There were plenty of construction sites to explore, as well as woods with creeks (and therefore frogs and salamanders). When I was a bit older, smooching in the toolshed was to be had.
Happy burp-day, wheelz, and I completely get the independent contractor woes. Best of luck on bore work coming soonest. If I may ask, what sort of work do you do? I build random stuff, museum exhibits, custom furniture.
Free range child of the 60s. We lived in a nice neighborhood. Everyone knew everyone and if your mom wasn’t home, there was always an emergency back up mom down the street. Summers included the park district pool, the park behind our house, running around screaming, going to the library, and just doing kid stuff. We walked or rode our bikes. Nobody drove us anywhere. We took the bus (12 cents) if we wanted to go the Plaza and wander around looking at stuff we couldn’t afford cuz we had no money.
Most evenings after dinner I stayed inside cuz I had had enough. Watched tv or read. Most read because there were only FOUR stations and no kids stuff on.
It’s an inventory control business. Companies can hire them for multiple services: building and configuring new warehouses, re-organizing parts storage rooms, simply counting inventory, etc. It’s the kind of thing I used to do many years ago, and an old co-worker from that job hooked me up here.
Hah! I just noticed my typo. I meant more work, not bore work.
Happy birthday, Wheelz!! 
We lived in several different places when I was a kid; also, I have few memories of summers. No trauma or anything, and I’m only 51…I guess I just have a lousy memory. 
But I do remember walking railroad tracks: the house I spent most of my childhood in was next to some tracks* – then used for infrequent freight trains, now used for the light rail that goes into Baltimore – and sometimes my brother and/or I would walk the 1/2 mile to the next town, which had a tiny shopping center that contained both a dime store and a place that sold milkshakes. I remember knowing that if I heard a train coming, I should go into the treeline: if trees were standing, it meant that trains (and their cowcatchers) didn’t hit them.
*There was no good/bad side. 
Work is blessedly quiet today (*knocks on wood*). I do have one more meeting, right about now, but it’s just a status call and should be over pretty quickly…maybe even by the time I click “reply” on this post. And there are two files that will need to be delivered to the customer this afternoon: one of my direct reports is editing them right now, but my review and submission shouldn’t take long. There’s a chance this whole week could be on the quiet side… 
I have a volunteer-related Zoom meeting this evening, but our president has promised it will be quick and I’m planning to stay off-camera…which means I’ll participate via iPad from my couch, instead of via my personal computer from my home office.
All in all, if I haven’t jinxed things it should be a pretty good day/night here in beautiful – and only 85° but muggy, with a forecasted high of 91° – Northern Virginia.
Going over rules of grammar for their native language just doesn’t excite many adults, either. 
As a long-time professional writer and editor, I’m often tasked with helping grown people with this stuff. One of my proudest moments was coming up with the “zombies” explanation for detecting passive voice: if you can add “by zombies” to the end of a sentence, it’s passive voice. For example: “The meetings will be held every month (by zombies)” = passive voice, vs “The team lead will hold meetings every month.”
So does Bailey. 
For the first few years of her life she always wore a collar, but at some point I decided she might be more comfortable sleeping without one. Since then she’s been nekkid whenever she’s inside the house. (Also, it took an embarrassingly long time for me to start using a harness vs attaching a leash to her collar…I think I got the “leash and collar” thing from my ex, who already had a dog when we adopted puppy Bailey, but sometimes I just don’t know WTF I was thinking.) When we go into the back yard she only wears a harness, so the only time she wears a collar now is if we’re leaving the property.
I will stop complaining about 91 and muggy!
Afternoon all. Sammich has been devoured (the clerk rang up $26 that I gave her instead of the $20 bill I actually provided, so had to point out that I didn’t need $13 in change) and will shortly head over to the gym for the swimming and sauna part of the day. Also picked up the New York Times (It’s $3.00 at Kroger, so a couple times a week is all I get) for reading and puzzles. Otherwise just a quiet and hot (87F) day in N. Ali-bama.
Wheelie, hope the job situation improves; and like the old line goes, "but it’s a dry heat!
And Happy Birthday!!!
Oh, yeah, it’s amazing we didn’t lose 2-3 kids every summer crawling through those places.
cookie, glad you’re feeling well enough to upload hot caffeine to your system.
vroom, hope the Birkenstocks smell better.
OK, on with the bathing suit and off to do my laps. Been doing 900 yards (in about 30 minutes) last week, probably will go to 1,000 (in 2-500 yard sets) today.
I like the “by zombies” tool!
You had four stations? Luxury! In Juneau we had one fuzzy channel. In Anchorage I think there were two, possibly three. We got Mickey Mouse Club, but that was it for kiddie programming. But at least we could fantasize over Annette.
Our neighborhood was all row houses and everyone’s back yard was defined by chain link. My house was 1764 as defined by the garbage cans. Except this is what it looked like in my youth - and the one on the left is me in my youth - maybe 5 or 6?
At one point, the total of kids 12 and under in the houses that shared our alley was something like 102 I think. A good, prolific Catholic neighborhood!
There was a county playground a couple of blocks up the road where they’d occasionally have summer activities for kids and sometimes we’d go there. Another favorite was the local elementary school playground with a bag lunch and a piece of waxed paper for waxing up the sliding board - steel, of course, and often hotter’n Hades in the summer. Good Times!
Anyway, home. I took the weather cloths off the boat.
I’ll be making new ones in a light gray fabric. These old ones are just icky. There’s one on each side of the flybridge. We’re hoping to get a new bimini (canopy over the flybridge) made in the same gray - as soon as we hear back from the woman who makes them. I thought about doing it myself, but it’s just too complex.
After leaving the boat, I ran a couple of errands, ending up at Daughter’s school to help FCD. We organized the spaghetti that comprises their network cables. Then I took a box that was full of all manner of cords and untangled them - 12V power supplies, printer cables, a wired mouse, power cords, USB adapter/extension cords, some speakers, and intercom unit, an alarm clock - What a mess it was!! It’s about time to start pulling wires and cables to set up the new network and get rid of the mess that was the old network.
But for the moment, I can chill a wee bit.
OMG, you look just like The Roxstar!
Except that I have straight blonde hair and she has curly black hair…
It’s all about the twinkle in the eye and that smile!
Happy Moonday!
It was a bit warm at the park this morning. Nobody there but Lucy/Petey Dad and us. I thought more people would show up as today is his last day for 6 weeks.
The GR don’t like the heat, they chased Echo for a little bit, then found a cool place to lay down.
I’m killing time until I have to wake my son to go to America’s Best. He broke his glasses a while back, fixed them, and they broke again. He needs them to drive.
He’s going to have to go in by himself, I’ll sit outside with the brats.
Unless we leave them home.
Summertime and childhood.
The summers seemed to last forever back then.
Nobody had AC, so we were almost always outside where it was cooler.
When young, we would sit under the trees with our Barbie dolls, or play jacks.
Older we rode bikes, or roller skated in the street, jump rope, kick ball, SPUD, and other games.
Sometimes all of us kids would pile up in somebody’s car and go to the movies. Then a different parent would bring us home.
We could walk to the corner store for ice cream, and there was Mr. Jack, the snowball man. He lived a few houses down and after he got home from driving around selling snowballs, we’d run down to his house to get one.
Then older, the mall, movies, and library were within walking distance.
Before all our mothers went to irk, there were a lot of cookouts and picnics, or a day at one of the local beaches. Once all the women decided to start irking, that ended.
We always went to WV to stay with family for our summer vacations.
Depending on where we were staying, it could be fun, or boring as hell.
By then my great grandfather had sold the farm and lived in a small trailer. He always had circus peanuts and RC cola for us. Boring though, no phone we could use, no TV, no radio. The phone was the old kind where you had to call the operator to connect a call, and Long Distance was expensive.
He, at least, had indoor plumbing.
It was best when we stayed somewhere where I had cousins close to my age. Then we could find things to do.
Even better when there was indoor plumbing.
Another uncle always had lambs that needed bottle feeding and chicks we could feed and play with.
No indoor plumbing, and only a small TV that got maybe one channel, and it was never clear.
There is a reason the satellite dish is WV’s state flower.
I was always jealous of my friends who got to go to Ocean City, Myrtle Beach, and even Florida.
Now I look back and think I had the better deal.
I used to love spending the night at my friend Jennifer’s and catching fireflies in jars, then bringing them inside as lanterns under tents made from her white bedspread. Of course, that always ended poorly for the fireflies, but I still remember running around at the base of this huge oak they had in their front yard, barefoot, collecting them.
A different friend and I would spend the night sleeping in a tent on her pool deck - after we got caught skinny dipping while her mom was trying to sleep, instead of forbidding us from sleeping in a tent by the pool, her mom got us all set up in this gorgeous tend on the pool deck, then just before bed, she read to us a very detailed excerpt of the book Cocoon, which had been made into a movie. The plot wasn’t scary at all, but she did a great job alluding to the possibility that there might be alien pods in the pool. Solved the problem of us taking a midnight swim really fast. She must’ve talked to my mom because when we tried sleeping in a tent in the backyard at my house. my mom read us excerpts from Pet Cemetary, probably to get us to stop digging up the yard looking for gold and dinosaur bones.
It’s been a muggy, muggy day. Glad I got the waddle in early today. Mom is having a hospice consult next week while I’m out of town; luckily my sister will be here.
Well shit news here at casa paint. Got in the truck to head home, blinking check engine light. Step on the gas, no power. So put it back in the shop parking spot, call my buddy who has a mechanic shop, and make arrangements for it to be towed over there, Uber home ($30!!) and now shall proceed to have several adult beverages. Gotta figure out how to get back to the shop tomorrow.
I lived on a street of row homes. Most of the people on the street were related to each other, not me though.
We had stick ball; a broom stick and either a whole or half pink ball. Wall ball; where you bounced the ball off the wall while doing claps or twirls, sometimes both. We had jacks and colouring books for the top step of the house stairs. Our stairs were marble, so they got scrubbed first. The streets that had non marble stairs did not play jacks.
We had a sprinkler attachment to the fire plug that was the charge of the street captain.
For 2 weeks we would visit the Nebraska cousins. They had yards and some had livestock. One cousin had a trailer on a lake, that was the best. I would row on the lake and “fish”. I did not catch much.
There was a 2 week religious camp in the poconos that was fun. That came after the Nebraska weeks.
Many books were read as there was a reading group at the free library. Those were the best days. Mum would leave me at the library, go about her errands and pick me up after a few hours. I could have spent the whole summer on a window seat in the library.
Howdy Y’all! I spent a fair portion of the day talkin’ funeral. A member of the church died Saturday mornin’ after a long bout with cancer. Sad, but everyone knew the end was near. So, I went over to the church house this mornin’ to make sure candles and such will be all ready for the big day on Thursday. Also have had the fun of roundin’ up folks to serve. Fortunately that was pretty easy. A big crowd is expected as Tom and his wife are well-know around town. Other than that, sloth and nappage were achieved. Sup also got cooked and et.
And now this…> CLEARIN’ THROAT < AHEM >
HAAAPPPYYY BIIIRRRTTTHHHDDDAAAYYY TOOOOOO YOUUUUUU!!!
HAAAPPPYYY BIIIRRRTTTHHHDDDAAAYYY TOOOOOO YOUUUUUU!!!
HAAAPPPYYY BIIIRRRTTTHHHDDDAAAYYY DEEEAAARRR WWWHHHIIIEEELLLIIIEEE!!!
HAAAPPPYYY BIIIRRRTTTHHHDDDAAAYYY TOOOOOO YOUUUUUU!!!
We rarely went on vacations that didn’t involve visiting relatives, but we had one biggie going for us. My mom’s parents owned a lot on the Magothy River. Every summer Sunday when the weather was good, we’d pack lunches and snacks, load up the car, and drive “down the shore.”
My sister, my grandmother, and me.
When I was in high school, my grandfather had a one-room “cabin” built that had a basement and a bathroom. Until then, the toilet was a bucket and flushing involved a shovel and a corner of the lot where no one went.
I loved that place and was saddened when my grandfather sold it. I wasn’t living in the area at the time, and none of my sibs could afford to buy it. My dad was interested but it was just too far away for him and Mom to care for it properly. This was in the 80s, I think.
A couple of years back, my mom, sister, and I drove out to look at the place. The cabin had been replaced with a house. I just looked it up in the county property records. The lot was maybe half an acre. It sold in 2012 for $423K. Redfin says $641K today. Yoiks!!
And a good early evening to all. Swimming has been done and the gym scale showed me right at 250lbs even…so now I can start working downward through the 240’s. Of course, given I’m traveling for 5-6 days and eating on the road with no gym around, the weight might go upwards a bit…ah well, at least in general I’m heading the right way. Also stopped and bought a pair of goggles that will fit over my glasses when/if I try to swim the Atlantic.
Will fix me some dinner here in a bit, need to move most of the mail to the shredder (I gave to the USO about 3 years ago and am still getting mail from them).
FCM, thanks for the pictures, they are lovely. And yeah, I sometimes wonder what that little 2-bedroom house I lived the first 7 years of my in is worth these days…(just googled it, Zillow says $127,300).
Yep. Never lived in an air-conditioned house (outside of window AC units) until I moved here in 1997. That’s not counting many years of apartment living, of course.
talkie, the Mom’s were pretty clever back then…
VanGo, here’s hoping it something easily fixed on the truck.
swampy, sorry that your church member passed, sounds like they were well-liked.
Getting about dinner time, so off to the kitchen I go. Take care all.