Goodbye, summer!

This past weekend was the traditional closing-up-the-lakehouse weekend but with untraditionally nice weather. I arrived Friday night to steamed crabs and sweet corn-on-the-cob. Normally I scavenge crab legs from family members who eat the lump meat inside the main part of the crab, because some of the guts in there gross me out, whereas the legs contain meat and not much else. Feeling slightly adventurous, I decided I'd learn how to open up the carapace and eat all of the meat in a crab. It isn't as tricky as I'd imagined.

On Saturday I forewent a hike at Dolly Sods with my dad, brother, and sister-in-law (their pictures) in favor of a day of quiet relaxation. I dusted off my fondue pot for a deliciously herby sage cheese fondue during cocktail hour by the fire. Dinner: fire-roasted yams (with brown sugar and butter on top) and chicken wings with our customary rosemary–butter coating. I had my last s'more of the year by firelight after dinner and fell asleep to the chirping of katydids.

On Sunday I slept in. After a late breakfast of pancakes and bacon, I joined my brother and sister-in-law for a motorboat cruise to the farther reaches of the lake, where a weekly sailing regatta was taking place, and where people seem to enjoy displaying unusual yard ornaments. And we saw the legendary swan boat. When we got back, I took my new kayak out for a paddle, but it wasn't a great time of day for it—hot, crowded and noisy with boats, and choppy from all the wakes. I paddled out to Stump Point and back, for a total distance of about 1.5 miles. Dinner: London Broil, twice-baked potatoes, more corn-on-the-cob, and sautéed mushrooms and onions. And some robust red wine, the identity of which I didn't catch. My parents defeated the team of me, my brother, and my sister-in-law in the second of two rounds of Trivial Pursuit, which I attribute to the fact that the members of my team were infants when the questions in this edition were written! We can usually remember to think back to a world map with a Soviet Union and two Germanies, but we're at a total loss at the 70s-era pop culture questions.

As soon as I woke up on Monday morning, I donned my paddling gear and headed out in my kayak to enjoy a quieter experience on the water. This time I went over to Red Run Cove, where I'd heard I might see some beavers or muskrats. I didn't, but it was a very nice ~2.5-mile paddle. Afterwards it was great to return to a breakfast of my family's famous chocolate chip croissants. Later I sat down by the water and embroidered while my dad and brother maneuvered the motorboat onto its trailer and up to the house. The weather was so pleasant, it was hard to leave, but the end-of-holiday-weekend traffic probably wasn't getting any better, and I had to return to real life at some point. Traffic on the drive back was especially slow.

Now if the weather around here will cooperate, I've got my new kayak, my bicycle, and a pair of in-line skates that I've yet to try. On top of that, I've signed up for a series of nature tours of the local lakes, and I'm planning to participate in a neighborhood wildlife study to catalog and count the resident and migratory macrofauna of the local park and pond.

A fine weekend at the lake was had. Pictures available. Since the lake's water level had dropped over the past several months, my dad and brother moved the dock and boat hoist out farther. On Saturday night we all watched for the Perseids, and we even saw them. On Sunday we went for a boat ride to the other end of the lake, stopping by the unnaturally calm Honi-Honi Bar (the county has outlawed liquor sales on Sundays).

On the electronics/craft project front, I'm very nearly finished making a cuff with embedded LEDs. Mine's pseudo-suede with a simple cut-out pattern. I'll probably make another one at some point. It would be nice to have a less bulky battery pack on it, and I'll try to think of a fancier design. Sewing occupies a nice cognitive niche for me, as something I can do while conversing or listening or otherwise 'being' somewhere—it's not as distracting as reading or web-surfing (which is just a particular kind of reading), so it can be a relatively social activity.

Among those with whom I celebrated, the consensus is that Independence Day should be scheduled more conveniently for workers who want to take a long weekend holiday. "First Monday in July" would work for me. rebelzero, jmsa, barawn, and I went to the lake on Saturday and returned yesterday, missing tonight's fireworks display there.

The weekend's weather was mostly nice; I never did measure the water temperature, but it seemed cool, so I didn't go swimming. The Sunfish, kayaks, and power boat all saw time on the water.

We sampled Belgian chocolates and absinthe (yes, it's legal), played mini-golf and Apples to Apples.

There have been some improvements to the lake house since I had last visited. The fire pit has been rotated by thirty degrees or so in order to keep the smoke away from guests. One of the upstairs bathrooms has undergone extensive renovation. And there's now reliable high-speed Internet access, allowing one at long last to kick back down at the shore and surf the web.:)

I had a relaxing Memorial Day weekend, discounting some car trouble. (Today my car's in the shop, where I hope they'll find the coolant leak.) Here are my pictures. On the drive out to the lake, I noticed a lot of dead trees alongside the highway. It almost looked as though a forest fire had swept through the area, but apparently what I saw was caused by a return of the gypsy moths. A snowstorm early last winter knocked down a lot of large branches around our place.

We could have spent the whole weekend keeping track of the three cats: Fritz being curmudgeonly, Tornado Kitty being cute, and Oliver being rambunctious. Mostly we just chilled out by the water and read. It was the hottest Memorial Day in recent memory, and the thinned forest canopy hadn't filled in yet to provide the shade to which we were usually accustomed. The water temperature was probably around 60°F/16°C, so only crazy people went swimming. :) We did some kayaking, during which I saw a couple of big fish in the nearby cove. But the big wildlife sighting of the weekend was a muskrat swimming around. It may have been living under the neighbors' beached dock and been uprooted when they slid their dock into the water.

My 10-year high school reunion was this past weekend, but I can't say it bothered me already to have had other plans. For the interested, photos from that reunion are now online. (They're behind a registration wall, but bugmenot saves the day.)

Pictures from last weekend at the lake with Jamie and Pat are up. I'd like to think that what they lack in quantity this one makes up for in comedy.

I was reading a book excerpt at BoingBoing describing real-life evil scientist Sidney Gottlieb, and a reference to Deep Creek Lake caught my eye. It was the setting where Gottlieb, in 1953, slipped LSD into an unsuspecting colleague's drink. That colleague, Frank Olsen, died nine days later in New York from a fall from a 13-story window. I was going to post a link to that story for those of my readers who've been to my family's place at the lake, just to sort of point at the story and say "Oooo, intrigue!"

And then I followed a link to the Frank Olsen Legacy Project and found that the story goes way beyond that cold November evening in a lakeside cabin. It involves the CIA, biological weapons, mind control, Nazis, state secrets, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, former President Gerald Ford, and a lot of disinformation. The LSD experiments were only the tip of the iceberg in a story about a scientist facing an ethical crisis, a case taught at the Mossad Training School as an example of the perfect assassination, and how far the U.S. government would go to cover up the atrocities it was committing.

It's a chilling story.

Here are my pictures from this weekend at the lake. We went kayaking, visited the Honi Honi Bar, relaxed on the beach, and took the motorboat for a spin. Some of us, not including me, also sunbathed (read: purposely got sunburned) and went swimming. At the time I thought the water was too cold for swimming—an idea that was confirmed each time someone got in the water—but maybe I should've braved it anyway.

I picked up Tornado Kitty from her vacation with Mom and Dad and was convinced to switch her back to regular food from her less-than-appetizing raw food diet. Now that she has lost weight and become more active, she should be able to enjoy normal cat food.

The weather was great today and Saturday, overcast on Sunday. We missed the big fireworks display since the chamber of commerce is strict about scheduling it on the 4th, no matter which day of the week it falls on.

Overall, a fun weekend.

I dropped Tornado Kitty off at the lake today so my parents can take care of her while we're gone. The weather was great this weekend. There's a new toy at the lake: a small kayak, just a basic recreation-type boat for paddling around. It's fun so far, and my parents are thinking of getting a second, since it looks like it's going to be a popular activity.

We had three cats around the house this time: Fritz, Tornado Kitty, and Phil and Larissa's cat Oliver. They were together this past Christmas, but here they had more room to run around; they co-exist peacefully for the most part. Ollie brought home a couple of chipmunks, which he's very proud of, and he doesn't let go of them easily (we're talking about a two-person operation here). Fortunately, when he finally did give them up, each turned out to be alive and capable of scurrying away in a hurry. On an unrelated fauna note, I got some pictures of a hummingbird at rest.

Saturday night's movie was In Good Company, which I thought was surprisingly good.