Let's see.
I've been reading lots of
escapist
Darkover
novels
lately (and finding that I was missing "Stormqueen!" I ordered it used
on Amazon and it came yesterday and now I'm reading that).
A lovely way to get away from stress (except that the stress is
still waiting for you when you come back; things that actually
get rid of the causes of the stress are unfortunately () sometimes
impossible, and () often alot of work).
The comment-spammers have really discovered me!
I turned off my cgi script that pretends to be a Moveable
Type comment form, because it was getting so much (and so
uninteresting) spam.
It still presents itself and accepts input, but it just
throws it away rather than mailing it to me.
Some of the weekly reader-input fields in old log pages
have also started to get a certain small amount of spam.
If it keeps up I may have to start throwing away old input
that contains html-looking stuff, or something.
The nice protection that I used to get from all my
handwrought HTML seems to be fading, sadly.
Fun proper names in spam subject:
billboard message from Leanne Chacon
With respect to kimberly hunt
Didn't know Iris had a sister!
(And when I google on "Kimberly Hunt" I get a paid ad saying
"Kimberly Hunt ; whatever you're looking for you can
get it on eBay", but when I click on it it says that there
are zero items found.
False advertising, I say!)
Ooh, a link!
I find randomly down in my list of things to maybe log
someday
rocketpack dot org,
with the notation "fun and randomly happened upon".
So there you are...
Happy Birthday, U, S, and A!
Boy, am I tired.
The Eight Annual Fourth of July Outing was great fun,
as usual.
This year I did read through all the ancient
records of previous Outings, and we did take along a cardboard
box full of convenient food and cups and utensils
(and M gave us a big container of "sesame" (but really
peanut butter) cold noodles to take along and share,
and that was very popular), and
we did take three sleeping pads to comfort the
pressure points.
Three sleeping pads because there were, for the first
time since 2001, three of us: the little daughter's
aged out of camp
(or at least the part she's interested in), and
astoundingly she didn't have anything else pressing this
weekend.
The other six kids remembered her to varying degrees,
depending on how old they were five years ago.
*8)
We stayed at the same campground as last year,
we spent lots and lots of time on the beach at Ocean
City (didn't go to Sea Isle City at all this
year, but that's okay), and we spent most of
yesterday at the same
Splash Zone
at Wildwood as last year.
We even had our on-the-way-home breakfast at Pappy's again
(and the little boy even had French Toast again),
and the air conditioning was on too high there again.
The kids had a really good time, I think, seeing people
that they like and don't get to see that often,
digging in the sand, playing in the surf.
I remembered and bought two boogie board this year, so they
didn't have to borrow other people's, and we even
played with the little boy's skimboard for the first
time. (Did I mention that we bought it on the
boardwalk last year at Wildwood, only to have the
lifeguards tell us we couldn't use it?
This year we had time to just wait until the
lifeguards went away.)
And we brought along some sparklers that another friend
brought back from a vacation South somewhere, which
was good because the other family that usually
brings sparklers forgot, and last night all the
kids had fun waving sparklers around and coughing
at the smoke and stuff.
The weather cooperated almost entirely; there was
some thunder, and two very short and very light
rains, but it wasn't horribly hot and humid (except
for this morning as everyone was packing up to go),
and the breeze along the shore was cool and sweet
(well, probably salty).
Saturday evening we actually got cold out there
on the sand as the sun got low;
Sunday evening we started to get cold but suddenly
(really suddenly, within like two minutes) the wind
got hot (shifting, we think, so it was coming off the
land rather than the sea) and we all waded back out
into the water to cool off.
And then just as we were leaving it shifted around
again and was cool and almost shivery.
So that was interesting.
And the campground was very quiet at night,
for a campground, and we were all tired by the
end of the day, so everyone slept well and slept
late.
I couldn't entirely get my mind away from various
complicated work-things of the sort that one's
supposed to not think too much about on holiday
weekends, but I had a good time anyway, admiring
the children and admiring the marshes by the
highway and the Shore culture,
and enjoying the cold of the ocean water
and the bigness of the ocean.
And now here I am collapsed on the bed writing in
my weblog, and we'll probably make some pasta and
watch fireworks on the teevee again this evening.
And someday maybe I'll work up the energy to,
like, link to things and respond to reader input
and other stuff that we sometimes do in the
weblog here. *8)
