A bit of this, a bit of that, and a whole lot of fat!

I wanted to write briefly about three separate things that occurred recently that I feel deserve attention, even if only by me.

First, an update on Ms. J, yes the babysitter. She came and ‘sat’ for us again. I know bad idea but it was arranged when we had her the first time. So, we were out later this time; probably pushing midnight. Not a big deal for a college student on summer break. I have to report that she didn’t allow the kids to watch TV. Of course, we all but pulled the plug on the thing and hid it in the other room. BUT…she was sleeping when we got home. Okay, I can deal with that. Well, soon after she leaves I find that she allowed our youngest (then age 3; he just turned 4, I am so proud) to use an ink stamp on the walls in three places! There are now three little zebra heads looking at me when I’m watching TV, eating breakfast, or in the playroom. Need I say more? We will never, ever have her again. We have only ever said that about one other sitter, and she was like 10. Ms. J gets an F in my book for f-ing stupid and generally irresponsible.

On Memorial Day weekend, we decided to make a day of going to a local recreational lake for lunch and a BBQ. I have to preface this critique with the statement that my previous experience with lakes has been either natural ‘hike-in’ lakes in the mountains or large recreational lakes like Lake Powell on the Utah Arizona border. I know that it was a holiday weekend, but I was surprised at how the park service administered the site. There was many, many picnic and RV sites…all right next to each other; imagine town home campsites and you get the idea. Looking back, since we do not have a boat or jet skis, we would not have done it again. All those sites I mentioned were full with people missing teeth, blaring Spanish music out of tiny radios, or wearing bathing suits that they had no business even looking at in a store. It was an experience; we didn’t last past lunch.

My wife and I went to the No Doubt concert this last week. Let me say, the band was great and the music, as always, awesome. We had lawn seats above an outdoor amphitheater. The weather was great. There were lots of people there. We were discussing that the last time we saw No Doubt was 12 years ago. The crowd at the concert was very ‘diverse’ to put it nicely. There were the young kids, the closet ska dancers, and of course lots of girls. But in our section, there were mostly big people. I don’t mean bigger people, but BIG people. The average weight in our section was probably in the 250s! Not a big deal but kind of odd. But looking more closely at those people around us and it appeared that the concert promoters must have been giving away tickets; probably at the local Walmart and on the nearby reservation. I don’t want to get into sketchy territory here, so let’s just say that it was peculiar. Oh and did I mention that one of those large people around us collapsed for some reason during the first part of the show and had to be escorted/lifted out by three big security guards? Yeah, it was an interesting night.