Summer 2022: Days 10-18

Oops!

The past nine days have seen unusual heat interrupted by rain. I've worked, gone for runs and attended two swim meets for Ben. And just like that about 20 percent of summer is complete.

But the best is yet to come. My six-week paid sabbatical is coming up, and my brain is swirling with what I want to do with the time. Airfare and gas is so expensive that a bunch of travel is probably out. We are taking Ben to a swim meet in Grand Junction, then going to Colorado for my sister's wedding. There's another meet in California that we're starting to conclude that we aren't traveling, too -- it will cost so much, and Ben isn't swimming that great this summer (he always struggles with long-course season). I would love to find another adventure, but both boys want to work, and even a trip to Chicago won't work. Maybe we'll do something small. 

I mostly don't want to let the Joe-battical go to waste. Besides traveling, here's what I may do:

  • Relive an early-'80s summer, playing a lot of Atari and Strat-o-Matic bsaseball, riding my bike everywhere, sleeping late, and going to the pool (which I didn't do much 40 years ago)
  • Organize so much of the disorganized and overflowing parts of our stuff. To quote Lori, "Marie Kando the shit of out the house."
  • Convert boxes of photos and videos into digital format, upload to the cloud, and consolidate/organize.
  • Write, write, write!
  • Relax.

I have two weeks to figure it out. In the meantime, I need to not let nine more days pass by before writing again. Until tomorrow ...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Summer, Day 8

Today was Memorial Day, and as far as Memorial Days go, this one seemed somewhat anticlimactic. The sun came out after three less-than-stellar days, perhaps preventing the weekend from being a total bust. I worked late last night but was awake earlier than I wanted to be this morning. I fell back asleep and woke up around 10:30 to a thumping sound outside. Michael, Lori and my father-in-law got the rest of the sand in the base of the new basketball hoop, and Michael and his friend from across the street were shooting around. This was Lori's parents' last day in Utah, so we treated them to The Cheesecake Factory at the new City Creek mall downtown. I had the macaroni and cheese burger and most of a piece of Oreo cheesecake (no matter how much I pushed on my sons -- they wanted to share Lori's banana cream cheesecake). The boys and I wandered City Creek a little and came home. The afternoon wasn't much more eventful. Michael and I took Popcorn to the park for about
Read more

Vacation finale

Image
As expected, the last three days of vacation were much less eventful than the first 12. This happens every year -- we get back from Wisconsin for at least one day before leaving for Utah, and it's just wind-down time. And that's OK -- going nonstop for two weeks isn't easy, especially with kids. And vacation is supposed to be a time to relax, and for the past three days, that's what we did. The past few days weren't that relaxing, however. Monday, we met my mom, who is in Chicago this week, for lunch and then to Old Orchard Mall. That night, we met some friends at the new Superdawg (my favorite Chicago hot dog restaurant) in Wheeling. Tuesday, after pondering going downtown, we ended up just seeing the Smurfs movie with my dad. Last night, we went to dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant here in Edgebrook. Wednesday was mostly devoted to getting ready for our return trip Thursday morning. The heat and thunderstorms finally subsided -- this might have been the m
Read more

The Little Red Machine

Image
After blogging about Eldest's baseball experience (as well as mine as an assistant coach), I decided to write about my five years playing organized baseball as a kid. Long ago (the mid-1990s), I wrote about two of these seasons, so I will dig those up and transcribe/edit/add/revise when I post on those two seasons. This post will be about my first season, in 1978 on the Reds. We had moved into our new house in 1977, and my new friends, especially Marc, loved baseball and collected baseball cards. Even before we had moved that spring, I was started to become interested in baseball, so my interest exploded that summer. I had played basketball for two seasons at Norwood Park, so my father signed me up for t-ball in the spring of 1978 and bought me a glove (mass-autographed by Mickey Rivers!). I was placed on the Reds. The team was coached by a couple teenagers, including the older brother of one of my teammates. I don't remember many of my other teammates, except we had a bi
Read more