Dogs and Saturdays

I don't understand Makayla, my Keeshond, sometimes. Like this morning for example.



I wanted to sleep in and enjoy waking up slowly and leisurely in the morning in bed. Maybe I think I had visions of even sleeping in until 8 or 9 am.

Makayla, however, wanted to play and made sleeping impossible. I looked at the clock which was blinking 6:30 and realized that on a normal morning, the dog would be crawling back onto the bed for a few extra minutes/hours of shut-eye.

Why not today, I wondered?

Alas, it was not to be--and for some reason, she has been glued to me, it seems, for the past hour.

I think she has missed me and she somehow senses that today, I am going to be around at least for the morning. And it really isn't so bad to have a dog that wants to be part of rather than a spectator of life.



I know some people who probably need to engage a bit more.

And so the weekend is off and running. I'm already on my third cup of coffee and the dog is walked, fed, and has two doggie treats in her.

Maybe I'll sit here and watch the Today Show for some amusement.


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Thunderbirds

Which one doesn't belong?


A few weeks ago, when we visited Monticello, the Thunderbird collectors club was having a car show--and Patrick and I had the opportunity to see more vintage Thunderbirds in one place than we have ever seen before.




All of these convertibles make me want to hit the open road and drive down Route 66.

Built before interstate highways, these cars represented the ultimate freedom of the late 50's--a big engine and a fast car.


It was fun to see all of them lined up--ready to hit the road, which they did by the time we departed Monticello--it must have been really something to be along the road watching one after another of these classics motor by.


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Location:Monticello, Virginia

Beaches and Long Weekends

I considered sand this weekend while was at Ocean City. I remembered that during my recent vacation, we had to deal with precious little sand--because there were few beaches.

Ocean City is blessed with a long, wide, very sandy beach. Sand gets everywhere. Especially into places one wonders how it got there.

Much of that sand is kicked up by the tide and the surf crashing against the sandy beach--but still even walking along or over the beach--sand gets to be a nuisance.

Still--I love sand. I love beaches, too.

I was reminded how incredibly hot sand becomes during the daytime as it bakes in the summertime sun. Hot enough to blister the feet of small children. And then, remarkably, even remaining in the sun it begins to cool by mid-afternoon to a nice, soothing warmth.

I have seen that sand comes in many colors: black, gray, reddish, sand, and even pure white like the beaches of Sunset Key in Florida near Sarasota. It also comes in many textures--ranging between a very fine powder and very coarse.

Sand, next to water, may be the most voluminous substance on the planet--although I am not sure that this is fact, I sense it must be almost true.

And like water, sand can be a friend or a killer.

So as I sat on my beach chair firmly in the sand this past weekend thinking about the words to a song that goes--"suntanned toes tickling the sand," I realized that for all of its faults--I love sand. Sand goes hand-in-hand with long weekends, frozen drinks melting in my hand, and the sound of the waves crashing relentlessly against the shore.

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Turtles of Tobago Cays

During our recent vacation, some of the most fun we had was snorkeling

with the turtles in Tobago Cays. Tobago Cays is a collection of small islands at the southern end of the St Vincent Grenadines. It is a marine park and accessible only via watercraft. Wikipedia has a good description of the islands and the park.


The most enjoyable thing we did was to snorkel with the turtles. The turtles generally do not mind having people around them--as long as we are just watching. They, like most other wild animals, do not like to be touched or bothered. They seem to have a live and let live policy.


As a result, I got some pretty good images of the turtles as they grazed on the grasses and did their thing. I have been doing some color correction on the images from my underwater camera--and some of the best images are provided to help document our experience.




I hope they will continue to remind me of a great vacation for a longtime to come.


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Location:Tobago Cays, St Vincent Grenadines

August Blues

Although it is still summer--lot's of people I know are in a funk because of the recent passing of July.

But, things are looking up. Congress came up with an agreement on the debt limit that no one seems happy about--I think that is good.

And I still enjoy the pool--although I have noticed that it is getting darker, sooner.

The days are hot though and that is causing a lot of problems for a lot of people. Then, there was the afternoon thundershower yesterday that caused me to cancel mowing the lawn--so there was some good and bad. Sadly, neither the temperature nor the humidity seemed to notice the passing rain.

So as we struggle with the blues of August--heat, the impending end of summer vacation and the shorter days, let's remember--it isn't February!



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Monday Musings -- August 1, 2011

1. July is gone, get over it--I had to. Summer is still here.

2. Finding 52 mole crabs before 11AM--how to keep two boys and four adults busy at the beach.

3. A little rain made my return trip yesterday mostly occur with the top up on the car simply because I didn't want to stop and take the time to put it down again after I had put it up.

4. Makayla and I had yet another happy reunion yesterday. I'm sure she is beginning to get a bit freaked out every time I go out the door.

5. Sand gets everywhere. Even places it shouldn't.

6. I wonder why the sand gets so hot during the day, but yet begins to cool even though the sun is sit shining on it?

7. I was reading movie reviews and amazingly, the Smurfs have returned in a movie. I wish they hadn't.

8. In an amazing bit of Post Office ineptitude, I had a package shipped Parcel Post from California and it took 17 days for it to get to me after the Post Office had the item.

9. Today is going to be hot. I have a lot to do--so of course it will probably rain while I am trying to do the outside stuff.

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Reflections of July

Paul Simon wrote a song many years ago titled "April Come She Will" which recapped the months of the year from April to September. The phrase he used for July went: "July, she will fly and give no warning to her flight."

July, arguably my favorite month of the year, has indeed flown by in supersonic fashion.

July 2011 came complete with five weekends--I was home only one and I had just returned from a two week trip for that one. Of 31 nights in July, I was away for 17 of them in three very different places--Ithaca, the Caribbean West Indies, and Ocean City.

Wow. And I think I even got the lawn mowed somewhere in there, too.


Last evening, we has a fantastic dinner at a marina side restaurant in Ocean City which really capped the month of July. It was an awesome way to wind up the best month of the year.

And alas, July has flown by and we are standing on the doorstep of August.

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Notable quote

"No gramma, I'm not bored. I like picking the dead skin off your legs. It males me feel like a truck mechanic." - Ethan, while laying on the floor beneath Chris' legs.

We were having a quiet afternoon of napping and chilling at the time.


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Location:Ocean City, MD

From Sea to Ocean

What experiences I have had during the past couple of weeks. From enjoying the Caribbean West Indies to returning to life at work and now spending time on that small strip of Maryland on the Atlantic Ocean shore known as Ocean City.

The view from the condo is fantastic, looking right out onto the ocean. I am sitting here listening to the waves crash just over the dunes and to the sounds of sea birds calling to each other.

It has been a very long time since I have been in Ocean City. Maybe more than 10 years. And I am such a beach guy, too.

I had forgotten how pretty the low sand dunes are as they strive to protect the land from the sea and provide a foothold for shore life.

The long open beach goes on seemingly forever until it slips beneath the waves of the unstoppable force that is the mighty Atlantic Ocean.

The air is clear, although it is already hot as the day is going to be a scorcher.

And I have escaped, once again. If only for a weekend.

What could be better?

Successes and Failures coupled with Ups and Downs

It has been a bit of a wow week, as I shake off the remnants of island time and get back into the grind and pace that is my life.

I have been able to celebrate successes with friends--and today I am celebrating another success as one of our people departs for a new assignment. I can say that I am a bit envious of his good fortune--which he totally made for himself, but that he and his wife are in a place to pick up their lives and go for their dream is reassuring and at the same time reminds me how entrenched I have become in this place where I live.

I confess, I really did not want my recent vacation to end. Often, I get to the point on vacations where I am ready to go home and leave the fun behind. Not so this year. I was in no way ready to step back into the complexities of my life. I could have used an additional week, or maybe a year.

And then, upon my return, I was greeted with a personal failure of sorts. One that I knew in my head was probably going to happen, but that I had convinced myself that this time--maybe this time, the outcome would be different and restore my faith in the system I work within.

But alas, I got the same narrow-minded response that I have come to expect and that I alluded to in a blog I published on September 25, 2010 about Plug-n-Play Leadership: The Wrong Answer.

But that is my own personal axe to bear. (It is axe to bear and cross to grind or the other way around?)

It just still hurts a lot when I take a big personal risk, lay it all out there and then feel as if the paradigm du jour was blindly applied for the sake of easy out leadership.

It took a couple days, but I am mostly over it. Spending time reviewing and editing the images we captured on vacation has really helped. I have about 930 already loaded into Picasa, and there are about 100 more that need loading, but my camera had the wrong date and I need to get the date fixed before I load them into the main directory.

The sine wave of life then is full of ups and downs.

The key is whether the trend is up or down. I like mine to be in a trending up kind of position.

And it is.


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