I’m fresh back from a long week at the lake. Blogging’s been sparse lately as a result. I had a pretty tech-free week. Granted, I checked my email via my phone, and addressed a few of Mom’s tech support issues, but otherwise was off the web for 10 days. And yes, I’m recovering nicely.

I had plenty to keep me busy though. The bunk house is pretty well set. The toilet flushes (mounted exactly 2 bays from the wall), the lights light, the fan spins, the mirror reflects, the door swings, and the metal roof sounds great in the rain. All in all a success. One minor hiccup on the beds. We built them all out of fresh (green) lumber as that’s what the Amish sell for cheap and that’s what the rest of the place is built from. However, it turns out that when you slap a mattress atop green lumber, it acts like a big sponge. Doh! So we dried the mattresses out and placed a vapor barrier under them. I expect they’ll be dry enough by spring that this won’t be necessary.

We also resurrected the boat shelter. Lots of new steel frame parts, a few new straps and supports to prevent another roof collapse. Keep your fingers crossed for a mild winter.

And finally we fixed the boat. It ran for a day and died an unrelated death. It died on my son this time, the one who swims 5000 yards a day. But he breaks down 50 feet from the dock. That’s not fair. Anyway, I dragged the boat home to work on it over the winter… unless it gets stolen first. That would be an awful shame.

Oh, and speaking of swimming… yeah we did a bit of that intentionally too… but how ’bout that Michael Phelps? We do get 2 channels of Olympic coverage up there, but one is Canadian and for some reason they seem to focus a lot on minor athletes sporting maple leaf emblazoned jerseys. But we did see all of Phelps’ swims. It was an amazing feat, but kind of cool to me personally as well. I was near my sons’ ages when Mark Spitz swam in Munich for 7 gold medals. He was an inspiration for many of us who swam competitively back then. In a way it felt like passing the torch down to my sons who are now being inspired by Michael Phelps and his 8 golds. Not all were so inspired though. One young lady (who shall remain nameless) was mostly focused on Phelps’ mom, who was just the cutest thing. But don’t mind her, she’s just sore because cheerleading isn’t an Olympic sport… yet.