The Last Month Plus...

So, in case you hadn't noticed, I am not the most disciplined with this dang thing. But, I am here now.

The last month and a half have been busy, so I will do the highlights:

In late June was my wife's birthday! We had our private celebration at the Cheesecake Factory, and then a party at Wilfs with a bunch of friends. Both were good and my wife loved her hard won gift.

In early July was our anniversary and we had a great dinner at Jake's and a night at a fancy-schmance hotel, woo woo!

And my birthday was later in July and we had a great open house that people came over and ate and talked and we eventually broke out the Wii. Many rounds of tennis, bowling, and boxing ensued. And there was much rejoicing. Yay!

Now onto this weekend. We went to the coast because of the invitation of a friend of ours, who had a rental home that he let us use for a weekend. We had a low key Friday night at the rental, watching "Thank You For Smoking." Saturday, we caught up with our friend, who is pretty amazing. He is a brillant businessman and developer, but his heart is for working with guys who have had a pretty rough history and seeing them have real change in their lives. So, we got to his place and talked for a while before we got into his Hummer. Ah yes, the fun begins. He drove us through some land that he has bought and some that he gave away to the local municipality, all of which was fairly untouched other than a couple of trails and roads. We got out and one point and hiked a little ways to a nice hilltop. The sun was warm and the wind was blowing. Just a beautiful, pure day on the coast, which was very refreshing. On our way back, as we were going up a small but pretty serious incline, and our friend looked at the gas gauge and informed us that the gas tank is empty, which was emphasized by a slight sputtering of the motor. His answer to this was to hightail it through the back country on some "roads" to get back to his place as fast as he can, where there was a 5 gallon can of diesel waiting for his thirsty vehicle. When we arrived back at his place, we were all very hungry as wandering on foot along the hill and the exhiliration of the Hummer ride made us all quite famished. He parked the Hummer and asked if we should take the convertible... ummm, yes. Yes we shall. The car is an AMG, which is faster than a Ferrari. I only know this because he showed us the shift paddles on the steering wheel. We drove to a little seafood place of his recommendation (I hate seafood, but my wife loves it and has been fairly deprived since we got married, sorry honey.) And the drives to and from were punctuated with "sprints." He would find a place to speed up and get all the way up to 70 mph in the span of about 7 seconds, usually towards an intersection or another (stopped) car. We are fortunate that our friend has no desire to see us come to harm, otherwise, his motives (and desire to live) might have come into question. And to top it all off, we were invited to a bonfire on the beach that night, where a bonfire that was taller than my head was successfully built, despite being nearly thwarted for a lack of paper. S'mores ensued, once the fire got going.

That is all for now. Peace to you.