White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Hmmm, things are getting a bit complicated. I'm just not keeping up with the whole blogging thing. But enough of my insufferable whining, let me tell you about the final days of the GREAT VACATION OF 2005 (pause for echo effect). Things actually went a bit better after the Mrs started to recover from whatever had pounded her down into the sand. She was still a bit on the frail side and seemed to be inundated with frantic emails and even more frantic phone calls the entire week. These, of course, were regarding work. While the Mrs was valiantly trying to deflect as much occupational detritus as she could, we continued on with exposing the children to all of the wonders of Metro-Ithaca. We went off to some of the parks and gorges (so we could throw rocks into the water), we stopped off at the Science Center to play with snakes (much to Hero-Dad's horror) and we stopped off at Purity Ice Cream for a little treat. We also made it down to Owego for a ride on the old diesel train which was a big hit with Jacob. He really enjoyed the puppet show that they had on the train and was extremely upset that it only lasted 2.5 hours. The experience, as bumpy as it was, led me to believe that train travel is actually a lot nicer than driving the tank about. This conclusion was inspired by the long stretches of highway that were reduced to 1 lane due to 'ditch digging' between Ithaca and Owego. Bletch. Made me want to cry. Alexis, who has been having a rough spot with a virus, was acting up a bit as well. One evening she learned to pronounce Machiavellian on the first try. I was mildly amused but not entirely surprised. Later that evening she engaged in a massive temper tantrum that solidified my belief that she will be the end of me before she graduates from college. On the last full day of vacation, we drove up to Rochester to meet our friends (Sean & Lucy) with twins. Sean was the best man in my wedding and Lucy was my 'Little Sister' in college. We are all very familiar with each-others lives. So much so that we put them on our list of people to take care of our twins should something happen to the Mrs and I. Their twins are just as adorable as ours were at that age and they look very happy in the new home they had bought. They are somewhere between Rochester and Buffalo actually, just beyond Greece. Nice, rural, quiet. Something that the Mrs would never tolerate. We only brought Jacob along since Alexis was a bit ill yet and we did not want to infect the infants. It was a long drive but well worth it.

While we were out and about, we had left the hounds outside on the back deck at the FOB. This, as it turns out, was a bad idea. Every time a car drove by on the gravel road they would start barking and howling thinking that it was us returning from wherever we had gone. After a couple days of this, the neighbors got a bit tweaked and left a few messages for the parents. Sure, it was a week-day and you would think it would not bother anyone ... but apparently there are 3 people who live in the darkest deeps of the woods who would rather listen to the donkey bray on the distant farm than have to hear a couple of dogs howl. We kept them inside when we were gone from then on. Odd, they don't do this at home. Must be all the liberalism in the air getting them all buggered up. That, or the damned Trilateral Commission. Either way, I spent a bit more time with the dogs after that. They really enjoyed chasing after rocks that the kids would throw down into the gully-wash. You know, if we had spent the whole week throwing rocks into the gully or creek, the whole family would probably have been just as happy and entertained. I think I'll plan for that on our next trip up to the FOB.

The trip home was awful. 230 miles of misery. Alexis did not drink nearly enough of her Dramamine spiked water and ended up spewing 10x the volume of her stomach. Jake, on the other hand, drank his entire bottle of ambrosia which only seemed to agitate him more. He was a non-stop chattering machine and insisted that he had to pee before we got to the first charted stop. When we did finally get to Gibson, we tanked up on gasoline including the two 5 gallon containers for a total of 28 gallons. At 2.89/gal (pretty good price, eh?), it was a small fortune. With prices here in the Philly area topping off at 3.35, I'll certainly have to talk to the Mrs about using the SuperSaturn for our weekend shopping trips instead of the FamilyTank. The damn thing has a 26 gallon capacity and she refills it every week. Grrrr.

Final note, I've managed to crawl through the 2000 emails in my work email inbox. Bletch. The Garden went wild while we were gone and the tomatoes have formed a new union to conquer the whole agricultural sector. The cucumbers are done and the green-beans are on their last cycle. It's nearly time to haul in the compost and start to till it under. That, and the thousand other tasks I have in my queue ... some vacation, I'm glad to be back home and get some rest!