Everything Else from the Month of Caesar

Well, July is finally over. 

I can honestly say that it will surely go down as one of, if not the busiest summer months the Hough Family has ever had.  A ten-day vacation in Florida, a week at Sanford counseling at a Junior High Camp, a four-day stint up at Eight Point Lake at our family's cottage, the Fourth of July, and several social obligations with our friends.

A whole hell of a lot of July.  And while most of the aforementioned highlights I've already disclosed, there were some other notable highlights to this month as well.  Kris recently decided to undertake the infamous Marie Kondo process of purging and de-cluttering our house, which became the focus on many of our mutual days off.  Yours Truly finally interviewed with the Freemasons, after waiting two months since my initial petition to the local lodge was submitted (the lodge goes 'dark' during the summer months, and they were unable to meet with me sooner.)  Some of our good friends moved away to New Jersey, so there were multiple send-offs for the them and their family.

A crazy, blur of a month which went by in record speed, but holy hell was it a lot of fun.

So yeah.  Here's a few things that popped up here and there between all of the other crap.  Enjoy. . .

Kris kicked off our family 'Kondo'ing' process (yes, the Japanese lady's last name can be used as a verb) where one is supposed to start things:  clothing.  She spent eight hours emptying the contents of her side of the closet and dresser onto our bed, then systematically began the process of choosing which articles of clothing 'bring her joy' (a phrase they often use in the Netflix series and books.)

In the end, she ended up getting rid of nearly half her clothing.  I got rid of about a third of mine, since half of my wardrobe is work clothing, and I rely on it during the school year.  It only took me about fifteen minutes, though.  Just sayin'.

On my birthday, later in the morning, I went to Radio Wasteland to spend a couple hours perusing their wares (a tradition I've adhered to the last few years since they've been open in town.)  I walked away with two new LPs and an arm-load of vintage treasures, but left this gem behind (I took a pic to send to Kris to see if she was interested. . .  she wasn't.)

While I was gone to the record store, the girls decided they'd decorate the house up for my birthday.  Ella, shown here, has more or less moved in with us this summer.  Her parents live around the block from us, so her and Abby have been inseparable this year.

While still waiting for me to return from the record store (yes, I take my time on my birthday), Kris took them up to Plymouth Park for the daily Meet Up and Eat Up program for a late lunch, put on by Midland Public Schools.

In the afternoon, Kris let the girls swim at the neighbors' pool (they - the Angelotti's - were vacationing in Ireland and told us we could use it as often as we wanted, joking it'd be good to stir up the pool once and awhile during their time away.)  We'd end up using this pool on a nearly daily basis throughout the month.  It was awesome.

That evening, Ella's parents - Courtney and Erik (who sponsored my membership petition with the Freemasons, himself being a Master Mason) - swung over for an evening bonfire and some s'mores.  I've had far shittier birthdays.

An amazing beer.  Dragonmead does their homework.

Sending me a picture from home while I was slaving away as a camp counselor up at Sanford Lake. . .

. . . aaaaand of course there's a weird one.

Free Slurpees on 7-11 Day.

Playing Hogwarts Chess. . . with a couple stuffed animals that they picked up at Universal Studios' Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  Who the hell knows why - this is while I was still at camp.

When I finally got back from camp, the second weekend of the month, Kris and the girls were out of town:  Kris was away down in Kalamazoo with the Wives, and the girls were at her mom's house in Clare.  So I went over to my buddy Ryan's house and had a few beers around a campfire.  This Founders offering tastes exactly like a margarita, it's insane.

The next morning, with our wives and children still all out of town (his wife was in Kalamazoo with Kris, as well), Ryan and I loaded up some firearms and went shooting at the Midland Sportsmans Club.  We sighted in my .22 Ruger (shown here) again - I hadn't done so in a year or so - and tried out the new .45 sub-compact my brother Chris had given me before he left for Indiana.  It kicks like a frickin' mule.

After sighting in the .22 and playing around with handguns for awhile (always a good time - I really want to buy a 9mm), we went down to a third range and played with a few larger rifles Ryan owns (he collects firearms like I collect vinyl.)  We shot several magazines worth of ammo through an AK-47 and AR-15, the latter of which was a hell of a lot of fun (the other was meh.)

Yours Truly with an AR-15.  I can see why Trumpers love them so much, they're pretty rad to shoot.

One day while I was out and about running errand with the girls, we stopped off at Target.  Afterwards, on the way back out to the van, we found this:  four identical, black Chrysler Town and Country's (one of these is Kris' - I forget which one.)  There is a serious glitch in the Matrix. . .

Another day of destroying the living room.  And of course this wasn't cleaned up right away. . .

My previously-mentioned new handgun.  For free I'm definitely not complaining. . . but it's definitely more for, say, 'stopping' someone that breaks into your home rather than target shooting.  It kicks like crazy and so is hard to aim well.

One day, while the girls were both away on play dates and Kris was at work, I went to war with the Garage - yet another step on our Kondo'ing process this summer.  The first step was sweeping and blowing out all the debris, dirt and leaves that had accumulated in all the hard-to-reach corners of the garage over the last year or so.

Chris (who, like I said, was moving to Indiana towards the end of the month) was getting rid of some bar signs, and I told him I'd take a few to hang up in my garage.  He was dumping a lot of crap, but I stuck with the larger, nicer ones, which had a beer/Ireland theme to them (fitting for a Hough Family garage, for sure.)

This one is pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Cleaned, wiped down, and well-organized.  The garage now 'brings me joy.'

This seriously took an entire day.  But it was soooooo worth it.

 

 

After our vacation at the Cottage, the girls went off to their respective summer camps.  Abby, who has recently started to show a budding creative side with each passing day - writing large-scale stories, drawing, singing, etc. - took an acting camp.  Their production this week was a collection of short stories pulled from Greek Mythology.

I brought along my SLR, but didn't take many photos.  Alayna took a few from my phone, and Kris filmed a bit with hers, but most of the video files were too large to upload to Blogger (I can hook you up if you're really dying to see them, though.)

Abby was the narrator for one of the stories, and had bit parts in two of the other ones.  Here she's, um. . . a rabbit?

The set was built on one of the smaller stages at Midland's Center for the Arts.

(She did the bulk of the narrating because the other girl could barely speak English. . .)

One more dance number to close out the show.

After the play, picking her up from the dressing room.

. . . and outside the Center for the Arts.

A truly great combination.

No idea.

This is how Marie Kondo wants you to fold your clothes.  In case you were curious.

Abby reads a story to a few of her plush animal friends (including her recently-acquired dog, Fang, from Universal Studios. . . who is inexplicably wearing my camping headlight.)

The Study, Kondo'd.  I routinely go through my vinyl and purge records I no longer want/listen to in order to sell at Radio Wasteland for store credit, so the record collection wasn't in need of being Kondo'd at all.  The library, on the other hand, hadn't been purged since 2016, so it was about time to work through that again anyway.  Over the course of a few hours, I shaved off three piles similar to the size you can see there on the floor before I was done, which was really hard to do.  Now I have more room on the shelves for more decor and artwork.  And books.

- Brian

Pirates?! Pssh...

you know, at first i thought this whole somali pirate craze thing was kinda cool. i mean, pirates? in the 21st century? attacking merchant ships on the high seas? peril?!

yeah... i found this considerably awesome.

this, of course, is coming from a kid who's childhood vocational dream was to be come a pirate himself (after realizing that there was practically a 0% chance i was ever going to learn the ways of the force and own my own lightsaber).

i was obsessed with pirates growing up, and, like most other kids, couldn't shake the romantic view of pirates that hollywood and popular culture has capitalized on over the course of the last hundred years or so. keep in mind that this was way before that whole johnny depp franchise came along, too... had i been still a kid when those movies came out, there's a solid chance i'd be cruising around in a fishing boat in the indian ocean today carrying an AK-47 and flying a jolly roger.

but let's not kid ourselves, folks...

pirates, as probably most of you are aware of, are not nearly as awesome as we make them out to be. very few pirates - bartholemew roberts and edward teach (blackbeard) being the exception here - ever tooled around in large, man-of-war, galleons the type of which are considered the pirate standard in the pirates of the caribbean franchise. and pirates usually didn't steal gold, or spanish dubloons, or any other type of treasure from their captured prizes - nine times out of ten, they were gunning for spare sails and rope, food and medical supplies, ship hardware, and, of course, casks of rum.

but let me stop right there for a sec - i realize that i'm beginning to transform into mr. hough... giving all you folks a lecture in blog-form. not my intention. nay, readers - my reason for writing about pirates this morning is to simply state my opinion on the whole, on-going fiasco happening today with these somalian pirates.

since the somalian government collapsed in the early 1990s, the country's become a safe-haven for pirates. no order, no stability, no peace = pirate heaven. now, for whatever reason, the global community - with all its naval firepower, state-of-the-art intelligence and global positioning equipment, financial capital, etc. - simply cannot stop a handful of half-starved somalians from putting along in their rusty fishing boats with outdated russian-issued no idea. these guys are just way too damn much for the likes of us.

...are you kidding me?!

this crap is ridiculous, ands its pretty much gotten to the point now where if countries are going to consistently act like morons when dealing with this threat, than they deserve to be hijacked and plundered. that's the price for being an idiot, guys. quit whining.

me? i'd take a lesson from the annals of history (another reason why i teach social studies). before getting his ass handed to him by julius ceasar, co-consul of rome pompey magnus was - and is still considered today -the greatest pirate hunter of all time. he single-handedly wiped out piracy in the mediterranean sea, creating a 'roman lake,' around which the entire empire spread out. and the funny thing about this is that he did it rather easily - it wasn't a brilliant plan by any means, it only took a matter of months, and, for the life of me, i can't understand why the hell we're not doing this right now.

here's how it works:

1. create huge bounties on pirate leaders, and offer rewards for captured pirates

2. bribe major pirate leaders to take down fellow pirates

3. blockade pirate safe havens and raid strongholds(what's up, somalia?!)

4. increase naval supremacy in the region and take no prisoners when encountering pirates

5. execute everybody you can get your damn hands on

that's it. that's how we solve the pirate dilemma in the indian ocean. the pirates of tunisia and algiers in the last century B.C. were a hell of a lot more sophisticated and organized than today's rag-tag assortment of hoopleheads, and they were vanquished with little or no technological support. i see no excuse for the global community's complete and utter lack of smartness.

in closing, i hope you all thoroughly enjoyed your lesson today - your homework assignment is to do the section assessment on page 297, questions 1 - 7. have it to me by monday.

- mr. hough