Back to reality

I had my wonderful 2 weeks in Rhode Island and am back on North Country soil again.  Before I went to RI I went to our family meeting, something we have every summer.  A smaller crowd this year than we have some years.  It was our 40th gathering.  Yikes.  We get together to talk about money, camp, each other, etc.

My trip to RI was great.  I got to be with my sister and her husband for a day or so before Paolo returned to Italy.  They came to Silver Lake, too, and we had a nice visit while they were there.  Molly got to swim in fresh water.

We didn't do much that was exciting or different in RI, which was fine.  Lots of reading and quiet time, beach time every sunny day (and there were a lot of those), lobster a couple of times, RI corn (delicious) every night, some shopping and mostly just a lot of good visiting.  The beach was grand--my mother's town beach is very nice,  not too crowded most days.  It was very crowded (by our standards) on Monday the 12th, which was Victory Day in RI.  I think only RI still celebrates Victory Day--it used to be called V-J Day (Victory over Japan) but they finally realized that wasn't appropriate, so they changed the name.  It's really just an excuse for another summer holiday in the state.  Anyway, that was the only time the beach was uncomfortably crowded.

We ate at our favorite places.  Jenica came to visit.  The dogs behaved well.  Treasure swallowed one of Mark's socks, then threw up for 2 days until she finally threw up the sock.  Swell.  That was the only dog incident, thankfully--no running away, just a couple of walks in the park and lots of time sunning on the deck at Liza's.

There's not much more to say about the trip.  It was so so nice to be with my family, having a good time together.

I came back on Saturday, and uneventful trip.  Too much traffic, which seemed strange, but not a big deal.  I went to Sunday dinner with my friends--it was at one of Bill's camps (he has 2)(we call him a land baron).  Food was excellent and all were in rare form and feeling good.

Yesterday I went to Burlington, to the dermatologist to have some more pre-cancerous stuff frozen on my arm.  A nice enough trip but I didn't do much else while I was there, went to a grocery store for a few things then came straight home.  I had planned to spend the night in the boat house, packed a few things & went down there but ka-zowie we had a power outage so I went home to call it in.  Power was out for a bit more than 3 hours--I went to bed.  Tonight I'll be in the boat house--it's warm at night and I like sitting on the porch there, reading quietly.