jimsjournal
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jimsjournal |
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Another summer weekend... although this one was just the normal two day size. (Last week -- because of the 4th of July holiday, I had a four day weekend: Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.) Friday night Nancy and I worked at The Towers for a wedding [Lest this make no sense to someone relatively new here, the Town of Narragansett has a couple of historic buildings that they rent for functions such as weddings and Nancy and I sometimes work as attendants at these affairs -- sort of a combination of museum docent and babysitter for the building.] The wedding took place at The Towers as well as the reception. (And the town was even more crowded than usual on a summer weekend night because the Rhode Island Philharmonic was playing an outdoor concert on the Town Beach. If you stood outside the building you could see the crowds a bit over half a mile away down the beach, and sometimes the breeze brought the sounds of the music.) Music at the wedding was provided by Firecracker -- a first rate jazz band. They were so good -- I kept wanting to just stand around and listen to them. The previous night they had played at a public concert at The Towers (Thursday live music and dancing is a regular summer feature) and on Saturday night they were playing a concert at Belcourt Castle in Newport.
On Saturday we met two of Nancy's sisters on the beach (East Matunuck State Beach) -- It was around low tide, which meant that there was a lot of hardpacked sand exposed, great for running (unlike the soft fluffy dry sand above the high tide mark that is impossible for running). So I slapped on sunblock and went for a run. I was running fairly slowly, more like jogging than running (except that, these days, a jogging pace is fairly quick for me). So I ran for not quite forty-five minutes (covering around four miles). In the evening we went over to Nancy's mother's house for dinner (with the same two sister plus one spouse) and had a good meal and sat around talking and visiting. I thought about writing a journal entry when we got home -- but it was after nine-thirty and I had some other stuff to do first and by the time I had finished that and checked e-mail and such, it was closer to eleven and I was just too tired. We accomplished a few chores around the house today -- we have a metal structure set up on our back deck and today we put the tent-like canvas roof on it. We have mesh screen walls that go on it too, but we haven't dug them out of storage yet. Yes, normally we would have had this all set up at least a month ago, if not sooner, but this year's monsoon weather kept us from doing it. Anyway, it makes it very pleasant to sit around a table on the back deck with the netting keeping our the mosquitoes (well, most of them), so over the next couple of months we will probably eat on the back deck more often than we do inside. Jill and I wanted to go for a bike ride this afternoon. My tires seemed a little bit soft but I didn't feel like pumping them up... but a couple of blocks from home Jill was riding behind me and said that my back tire really looked too soft... so we turned around and went back home and I pumped up both tires. We set out again... About a third of a mile from home was riding along when I suddenly realized there was some broken glass in the road directly in front of me. I couldn't swerve right -- there was a high curb -- and I was afraid to swerve left because although I didn't think there was a car overtaking me, I really couldn't be sure without looking and there was no time -- I was only a few feet from the glass when I saw it -- I tried to brake and swerve just enough to miss the worst of it. There was a crunching sound and then a loud hissing sound as all of the air rushed out of my front tire. So... walk the bike back home... and change into running shoes and running shorts... and we went out for a nice run. Okay, almost eleven p.m. -- I pronounce the weekend officially over -- I'm going to bed and read for a while.
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