit so that I could look into each and every box of my father’s mountains of business papers, old books, etc., and intone the words, “I have looked through this box and there is nothing in it I want or need, you may dispose of it.”

Sitka is lovely, though it was damp and rainy most of the time, and most of the nature walks were cordoned off due to recent bear sightings.  I was able to see a river that appeared at first glance to be black water, but was actually clear water filled to capacity with roiling salmon swimming upstream to spawn and die.

I found the bookstore and coffee shop where Sitka’s liberals congregate, so I was able to fend off the evil juju of pig-ignorant Republicanism.  Although, when the elderly man in the airport gift shop told me that Obama and the Democrats were looking forward to killing him and his peers, I let him know that he was correct, and this was the precise reason why I and all other young people voted for them.

That looks like one of the mannequins from “Oh Mikey”