Great moments in vacation, July 2007 edition

Eschewing work and other responsibilities, I flitted up to Traverse City, Michigan for ten days for vacation, and to see family and friends.  It was fun, relaxing, and actually productive. Most of all, educational.  Here are some of the highlights in the form of short vignettes:

The dog who got his eye bit out by another dog and lived to tell the tale

Our awesome neighbors have a pug whose eye was bitten out by another dog at a park a few weeks ago. Through emergency surgery, the eye was put back where it belongs (and seems to work, for the most part), but the dog has to wear a large cone around its neck to prevent infection.  Despite what I would imagine to be a pretty disturbing experience, the pug has a great attitude, and is happy, doing what dogs do best: snuffling, licking, and chasing things.  And because it has a huge cone around its head, the animal has improvised by using it to scoop up things to feed into his mouth.  A session of fetch (scoop-bite, scoop-bite) ended with me laughing hysterically on the ground. Clearly, I am a bad person, to seemingly take delight in a little creature's misfortune, but dude, it was hilarious. 

I guess you had to be there.

Taking care of a car is, like, hard work, y'all!

I now know how to wash, wax, and fully detail a car.  Thanks Dad!

Man vs. Wild: Northern Michigan Adventure

I watched upwards of twelve episodes of MvW over a couple of days.  Then, when I went on a long hike stroll with my mother and a friend, I heard the soothing voice of Bear Grylls in my ear: Wild raspberries-- eat them-- you need to eat as much as you can, and often, to survive in the wild! ...Oh, and that dragonfly too-- protein! ... See that cliff over there?  You can climb it by inserting your fist into the craggy notches and pulling yourself up to escape from the grizzly bears ...If you are getting overheated in the midday sun, slosh around in that mudhole like a hippo in the Sahara. 

I love this show.

Not wanting to embarrass my mother more than is expected, I was able to suppress most of my instincts to shimmy up trees or rappell down a dropoff.  I resisted all except one:  stealing ripe cherries off a tree and running like Bear from a mountain lion.

Baseba....zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....

There are a lot of great things about baseball, I am sure, since it's the most American sport and all. You can eat hot dogs there, drink beer, enjoy the setting sun and the stadium lights ("If you build it, they will come"), and the mascots might give you free things.  It's also cool that a whole crew of ripped guys scamper around in pajama-like outfits, and sometimes slide through mud to touch the "bag" in time, whatever that is. I realize that there's a lot of skill involved- - that it's hard to hit the ball 300 times out of a thousand or to decide when you should be running and when you should be standing.  I respect the baseball and the traditions that surround it--  the eating of bratwurst and nachos, the squirming around in molded plastic stadium chairs, the participation in The Wave, the high-fiveing of the team mascots. Oh, and the watching of the ball-hitting and running, diving and tagging.

But seriously, I have to ask: what can be accomplished in NINE whole innings that can't be done in six?  Or five, for that matter? 

Nothing, you say?  Yeah, that's what I thought.

Meat-legs

Traverse City receives quite a bit of tourism in the summer months for the beautiful lakes, vineyards, chocolate confections, general cuteness, and the Cherry Festival, a celebration of -- you guessed it -- all things cherry (northwestern Michigan's largest export).  There are carnival rides, games, cherry pie eating and pit spitting competitions, a crowned Cherry Queen, and more cherry-related food than you can count (cherry burgers, cherry hotsauce and salsa, cherry ice cream).  There are also other foods present, in case you don't want cherry meatballs, and this year we noticed a stand offering non-meat/fruit combinations: a proper BBQ joint.  They had the usual ribs, burgers, sausages, and pork chops, and, disturbingly, a giant, cooked turkey leg.   The leg of an overgrown fowl, still on its leg-bone.

Although the parents assured me that this is normal fare and even good-eatin', it was pretty startling.  I can understand eating the meat, yes, but a drumstick like that is like chewing on a dinosaur leg in The Flintstones.  Are we still in Medieval times, when we didn't have knives or whatever to cut ones dinner into convenient morsels? Am I this removed from popular culture?

And I had thought learning stopped after college!

Comments

[Nick]

On the baseball question: a perfect game should last the span of an afternoon. Game should start about 1:00-1:30, you get your hotdog, you have a couple of beers, ignore the game for a bit, go wandering off with your friends, come back for the ending, and are done in time to go get dinner. Five or six innings will only last you two hours or so--not nearly long enough. Nine will sometimes run on too long (and they don't have a lot of afternoon games anymore, aside from Wrigley), but when it's good, it's nigh-perfect.

[camille]

So maybe I should walk around more and ignore the first hour. The only problem is, I've never been able to pull that off at Tiger Stadium, Wrigley, or where the TC Beach Bums play. I'm not denying that the games are fun-- just that they're three or four innings too long. Maybe I should just stick with skiing?

[Gloria]

My father keeps telling me that I wash my car "wrong" (I don't know what "wrong" is - I mean, is there really a wrong way to wash a car?), so now when I go home I let him deal with it.