On Track to Get Back
I guess I'm in a slightly funky sort of mood right now. Its been a long and not unpleasant day. Went for a long walk on the beach with my step mom this morning. Gotta love that gulf coast water! Warm and wee little waves, just shuffle when you walk in the water or you may just step on a stingray.
The afternoon was broken up by the arrival of my sister and nephew number one, Andrew. Always a pleasure to spend time with my sister although, obviously, the present circumstances leave something to be desired. But still, its always good to see her and since she'd been unable to join us in Delaware last month, this is all the better.
Back to the house in Bonita Beach, went swimming with Andrew in the pool, enjoyed watching the simple pleasures that a 3 year old can take in merely flailing his legs into the water. Children are amazing for more reasons than I can count but one of the most important ones right now is their blissful ignorance of larger issues that face grownups. I'm envious of their innocence.
Their because my brother, his wife, her parents and my other nephew, Zola, all showed up in a rush of bodies, people, heat (have I mentioned that its hotter than hell here? nah, its not that bad and certainly kicks the poop out of Chicago in late October). But yeah, it is hot but not unbearable by any means. I prefer sweating to shivering any day. It was alot of fun to watch the two little oblivious children play in the pool.
A nice evening of time together, looking through ancient photo albums, back to the early days in Germany, the steamer they immegrated over on and pics of my dad as a young child, a boy, a young man and then later on as an adult, father, husband and sailor and all around wonderful guy. It was nice and illuminating to look at my family's history in black and whites. It made me think to my own future and what the scene would be like in the context of the digital age, can't really go handing around old memory sticks or flash cards, can we?
Cool little side note:
I just went and used the bathroom and found a tiny little frog in the sink as I was rinsing up. It was no bigger than a dime as it hunched up against the pastel porcelain. I captured him gently and released him into the back yard. So my good deed for the day's been done at least once and probably twice.
Blatant Commercial Endorsement
Anyway, one quick product endorsement for the day because I dig it. I picked up an Olympia Soundbug at Fry's on my way to the airport yesterday because I have yet to have gotten my iRock 300w FM transmitter to allow me to beam my iPod music to any radio tuned to the right station. Actually I tried to buy one but they didn't have them and I saw the Soundbug.
I don't know if anyone's familiar with this little unit but what it does seems like magic but isn't. You attach the little unit to a flat surface, suction it down, plug it in and turn it on. It turns any flat surface into a soundboard or speaker. No, it won't blow your doors off with gut twisting bass but it does play well and I'm quite curious to see how the sound quality changes on different surfaces. But so far, I'm digging it quite a bit.
And it doesn't hurt that I picked mine up for $30 when every other one on the shelf had a $50 tag on it. Same exact thing, just mismarked and I walked out with a 40% off savings. Not sure if its fifty dollars cool but its definitely thirty dollar cool.
