Happy Fathers day father. Didn't get you called yesterday, so thought I'd
better keep up my weekly letter to make up for my missed call.
Zach and Jessica (aka Peaty) were up till the wee hours of the morning this
morning packing for their big Belize scuba diving adventure. They left
for the airport up in the cities at 4 am, so I don't think they got much
sleep. They had a crew of about 6 other people here last night 'helping'.
I'm not sure where the normal crew of Zach buddies who normally hang out
here are going to hang out for the next 2 weeks. One of them, Shane, was
been 'crashing' here due to problems at home, so we may still see him
occasionally. Shane is one of our ex-smokers. At least so far. We
bought him a set of stop smoking patches a few months ago and so far he
seems ok. The deal was the patches were free unless he started smoking
again. Zach is a good influence on these guys.
Zach finished his scuba training and got his license earlier this week.
Went out to the lovely not-so-crystal-clear Foster Airnes Lake (an old
quarry, with about 1 foot visibility) to do his final dives. He has 8
dives (1/2 day each) planed for his 2 weeks down there. The other days
will be visitng rain forest, caves, and other pretty stuff. Gets back
Friday the 27th.
Donna & Johny, thanks for the phone message. I think we were over at
Laurie's having some Father's day pie. The boys each prefer different
kinds of pie (Strawberry and French Silk), and I happen to like both, so I
have to suffer through 2 pies :)
We spent the weekend and much of last week trimming our trees. Our front
river birch tree died (I guess they only live 20 years on average), so we
thought we would send it out with some company. I have a wall of branches
5 feet tall surrounding our front yard. Visitors were calling it Bruce's
fortress. Or maybe Bruce's forestress. I couldn't hear them cause my ears
were full of sawdust.
The quaking aspen out back was another tree we added to the pile. Every
spring, it would tip over about 30->40 degrees, and we would rope it back up
(usually in the middle of a windy rainstorm). This year it tipped a bit
too far and must have snapped an important root. So we had about 5 guys
out there this weekend trying to tip it all the way down and it got real
stubborn. Pretty funny watching kids bounce of the tree in ineffective
karate moves. Zach wanted to drive our car into the back yard in the worst
way. Eventually we walked enough weight up it and it went down. Then Zach
single handedly pulled it up to the front yard by himself. I think he was
trying to get his he-man confidence back up because earlier in the day I
beat him in arm wrestling. He says it was a fathers day gift (he has been
beating me quit a bit recently), but I think he just wasn't awake yet.
The tree guy will be coming later this week to take the pile and chop down
that tree and an out of control Russian olive. Cost $400 to take out each
tree! I think we only paid $40 for the trees new. If it cost that much
to remove old computers, I'd be in big trouble :)
Love Bruce
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