in the hours after

or, in this case, the days after.

a week away from the office is good for the soul, but bad for el paperworko. i've been busy busy since my re-entry on monday, and it has taken me until now - thursday afternoon - to find a moment to pause and post.

vacation was a wild success this year. family, am i right? i think we all had fun, and nearly everyone got to stay for almost the whole week. highlights include:

1) bonfire! we've talked about having bonfires before, but we just never get around to it. this year, we came through. scott and i thought we could buy some bundled firewood over at the baitshop - but no. foodlion, lowes foods, farmer's market - no, no, no. lowes hardware? no again. so we just drove around aimlessly until i spied a vacant lot filled with giant piles of brushy stuff and made scott pull over. we filled his hatchback and backseat with sandy branches and small logs torn from the piles, and headed home with the loot. oh! and we did succeed in scoring a large pile of sap-laden pinecones at the farmer's market. good kindling. after dinner, the whole family kicked in and we combed the immediate area around the house for firewood. joe flexed his engineering muscles and somehow he and scott broke down a 40'+ tree into usable chunks, using only their hands and the support posts of the deck for leverage. impressive! we made s'mores and roasted hotdogs and basked in the smokey warmth.


2) crabbing! our housemate, michele, clued scott and i into crabbing just before we left. catching crabs? why not! so we got string traps and frozen chicken necks at the baitshop on the corner - and in a fit of inspiration, a slim jim - and headed to the little bridge and tidal canal on 40th street. i had read a little online about catching crabs, and sources say that crabs get bored with the same old bait and are intrigued by different smells and oily patches in the water... hence the slim jim. sources also say that the best times for crabbing is when the tide is rolling in, just before high tide. we got to the spot about an hour before high tide, so conditions were perfect. also, this perfect time was about 11:30 in the morning so we didn't even have to get up early or anything torturous like that. screw you, early-bird-gets-the-worm! i ended up catching 7 crabs!! to keep a crab, it must be at least 5" across - and these were all keepers, and one or two were downright huge! it was really thrilling, actually. the water was shallow, so i could kind of make out the hoop as it lay on the canal floor... then i would sometimes be able to see if a crab was in it or not - but most times, i would just jerk the trap to the surface out of sheer boredom or impatience and nearly fall over from surprise to see one or two big ole blue crabs scrambling around in the trap. yikes! there was shrieking. and yes there was wimpish prancing and gnashing of teeth. and my mom had to help me with getting those pesky snappy crabs into the bucket. and i can't wait to do it all again next time we go camping! crabbing is also satisfying in it's democracy. there doesn't seem to be much skill involved - you just toss the trap out there and wait, then jerk it to the surface with a little finesse. catching 7 was out of no skill of my own - just sheer luck! which is sometimes even more satisfying. scott ended up not catching any crabs big enough to keep, and for a while he was chasing the trail of a wily ole grandaddy crab... but that crab proved to be to smart and elusive for the likes of our slim jim. ahhh. maybe next year.

2) Hand and foot! a card game that our family plays obsessively when we get together as a group. it is some sort of mixed-breed canasta-style game that involves a lot of luck and screwing of thy neighbor. david and i were partners for the first game, and trounced everyone so badly that we almost lost appetite for the game entirely. but we persevered and played many more hateful games through the week.

the rest of the time was spent lounging in our village of sun shelters set up on the dunes behind the house, or playing with maddie (cutest baby in the universe, as shown by the slideshow on jessie and david's blog). i started a new knitting project, of which i will hopefully post pictures soon...

in other news, my garden is taking over the yard. eeek! we've kept up the spring schedule of a few sunny days followed by a day or two of torrential downpour.

i bought a new bike last night!! it is a jamis earth cruiser 6-speed and it is S-W-E-E-T. entirely chrome plated, and so shiny that it would take your eyes out on a sunny day. you can see a picture here, but i can't guarantee how long the picture will be there (right now, it's the second picture down - the shiny chrome one): http://bulldogbikerestoration.com/Currentbikes.html

this is a long post. i think i'll quite now.