Fun weekend, part 1

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Friday night I practically ran out of work as quick as I could escape the
meetings I was stuck in all day.  I knew we had to get to storage before
they closed and it was going to be tight.
The good news was that when I got home, my wife had already cleaned the
unnecessary things out of the car (quite a lot of stuff) and packed up what
we needed for the weekend.  So, we were able to throw the last few things
in the car and head out.
Going to the storage thing is often a challenge.  But only because you need
to get the access key from the rental truck place across the street.  This
time of year with college students moving back to town in flocks, getting
into the truck rental office can be a major challenge, even if only to say
“hand me that key”.
But, when we got there, there were only three other people there and I got
the key quickly, we got the fire equipment out of storage, and I went back
to get the key.
In the 8 minutes it took my wife and I to cross the street, unlock our
storage, grab the fire equipment, put it in the car and go back across the
street, the line grew to 14 people.
But, I was able to wave the access key from the back and turn it back in
pretty fast.

We had debated a lot of where to eat on our way to NH.  All of the places
along the route we were going to do stink.
But, coming out of the storage place, I saw a McDonald’s across the street
that we had both forgotten.  Not great food, but fast and acceptable for
driving. We were very happy to find the “lost” McDonalds.

It seems like a whole lot of people had birthdays over this last week.
And, evrgreen who we were going to visit was one of them.
We wanted to bring him a present, but didn’t know what to get him.  My wife
suggested getting him some out of the ordinary beer as he’s a big beer fan.
So, we stopped at the very large liquor store in Westborough where they
have an entire aisle of out of the ordinary beers.
Of course I haven’t had a beer in more than 2 dozen years, so I wasn’t very
good at picking them.  My suggestions of “this one has an elephant on the
label, that should be good”, were not as helpful to my wife as was her
reading the ingredients.  The one I pointed to that did make it “400 pound
monkey”, proved that my wife’s attention to how it was made was correct as
I’m told it was not the best.
The good news is that if you buy 6 or more bottles, you get 15% off.  So,
we did.

By then it was late enough that the traffic wasn’t horrible and we made
reasonable time up to New Hampshire.  It  was dark before we got there, but
we didn’t have any trouble finding it.  We been there plenty of times over
the last decade or so and almost always arrive after dark no matter what
time of year.

We had a very nice visit with evrgreen, his wife and their two
dogs.  We’ve known each of them longer then they’ve known each other, so it
is “old friends” either way.  And there never seems to be a shortage of
interesting things to talk about with a physicist/science teacher and
another engineer.
Their house is one of the few places where I sleep as well there as at
home.  (That doesn’t mean well, but most places it is worse then home.)
So, we got a nice night’s sleep.

Saturday morning we were all happy to see it was going to be a great day
and evrgreen made us pancakes for breakfast.  My wife had been
looking forward to swimming in the lake all week and started the day off in
her bathing suit.

evrgreen’s wife and I went into Concord for supplies and so
she could get him a birthday present.  She wanted to get him seat covers
for his new SUV.  Although she was very tempted by the leopard skin covers,
she got him something else.
Of course, I couldn’t not see his reaction to leopard skin car accessories,
so I bought him a fake leopard skin steering wheel cover.
His “What??” was certainly worth the $8.

We spent a lot of the afternoon swimming.  Last week was cold for summer
and rained a lot.  So, the lake wasn’t as warm as it often is at the end of
the summer, but it was still very nice.
It is a fairly small lake and there are several folks out there water
skiing and zooming about on jet skis.  So, I tend to worry about being run
over by some of them more then any issue of swimming.  The only boaters
that seemed to recognize this and assure me they weren’t going to hit me
were two women in kayaks.  I’m pretty sure they posed the least danger to
me off all the water craft.  But, I’m still glad they went around.

To celebrate evrgreen’s birthday, we went off to a Barbeque
place he likes.  We drove there over back roads just about sunset.  There
was one farm we saw that has all sorts of stone posts around it.  I can
only assume it is part of a Stonehenge type thing in New Hampshire.

The BBQ place was pretty good.  I had the “BBQ Sunday” dinner.  That was
pulled pork covered in baked beans, covered in coleslaw with a couple of
ribs to either side like bananas in a banana split.  We also had their hush
puppies and fried pickles.

Then, we went back to the house (by faster if longer roads) and had cake
for evrgreen.  He then tried some of the beers we had brought
him.  Some went over better then others.  But, next time we can concentrate
on the ones he likes.