Lake time

This past Saturday the Man got up early (5:45) and went surfing. He's nutso like that. When he came back at 11-ish, I had gotten up and gotten a few things done, so we packed teh car and went to his parents' small cottage on Little Squam Lake in New Hampshire. It was glorious. It was about 5-10 degrees cooler, a million percent less humid, and very relaxing.

We took the boat out on the lake (and got lots of sun) and I felt surrounded by dark blue water, green trees and the outlines of mountains in the distance. There was very little else to think about, and that was perfect.

There are a lot of older, retired couples in the camp area, along with the Man's parents, and they were having a little get together. Generally, I admit to not being terribly interested in stories about people's children and grandchildren if I don't know them, but these old guys were telling stories about their days in the military and one guy was talking about the recent capture of Whitey Bulger because apparently a friend in South Boston had been killed by Bulger. I know, WHAT?! Indeed, he told me all about the gangs in South Boston and the cushy court jobs some of the thugs got and the jobs as longshoremen other guys got and how product from the ships mysteriously disappeared (like on Season 2 of The Wire!) and how sometimes these court officials would look the other way when people they knew were brought before them. Let me tell you, this made for great story telling. Three of the older gentlemen had been in the Navy and since my father always worked on ships I really liked hearing their stories about the Korean War and the Cuban missile crisis. Actually, they were in those conflicts but the stories were just about regular stuff, like:

Bob: One of my jobs every Monday morning was to wind all of the ship's clocks to make sure they were set to Greenwich time.
Leslie: How long did that take?
Bob: About an hour and a half.

or

Owen: I had never been on the water, and I was just 18 and my old man dropped me off at the Laconia train station and I had never even been on a train, and I ended up in Boston and I had no idea where to go, and some wonderful stranger took me all the way to the ship and I was five minutes late and they held up opening ceremonies for me. I was so embarrassed!

or

Gary: It was three days until we were discharged and all of the guys snuck into the officers kitchen and stole five pounds of hot dogs and a bunch of cans of beans and we cooked them all but we couldn't eat them all. Five pounds of hot dogs is a lot of hot dogs! We could have been thrown in the brig for hot dogs!

Old guys, how are you gonna be so cool?

After much laughing and talking and listening to old stories, we went to bed and slept for almost 10 hours in the cool camp. Ahhh.

Sunday we went home and did more stuff that we had to do and I memorized some lines and bought a dehumidifier for the basement and tried to ride the wave of relaxation just a little longer.

Ahhhhh.