Wrap-Up

Today is the last day of summer vacation--not the last day of summer, of course, that's nearly a month away, thank goodness. And it's not the start of "fall activities" in general because we've been doing soccer in one capacity or another all summer.

But it is the first day of school. So today is The End.

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I was going to post about dining on vacation, but instead of doing a whole separate post, I'll just mention it here. It can really be summed up in one sentence:

We spent about twice as much on food as on attractions.

We stay in time share, so we have a full kitchen, but we weren't really inclined to either shop or cook much. Probably partly affected by our late-Sunday trip to Wal Mart for frozen stuff to make for arrival-night dinner. I have NEVER seen a Wal Mart so packed. Out of 24 or so check-outs, they had less than a dozen in service, and the lines snaked through the racks of T-shirts and artfully arranged produce. We managed to grab a line with only three people ahead of us, but they were either non-English speakers or taking advantage of their ESL appearance to have 60+ items in their carts in a 20-item line. Very annoying.

Most of our dining out was pretty mundane, even when it was very good. One stood out. Rioz is a new Brazilian steakhouse. They have fixed price dining with huge salad bar containing not only regular salad and prepared salads but all kinds of cheeses, hot and cold seafood dishes, and sushi. Each table gets cheddar mashed potatoes, polenta, and cinnamon bananas. The meat course is delivered by gauchos carrying over a dozen cuts and preparations of beef, pork, chicken, and lamb. If you want them to offer it, you have a paperboard disk that's green on one side. If you have enough and want them to leave you alone for a while, you flip it to the red side. They also make an awesome drink, Caipirinha, at table-side. And they have an incredible dessert cart. We spent over $50 more there than any other restaurant, even though they ended up not charging for one of the kids. But it was well worth it.

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Yesterday Number One's soccer team participated in the first tournament of the year. They did well enough in the seeding round to put us at 3rd seed in the bottom bracket, which is a good place to be. They played the 6th seed and won 1-0, though the game was delayed twice and called early due to storms.

Yesterday the weather was horrible. Nearly 100 degrees, very still, humid air. Once the storm hit, it dropped to 72 in about a minute and a half. I do not exaggerate. Unfortunately, it stormed all night down there in Gettysburg, flooding the fields so that they canceled today's games. Which was ironic, as the weather was simply gorgeous today--80 with low humidity and a nice breeze.

Oh, well. At least we didn't have to get up at 6:00 this morning.

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I had, like, six other things I wanted to blog about. How many times do I have to forgot blog topics and book ideas and scene development and charactization elements before I learn to write stuff down?

I need a holster. With a pen and pad. Seriously.

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Okay, I'll end you all breathing a sigh of relief that this wrap-up is so short and simply say, to those of you who are also facing a new school year and new freedom tomorrow...

Good Luck and Congratulations!