I also played with my new picture phone a bit. Sandra finished her errands in town and joined me shortly after noon. The nice guy from the heating company, Larry, finished the installation of our new gas cooktop.We investigated the neighbor's tree that was hit by lightning (the tree, not the neighbor). There was no damage to their buildings. One tree was split and knocked over, blocking the driveway. Another had a black burn mark running its length. The next day, we could hear our neighbor and his son-in-law working with their chain saw.
We'd set aside Saturday as day of peace and ease. We walked in the woods, paddled around the north end of the lake in the canoe, swam, read, dozed, stacked wood and gathered kindling, dined on steaks from the grill. My father couldn't make it up the stairs, so we had early afternoon coffee and snacks in the shade near the boathouse.
On Sunday Sandra went to the Cape for Russell's first birthday party while I went grocery shopping for my father and did a few other chores around the house. Michael Francis and Joe rode with Sandra. I'd sent a text message to her cell phone. Joe (age 10) showed her how these messages work. So simple that even a child can do it. Verizon Wireless should package a child with each new phone.
The concept of free long-distance calls is a new and strange one. Until 20 or so years ago, phone charges were measured by distance - a call to Florida, Florida was a lot more than a call to Florida, Massachusetts. Fiber-optic cables have made national distances disappear. My father would prefer to (and does) drive 40 miles to talk with his friend Ted rather than make the long-distance phone call. This new cell phone plan will change things, but probably not quickly.
I attended a regional school system, two small towns joining together to make one small high school. The other town, Ashburnham, was outside of our local calling area until my junior or senior year. Until then, a call to a friend in the next town (a toll call) required much pleading.
My father hasn't been able to get to the dump for a while. Not that he makes much trash; the house is quite tidy. As I was taking one bag of trash and other bags of paper and cans for recycling, I asked if there was anything else. He asked how much room I had in my car (a Subaru wagon). When he was assured that I had plenty of room, he pointed me to three trash bags with cement that had gone bad. (Moisture had seeped in and hardened the mix.) Anyone have anything that needs to stay at the bottom of a lake or pond?
On the back road that leads from my father's house to the Wal-Mart in Gardner, there's a sign by the driveway of a small house: "Worms 24x7".
Woody and Marian were having company this weekend, so Marian baked cookies. She laid them out on the kitchen table to cool, covering them with paper. They had to go out for a little bit. When they return, not a cookie was to be found. The company wasn't coming until the next day, so Marian had time to make another batch. This time, she put the cookies on the dining room table, covered them, and went out. Upon return, not a cookie could be found, just a very happy dog.
We received a bill from the circulation office of the Worcester Telegram. The bill is for 34¢. The good news is that it's a final notice.
One of my favorite sites (though PG-13 and usually not safe for work) is Fark.com. One of the recurring features at the site are their Photoshop contests. Participants are given a theme and they have to use Photoshop (or other image-editing programs) to alter a picture to make it fit with the theme.
This weekend, one of the contests was If the world were more like a cartoon...By the way, Blogger has added a new feature that makes it much easier to add pictures to blogs. I'll try to be judicious in the number of pictures that I include here because I know that pictures can be very slow to load on a dial-up connection, which I hope to have at the camp real soon now.
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