Night on the town with Nancy & Ted and Stephanie & Frank.

Ran into Bob Tarabella from Entré computers.

“I have everything I need right here.” -Frank

The Nicholas House with Teddy and the Braves.

The semi-bi-monthly-quarterly dinner party was at Ken and Shelly’s house this time. We had bolo bread pizzas that were good and sat around the entire time to watch the Braves go, once again, into extra innings. They were back in Minnesota playing much better. In fact, they should have won the series. It was a very exciting game, and that much more fun with all of our chanting and tomahawking friends squeezed around us.

Frank and Stephanie went Thursday night. Frank was offered $500 cash for his ticket. He had told Stephanie that $1000 was his price, so he turned the guy down. Stephanie was also selling femo tomahawk pins that she had made. Those were going for $10 a piece, though Frank wanted to sell them for twice that.

The braves played a great game, even though they lost to an extra inning home run. Alice said that the night proved that the Braves could play and win in Minnesota’s homer dome. They have one more chance to prove it.

Carol and Bob could not come because Carol had caught Eric’s bug. (Strike 1.) After the game, Bob started feeling sick, too. (Strike 2.) He felt awful Sunday morning, but went over to work on Mom and Dad’s shutters anyway. Whenever he started feeling too weak and ill, he would lie down and nap on a blanket in the front yard.

We all slept in Saturday morning, having exhausted ourselves at the Braves game. By late morning, though, we had lunches, bikes, and scooters packed, and we headed up to the Hedges Farm.

Kathy wasn’t feeling great, but good enough to watch all the Braves game. Nicole enjoyed playing with Rick Butker’s oldest girl, Linda(?). Danny and I took a walk with Bennett to look for snakes. Instead we found some ripe parsimmons (according to Bennett) that tasted like figs, some not-so-ripe pears, and some blight-covered Pecans. Teddy picked us up on our way back and toured us through the back paths in his Honda-Jeep.

Ted found a peculiar 1-foot snake that would turn over and play dead with its mouth wide open. I was pretty sure it was doing that because Robert or Shawn had run over it with their tricycles. But Bennett demonstrated how it would quickly turn itself over should you upright it.

“Puff Adder” came to mind. “No, that’s poisonous,” said Bennett. “This is a milk snake or a corn snake.” Then I saw the snake’s upturned nose. That seemed familiar, too. Couldn’t wait to get back to the snake book at Mom and Dad’s house.

Sure enough, that behavior is typical of the Hog Nose snake, often called the “Puff Adder” because it will puff and hiss when you first try to catch it. Teddy had said it had done that.

Milk snake, indeed. Now I’m wondering exactly what those fig-tasting things were that Bennett fed me and Danny.

Friday night we went over to Ted & Nancy’s for a game of Labyrinth. We never finished. The kids were very good and played quietly in Shawn’s room. We watched the movie “Naked Gun.” I was very tired, though, and kept dozing off. Everyone would laugh at a funny scene, which would wake me up. So I spent the entire movie asleep, or just missing the funniest parts. Yuck.

***

Saturday was fun. Nicole went school shopping with Gramalie for a new outfit. Then we all went to Tucker Day to see the parade. The Viceroy’s were the feature band prior to the parade. Got to talk to Charlie for a while in line for Bar-B-Q. They had just played in Alabama the night before and had another show that night. Weekends are the hardest when you are in a band.

It was hot and muggy, so we finished the day with a swim down at the pool. I don’t know how many more days of swimming we have left, now that the weather is starting to get cooler.

It was a long, hard weekend. The birthday that would never end. Kathy up early Saturday morning to go to work, only to arrive and find she had not been scheduled to work that day as she had requested. She came home muttering something about how much she can’t stand Helga (the scheduler.)

We took the kids to see “Wild Hearts Never Die.” A nice (true) story about a girl, her horse, and a tower that she and the horse jumped off.

Ted stopped by to help me get the keg for the party on Sunday. He stayed for BBQ Chicken. We watched Eric for Bob and Carol. Eric was pretty good. Danny made him a little bed out of his Sesame Street sleeping bag and Eric’s baby blankets. Though he missed his mom rocking him to sleep, he gave in and fell asleep soon enough.

Sunday morning, Danny and I took on Nicole in a round of Labyrinth. Fun game. One of Carol’s “Discovery” toys. I like the cartoon drawings. Nicole didn’t think it was fair that we won since it was two against one. I asked her if she wanted to have Danny on her team next time. She said no.

The cookout/pool party was fun. In attendance were Ted, Nancy, Shawn, and Brittainy – making her walking debut; Carol, Bob, and Eric; Shelly, Ken, and Alison ; Mom, Dad, Grant & Ted; Jeannie and John – and later Lauren – just in from California; Frank and Stephanie; and Harrison who is a bachelor for the week.

The Weber grill never worked so hard, cooking hundreds of hamburgers and hotdogs. Later we all went down for a long afternoon at the pool. Danny taught himself to do a flip when he saw Frank and Ken doing all of their usual spins. Frank and Ken are happiest when spinning in mid air. Mom came down. Dad stayed at the house and watched the braves game, which was a shame, since Frank brought the keg down to the pool in his truck.

Frank, Stephanie, and Harrison stayed into the night. We ordered pizza. Harrison lost his shoes and a shirt. Frank left his sandals and sun glasses here. Mom left her camera.

I suppose they are de facto birthday gifts.

Last night we all went over to Jeanie, John, and Lauren’s house. They cooked enough food for a dozen people or more. Shish Kabobs, hot dogs, and bratwurst. John was thinking about going to cooking school, but has decided to study Robotics. He would like to learn electronics and apply his mechanic skills that he used at Eastern.

Jeanie gave us a full AIDS update based on the latest word from the CDC.

After dinner Kathy and John beat Jeannie and I in Pictionary. I think they had some kind of scheme going. They could guess drawings almost immediately. Especially a robot that didn’t look like a robot and a bus that looked like a wiggly line.

Danny, Nicole and Lauren enjoyed dancing and singing to C & C Music Factory’s “Everybody Dance Now” and “Things That Make You Go Hmmmm.” Nicole spent the night with Lauren.

Dance-Now.mp3

My ears hurt and my left teeth hurt.

Last night Kathy and I, Ted and Nancy, and Bennett and Alice went bowling. Ted has his own ball and his own shoes. The rest of us rented and agreed that we would like to own a pair of bowling shoes just to wear.

My first warm up was a strike. That was the end of my accurate bowling. Each couple bought one round.

Ted won with 123 and Alice just behind with 122. It pays to have your own ball and shoes. Alice was tickled because she had never done better than 100. Bennett followed with a 110 and Nancy with 88. Kathy and I both scored 52. Isn’t that cute. Oh well…

The bad company of six all climbed into the Butker’s Suburu Party Wagon and went to Taco Mac. We had a good time laughing and trying to out shout one another. At one point, Alice, Nancy, and Kathy all climbed head first into the basketball machine to steal balls for us to shoot with. My one shot landed on top of the net-covered machine. We had to move the machine to climb up and get the ball down. I’m sure our waitress, Carla, was delighted with our behavior. (“What a nutty crowd. They each order only one beer and go nuts!”)

I carved Kathy and my initials in the top of the table (where many others words had been carved.) Somewhere in the middle of the exchange, the phrase “casual breast” came up. Kathy thought that was particularly funny. Rules are rules.

Now let’s see… how much of Nicole and Danny’s college fund did we use up?

Shoes:     1.50  x  2   =   3.00

Lane:      2.50  x  2   =   5.00

Pitcher:                    5.75

Taco Mac:                  32.15

Cash from group:          -13.00*

Summer:                    10.00

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Total                      42.90

*(Yes, I should have collected more.)

Seems like there are cheaper ways to make your ears and left teeth hurt.

We all went to Jeanie, John, and Loren’s house for Loren’s birthday and spaghetti. John is a looking-for-work Eastern mechanic. John has two aquariums, a big salt water aquarium and a smaller fresh-water one. The smaller one has lots of gold fish. It’s filled with waves of darting oranges and gold. He uses these to feed the big salt-water fish that putt around waiting to be fed.

The kids like to watch John feed the little flashes of gold to the big flash-eaters. They all yell, “Oooooooh!” Then they ask him to feed the big fish more little fish.

I was thinking about getting Danny and Nicole two gold fish in a gold fish bowl.

The four adults played several rounds of a word game called “Balderdash.” One person picks a card and reads a word out loud. Everyone writes down the meaning of the word (the words are very uncommon or out of date, so rarely can you figure out what it is.) The card-chooser then reads everyone’s definitions randomly, including his or her own, and including the actual definition. Then all, but the chooser, tries to guess which definition is correct.

My crowning achievement was getting everyone to guess that Aliosis was “brittle fingernails.”