Good morning all:

Wisdom Of The Week:

“Nothing very very good and nothing very very bad lasts for very very long.” — Douglas Coupland

Very very seldom do I head for the medicine cabinet. Last night I dove in on a desperate ibuprophen hunt. This morning I am in pretty good shape. Now, once I get a hold of my morning coffee, life will be good.

The ibuprophen came a necessity after hacking up a driveway full of fallen branches, the result of a Thursday evening storm. The storm woke me up at 02:15 worrying that our shade umbrella would pull the glass-topped table over. Since Marcia had cranked it down prior to heading for bed, this left me watching the deck furniture itself perform a little dance.

In the morning I spotted my neighbor in his side yard watering the smoldering parts of a lightning struck tree. Shortly, I heard our Red Tailed Hawks; they survived the night’s 60-70 mph wind gusts.

Monday evening my long-planned visit with Marin at his gymnastics class took place. I could not get over the sheer pleasure and “can’t-wait-till-we-get-there” attitude as expressed by this (nearly) six year old. He loves his gymnastics.

I watched him breeze through a series of exercises, each of which would have me be somewhat aware of approaching ambulance sirens prior to my passing out. For a full hour he handled broad beam, flips, trampoline, bars, and rope training with aplomb.

The little clip shows Marin practicing a proper landing. Here in a foam pit, eventually on a mat

I have to remind myself to savor these moments for they are life’s very best.

In a few days we’re heading back up to the cabin. Much to the chagrin of some of our family we have no communication with the outside world. Even though I have purchased a plan that allows us to ‘seamlessly’ use my cell in Canada, it turns out that like real-estate, it is all location, location, location. And we are seriously on the reception’s outer fringe.

Now, I believe I have solved the problem. Mid-week our mail delivered a package containing a 41” whip antenna, low-loss coax cabling, and an external antenna connector for the phone. My plan will be to mount the hardware by the peak of the roof, suck in any and all signals, pass them through the cable into the cabin, providing for a perfectly clear phone signal. Is everyone now happy?

As backup, our new walkie-talkie radios also arrived this week. 36 channels with 83 privacy channels and a 30 mile range, so there you go, just a few short weeks since our last stay and we go from zero communication to communication overload.

Next on my to-do list is to quickly wash our little —our Duck. At ten I will have it parked at a nearby local car show. That the temperature will be over ninety with bright, cloudless, and sunny skies; makes me an idiot for doing this. We’ll see if a few bottles of water, a bag chair, and straw hat allow me to survive the day. Luckily Adrianne’s home is less than a mile away; a home that I am certain is filled with ice chips.

If Marcia would have had her way the truck would already be packed for the trip north. As it stands, for the next few days there is one huge pile of stuff primed to be tripped over. I don’t think our plan to have “everything we need” permanently parked at the cabin is working all that well.

Yesterday was Tevita’s birthday. Next week it’s Kellen and Marin’s turn. Happy birthday guys!

Make it a great week everyone.

Cheers,

Dirk

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