Morning all:

The glorious and quiet early morning sunrises greeting me every day for the past week while in Canada are a memory. That along with the early cry of a loon, the hum and twittering of humming birds, and the occasional roar of a logging truck’s Jake Brake—thanks for those memories Paul, Dia, Donn, and Marlene. Having said that, the return to the familiarity of my White Castle coffee mug is not all that unpleasant either.

A last finish on last Saturday’s post with my elucidation on our fabulous week in Canada’s northland. Just to describe our last evening there. The evening was more than pleasant sitting on the cabin deck watching one of the best sunsets we’d seen all week and enjoying some Southern Comfort Reserve (which took all week to get used to—the reserve that is). Conversation was warm and as the banter continued someone, I forget who, started humming the strangest song from the Beatles 1968 “White Album”—Revolution Number 9. Pretty soon no-one could do anything but sing-along its dumb little refrain which goes on and on:

Prior to going completely daft, plus having to get up early for the drive home, we all retired somewhat early. Tuesday was the 12-hour drive back home and in my mind, there it was again, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9.

Now life is back to normal, but that is pretty good too. Normal, as in having a few conversations with Kirstin describing her own quick recovery, Derek’s love for his new brother, and Kellen’s determined effort to strive for the “perfect baby” award. Then stopping by Jason and Cathy’s to pick up Shang and have the oh-so-happy Marin proudly point out every detail of his brand new, complete with training wheels, two-wheeler. We missed his third birthday and will be celebrating that over the weekend.

Last night we chatted with Adrianne for a half hour. As usual, the amazing routing of a telephone signal down to Tonga at times makes for a quirky one-way conversation. But it was a chatty and happy Adrianne at the other end and that was all that mattered.

The good buried in the “normal” is also found in the regularity of my walks with Shang—even though these are taking place in a very hot and muggy southwest Ohio summer.

We had dual winners for the Baby Pool. Since it was a very complex point scheme used to determine the winner it took the massive computing power of excel to calculate the final numbers—I won’t bore you further. Let it be noted that Fred M. and Donn V. tied. The photo is that of a very proud Donn holding up his prize – a high quality Evenflow baby bottle completely filled with even higher quality Southern Comfort. Congratulations men.

I just had a very cold nose come up and flick me under my arm, “yes guy, we’ll start our walk in a moment.”

Make it a great week everyone; take a little time to appreciate the normal rhythms of life.

Cheers,
Dirk