Clear skies

Another lovely summer weekend has past by. I spent the past weekend at JoeyJoe’s cottage near Brighton, ON for the annual ‘Boyz Weekend’. Regrettably both MikeMike and nIVEK couldn’t make it which was disappointing because they are great guys and were missed. JoeyJoe picked me up Thursday and we spent most of the day cleaning the cottage after we arrived. We picked up fish and chips for dinner after passing on chicken as we couldn’t tell if the restaurant was open or not… It was odd. All the signage was removed from the store. There wasn’t any indication the store was actually open and serving and not renovating or whatever. The fish ended up being delicious so… *shrug* JoeyJoe has been mudding and sanding the cottage so it was a mess. There was dust on everything. I’m sure we emptied that poor little vacuum six or seven times. The cottage was much better once we cleaned but wow… drywall dust makes such a mess.

Dean brought both his kids up on Friday. I’ve never met his daughter before. She is a typical nine year old ball of energy. Dean’s son Henri also came up for the weekend. Later in the evening Captain and his brother Andrew arrived. So with the gang all present the good times began. The daytime highs for most of the weekend were ridiculous nearly 40 degrees. So any physical activity resulted in a sweaty t-shirt and exhaustion. Unfortunately the shoreline around JoeyJoe’s cottage is really weedy and gross. As hot as it was I still didn’t want to swim in the water – which is saying a lot.

Even the frog is staying out of the water.

We did manage a few activities. Last year we tried in vain to take down an old tree fort. This year we thought about how to take the tree fort down instead of just smashing it. Go figure. In less than 15m of strategic hits the tree fort was down!

Victory!

Off and on throughout the weekend we fished. Wow… after the incredible success of fishing in Apsley I was excited to fish again. But it was certainly night and day. Joe and I fished from the boat on Thursday. I caught nothing. He caught two fish. I fished every day, maybe 40 or so casts a day and didn’t catch anything. The only person to catch a fish from the dock was Henri. Hmmpt.

The early evenings were filled with mosquitoes who always drove us inside until around 9:30. Afterward we ventured outdoors to make a campfire. As usual, a small fire wouldn’t do.

What else can we burn JoeyJoe?

There was plenty of drinking. And dinners were a big part of the evening. I was a little shocked at how much my buddies smoked. (And in light of my Father’s passing as a result of smoking – a little saddened as well) It seemed at times to be non-stop.

The butt bucket.

The kids spent a lot of time indoor playing with an old Xbox. The dated console still brought a ton of excitement to the kids. I played with JoeyJoe’s slingshot for part of one day. I launched peanuts all over the cottage lot. You can fire a peanut quite a distance. Although they are certainly not an ideal medium to fire. JoeyJoe enjoys feeding the rats (chipmunks) that inhabit the island. I bet they think of him as the Peanut God. They must… he brought a 50lb bag of peanuts up with him…

It was a fun few days unwinding with friends. We ate well. Drank well. And enjoyed a lot of laughs. These days are too few.

I was having issue with my older iPod. It would appear to be connected to the WIFI but there was no internet access. I found resetting the network settings helped. To do so: Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings

update

Strangely one of the first things that attracted me to linux and ubuntu was the incredible flexibility of the backgrounds. I love having random backgrounds. I also have a few Windows boxes. The Theme manager for Windows always seems to screw up… even on Windows 10. And it is really limited. (It is really ridiculous and embarrassing…come on Microsoft) Anyway…I just came across this little gem which I first found here. Wow! A solid wallpaper manager for Windows. Thanks John!