There's been plenty going on lately, ergo my inability, it seems, to keep up with it all. My father-in-law was in the hospital recently, and at this point is requiring more maintenance than he has in the recent past, He doesn't seem to enjoy the experience of actually acting all of his 85 years of age, although after having gotten him a cell phone to use in emergencies and showing him how to use the one-button-dial feature, he really seems to dig that. He really didn't like it when I gave the inside of his car a thorough scrub-down, and checked all of his signal bulbs, replacing a few in the process. I explained to him that he had a girlfriend, and if there's one thing women hate, it's driving around in their boyfriend's skanky car, unless you're 17, then it seems to be pretty standard. Speaking of teenagers, my daughters were with me for a week in July, and I frankly feel a little more connected to them, (not much, but a little.) I went to a public pool for the first time this summer with Syd, and am thus now burnt and peeling; ah, well, the experience of being a dad. Yesterday Martha and I made our annual trek to the St. Andrew's Society of Detroit's Highland Games Scottish festival which was, as always, loads of fun. Even somewhat kid-friendly, if you can believe it; there's parts of the festival, of course, they specifically don't recommend for family attendance, but they're up-front about all that, so it's all good. I found a t-shirt that said, "I'm married to a Scot; Pray for me!" Everyone seems to have gotten a good laugh outta that, and I actually managed to get the stains out that proabably landed it on the clearance table in the first place, so, once again, we're good. It's always interesting to watch the heavy events, like the Caber Toss, and the Hammer Throw, and I got some awesome pictures, which will hopefully get up here in some sort of timely fashion. Definitely no lack of character on a day like that, although I mused about what a Croatian festival would be like; Martha said given our family reunions, you probably wouldn't really wanna know, but also said she promised to take my 94-year-old aunt to one of the upcoming Croatian church festivals. More food vendors and fewer kilts are what I'm thinking are the primary distinctions. But overall, I gotta tell you, I really am feeling a lot better, at least about myself; my brain is just kinda going, "things could definitely be a lot worse." I also couldn't recall if I had posted the following new images here, but I've been having fun playing around with this kind stuff, too. which makes me feel good.
Neat, huh? It takes a lot of work to get them looking like that, because the whole operation is essentially scaling a photo or other artwork to fit the paper, but the results are worth it, at least to me. All that, and here comes school again, right around the corner. It all seems way too short at times; or maybe that's just life itself.