News and Updates

1. The first of the Swedes has arrived! Our Swedish friends are coming to visit this summer, after a pandemic without much in the way of travel, but since all of the kids in both families are now adults this is a lot more complicated than it used to be. Everyone’s schedule is different, people are working, people are traveling separately, and so on. But David arrived on Friday and more will follow! Life is good.

2. Of course this is the week that summer chose to return with a vengeance. As one of my favorite current memes points out, I don’t want to say that it’s hot out there but two hobbits just threw a ring onto my front porch.

3. I suppose we should get used to this, though, given the rapidly shifting climate. It’s not the hottest summer of your life, after all. It’s the coolest summer of the rest of your life.

4. We have a lot of car shows here in Our Little Town. It’s that kind of town. I’ve never been much of a car guy, certainly not enough to go to one of those shows, but it is interesting to see them all driving by on their way to the show. Although, it turns out, that the age limit for defining a “classic car” is a lot more recent than I thought, which is how our 2000 Saturn station wagon (recently returned to us after we’d sold it to a friend eight years ago) ended up sitting in a grassy space with shiny 1956 Chevy’s on either side of it and a Model T across the way. Oliver’s workplace put on the show and asked if he’d bring the car by, mostly I suspect to paper the house a bit. In our defense the Saturn still has the ivy and astroturf that Lauren installed last summer so it looks snazzy. It’s just hard to imagine we now own a classic car that we once bought new.

5. Perhaps we should get the official “classic car” license plates for it too, although those come with restrictions.

6. We had a lovely Father’s Day on Sunday. Oliver, Kim, and David were already here and Lauren and Max came down from their dorms and we made pizzas from scratch and strawberry shortcake from berries we’d picked that morning and shortcake that Lauren and Max managed to find after much searching of Our Little Town’s grocery stores and it was a grand time. The house was full of noise and food and loved ones and that’s as good as it gets, really.

7. Mithra seems to be mostly blind now and somewhat arthritic, but is otherwise in good shape for a cat who will be legally old enough to vote in September. She still gets around pretty well, but we can’t rearrange the furniture for the foreseeable future.

8. We’ve been watching the Stanley Cup playoffs because they’re fun and a nice way to hang out together. Oliver and I watched some of the earlier rounds and now we’ve gathered a slightly larger crowd to watch the Finals. We don’t have a particular rooting interest in either the Avalanche or the Lightning, but I’m hoping Colorado wins because Tampa has won two Stanley Cups in a row already and dynasties are boring.

9. We also need to finish Prehistoric Planet, the BBC nature documentary on dinosaurs. We got through the first four episodes and then Kim had to go to Utah to grade AP exams and we haven’t gotten back to the last episode yet. If you haven’t seen them, well, you should. They’re marvelous, and somehow the producers convinced David Attenborough to do the narration, as should happen with all nature documentaries.

10. Harbingers of a rapidly approaching American Independence Day: a) Lefty, Claw, and One-Eye are already shooting off entire arsenals of fireworks here in Our Little Town and the over/under on garage fires is 4 this year; b) my viral meme from a few years ago is starting to pick up traction again so I will be on the lookout for this year’s trolls; c) the sweet corn is rapidly approaching knee high, which bodes well for later this summer, and d) the local stores are running low on jello, though this might just be a supply chain issue.