Dwindling Summer Days

Grrrrrr....

Yes I can't help it, I'm a little disgruntled. I get those late summer blues every year when August rolls around. There are fewer opportunities to fit in everything you wanted to do.

Friday night I watched the Red Sox/Yankees game with Jason at his apartment. Jason was kind enough to cook tacos and buy us some organic beer. (Stick with the pesticides.....) The umpires were horrible, calling balls "strikes" the entire night. In fact pitching really was sort of lousy by both pictures, however the statistics really didn't reflect it because horrible calls were made consistently the entire evening. I'm not even sure I saw a legitimate strike pitched all night long! Well, they were far and few between at the very least. To top that off, Mike Lowell gets thrown out for arguing about a strike-call. The pitch was so far out of the strike zone that he literally stepped backwards to avoid being hit by it. Frustrating to say the least. I would have been only slightly more pleased had we actually won the game. After the treachery Jason & I were going to go see "Step brothers" for a good chuckle, however it was sold out. I guess a lot of Sox fans needed a good laugh.

Overall this weekend was pretty good. I unfortunately slept late again on Saturday and I shouldn't have (time really seems too important to waste on un-needed sleep... however I tend to do it routinely). I did meet up with Mike and Scotty for some mini golf (put put for some of you out there) at the retro course on Rt. 1. We had a decent time, the weather was good, a bit warm but not unbearably so. A couple of grand parents and their grandson were in front of us on the course. They were so oblivious to their surroundings that three parties of patrons piled up behind them while they basically took turns tanning on the putting greens. Grandma seemed to be the primary reason for the delays as she seemed a bit distracted, distressed, generally out of it. She forgot her purse pretty much at every hole. Additionally she had an irritating OCD procedure of removing her flip flops with every put. When she putted, for what ever reason, she felt it was better to use the tip of the putter on several instances, rather than putting the flat portion of the putter up against the ball like just about anyone else would. Gramps seemed to have the hang of putting, but had no desire to educate his grandson who was slapping the ball around happy Gilmore style. As Mike would say... these people had absolutely no remorse that they were irritating everyone behind them. At one point grandma left her flip flops behind and Mike, Scott and I agreed to malevolently not say anything. About three holes later she finally realized they were gone, and I'm quite certain she thought we had hid them on her, when really all we did was the disservice of not reminding her that her head was on backwards. For the rest of the course she kept yammering on about "her honesty" and how honest she was. I'm sure she could have hit up another dollar tree on the way home if she lost them for good. She also retook half of her shots about a dozen times (the limit per hole is six... which is on a big sign at the gate, and on the back of the score card). Between her dozen or so shots she would exclaim how she was fighting with her husband because she wanted to teach her grandson it was wrong to cheat. (Try respect first and then move on from there....)
When they finally finished the husband said "Now make sure you don't forget anything"... and she yelled back "For christ's sake I don't have a tumor!" and then left behind her iced tea. This was a bit revealing, and I imagine this woman probably was unfortunately preoccupied with something else... as betrayed by that last comment. I have to admit I did chuckle... or laugh actually when she left something behind, right after exclaiming that she wouldn't... but a bit of guilt made me pick up the tea and bring it over to the husband after she scurried into a video-arcade with her grandson.
We went over to get some soft serve ice cream before all heading our own way.

Kate and I spent the rest of the weekend together. Saturday night I grilled up some burgers and we had corn on the cob and potato salad. I barely finished the potato salad in time as I found out at the last minute that my miracle whip had gone bad (what's so miraculous about that? yuk yuk yuk...grrrr!) I rushed over to Shaw's and picked up the necessary Miracle Whip, then got some ice cream too while I was there. Made it back and within minutes of my arrival Kate was buzzing my apartment. I was concerned that she arrived while I was gone, but I lucked out.

Sunday we drove to Lowell and saw the Lowell Folk Festival. It is always a good time. This year we saw a great band that specializes in Celtic music and fiddle based folk tunes (even some French Canadian stuff). They were fantastic, while we initially had intended on just watching a couple of songs, we stayed for the whole hour long performance. They had a couple of step dancers who travel with them, a guy who does "Canadian step dance" and a tall attractive red headed woman who performs traditional Celtic step dance. The main fiddle player also got up and danced for a couple of #s. The male dancer is the brother of the fiddle player and they had a little "dance off" near the end of the performance that was quite good. At first I was disconcerted by the lack of percussion, but they made up with it with the rhythm of the fiddle, tapping of feet, step dancing and momentum of their tunes. The harp player in the band actually has performed extensively with the Chieftains who are probably the most famous of Celtic bands out there. The band is called "Tread" and if you follow the link there is some info about them through the folk festival page. Tread's Myspace

After Tread, we walked around and took in some other various performances, watched the people, and walked along the river and through the old Mill complexes in Lowell. Kate had suggested that we go to the Chinese Buffet afterwards. (Kate you're so classy... that's why I like you!) We left just in time as it began to pour as soon as we arrived at the Buffet. We ate a lot of greasy food, including some sushi and finally topped it off with some ice cream. I drove by the old apartment in Lowell to get to the buffet. Looks like some gentrification is finally spreading that way, the chop shop was shut down, and a new condo complex is going into the building next door to my old one. I hope for the sake of the people who buy the units that they do some good sound proofing. Sadly, my old Shop N Save grocery store was closed up for some reason, and the Chinese Buffet was beginning to look a little worn out.

Well it is back to work now! I have a lot of writing to do this week, should be a blast. Technical reports are my favorite thing... ever!