Now That's A Weekend

Happy Fourth of July!

Around here, I think we had a pretty good weekend. Kinda laid back, kinda quiet but all good.

Saturday morning didn't start out so well as Ron got a service call at about 7:30 am. Since I didn't want him to suffer alone, I went along with him for the ride. While he goes into his client's building, I wait in the van with my cup of coffee and my book. He's not usually all that long, plus the weather was gorgeous, so it's all good. Besides, I hooked a free breakfast out of him when he was done with the service call. Bonus!

Ron and I tag teamed on the cooking duties for the holiday. We did some of the normal holiday fare. Ron got the grill out and did some portabella mushroom for portabella sandwiches, plus Smith's hot dogs, IN the skins. Damn, that was good.

From the kitchen, I made the corn on the cob and I cut up a bunch of fresh fruit for a fruit salad. I'm telling you, it was all good! The three of us ate like kings! Happy birthday, America!

This year, our neighborhood was LOUD with celebrations of the exploding kind.

Every holiday there is some neighborhood fireworks happening. This year, people must have had bonus money to spend on this stuff, or else someone was handing it out for free. It went on for hours. And, it wasn't the cheap bottle rockets and firecrackers. The sky was lit up with star bursts galore. I couldn't believe it.

Sometime after midnight, Ron and I went to sit on the front porch while he had a cigarette. All you could smell outside is that like sulfur smell that you smell when someone lights a match. And, with all of the gunpowder exploding, there was a haze all over. It was thick enough to cut last night, like a war zone! It even got hard to tell the firecrackers from the gunfire! I didn't hear of any fatalities or injuries in the neighborhood from last night, so this was much better than most holidays.

My favorite part was that I'm usually picking up between 20 and 30 bottle rockets out of the yard the morning after fireworks. Today I picked up a total of three bottle rockets and a couple of M80 wrappers. Bonus for me!

So, it was a good Fourth of July around here. Good food, good family, no damage.

Sunday again the weather was fantastic! We do love to spend time on the front porch in good weather. Directly across from the porch before the street is a large maple tree. We were sitting on the porch when Ron pointed out something on the side of the trunk of the tree. We couldn't believe it, but it was a bat! Now, we've fought with bats in our house before, so I was a little nervous that perhaps this little guy was scoping us out again. I grabbed my camera and got a little closer. Hopefully you can see the little guy just under the leaves on the left side of the trunk.



He was really small. I'm not sure what a good size for a bat is, but he just seemed small. After taking a few pictures, the bat started to go around and around the trunk of the tree. He climbed slowly down the trunk then, and ended up in the grass.



Not that I'm a bat expert, but I've heard that if a bat falls to the ground he cannot fly away. He needs to get up into the air in order to attain flight. Once I saw him in the grass I kinda knew that this little guy wasn't doing too well. My first thought was what can we do to help him! Ron gave me a little talking to that if he's sick, he's sick and there is nothing we will be able to do to fix that. As if to prove his point, the bat crawled out into the street!




I thought it was a suicide mission myself.

After our bat excitement, I went inside to get dinner started. I was trying out a new recipe and I was anxious to get going. Before anyone asks, no, I did NOT cook the bat! We had pork with artichoke and capers! Yes, I AM getting to be Betty freakin' Crocker over here!



If I do say so myself, this was one of my best dinners. The pork loin was so tender and how can you go wrong with artichoke hearts and capers? Three happy tummies over here tonight.

After dinner, Ron and I hit the yard for a few rousing games of bocce. The good news here is that in our first game, I came the closest to beating Ron than I have ever been before! He won 12 - 9!! Hello?? I was almost double digits! I sure did give him a run for his money that game! The second game was more like it with his winning score of 12 - 4. Yeah, I suck, but we had a lot of fun.

That was our weekend. Aside from a bat dying in front of us, it was a darn good weekend. I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday.