Another Thanksgiving in Scenic Romulus

Happy Thanksgiving, America.

This was another day of Thanksgiving 'usuals' for us Houghs:  we once again drove down to celebrate the holiday with Kris' mom's side of the family in scenic Romulus, Michigan, where we once again watched the Lions lose, once again gorged ourselves on the usual offerings, and drove back home at the end of the evening.  This year we managed to visit her dad's side of the family out in Taylor, something we hadn't done in a few years, which was cool.  We didn't get back into Midland until 11:30 or so, and by that point in time everyone was pretty exhausted, but Kris was happy she got to visit with everyone.

So here you go, folks - another Thanksgiving down in Romulus.

Enjoy.

Shortly after arriving around 2pm, we were greeted by Wayne's 200-lb beast of a dog, Captain.

I once again was tasked with carving up the turkey, which I've gotten pretty good at over the years.

Kris and Victoria's son, Julian.

Abby and Grandma Jordan.

This process takes forever.

Mickey and Dennis had their little lap dog down with them this year, and that little dog was not a fan of Captain at all.

Watching the Lions vs. Bills game.

As always, the Lions give you a small glimmer of hope throughout the game. . . just before they screw everything up and lose by a small number of points.

F***ing Lions. . .

Alayna and Abby with their cousin, Lily.  These three really enjoy hanging out with each other, and every year we keep saying we need to get them together over the summer up here.

Twins Mickey and Marcy.

Marcy, Mickey and Melanie with their aunt, Lois.

Teenagers hanging out in the basement - their usual hang-out spot during these extended family get-togethers.

Obligatory family group picture on Wayne's front steps.

Mary Lynn and Colton.  Now in their 20s.

At the end of the night, shortly before we left for Kris' Uncle Jeff's place out in Taylor, Margie - as usual - talking my damn ear off about God knows what.  Wouldn't be a Thanksgiving without running that gauntlet. . .

- Brian

Randoms from the Month of Caesar

What's up, Internet.

So July this year ended up being a study in contrasts.  We did a ridiculous amount of vacationing this month (look at all those damn posts off the right, guys), but we also did a hell of a lot sitting around the house and doing absolutely nothing.  So while there's plenty of pictures of our shenanigans up in the Upper Peninsula, or on Eight Point Lake, there wasn't a lot of captured moments from our day-to-day mundaneness during the down time.

I've been playing a lot of Skyrim on my new Nintendo Switch, a game that's nothing short of incredible, as well as working on nerd projects on the ol' MacBook Pro, not getting much exercise, and otherwise maintaining my yard (which has been a challenge, due to a nasty dry spell we suffered earlier in the month.)  The girls have been kept busy with play dates, luncheons at Plymouth Park, and multiple trips to 7-11 for much-needed Slurpees.  It's been a fun month, America.

So yeah, not a whole lot of pictures this time around, but what you see more or less wraps up the month (unfortunately there are no pictures of the kids drinking Slurpees, or my lazy ass sitting on the couch playing Skyrim.)

Enjoy. . .

The girls got into the habit this month of picking flowers out of the backyard gardens and leaving them on Kris' pillow for when she got back from work.  These plants would then sit there throughout the day, so that by the time Kris came home from work and found them, they were all dried up and shriveled.  So this is the sort of thing she came home to a lot of the time.

Screwing around on the Zipline over at Central Park Elementary (the new waaaay over-rated STEM school that opened up in Midland.)  They, like Plymouth Park, also host Midland's summertime Meet Up and Eat Up program, so we try and hit up any of the locations a few times each week for the free lunch and fresh air.

One afternoon, the girls set up a 'horse and carriage' in the basement, dressed up in period clothing, and pretended they lived on a 19th century farm out West. . . 

"Sleeping on the Trail."  Seriously.

Not sure if you remember or not, but I had scored a few German 45 RPMs from the Goodwill store up in Sault Ste Marie earlier in the month, and was eventually able to give them a listen on the ol' turntable.  And in case you were curious, they sound EXACTLY like the pictures suggest.

Halfway through the month, we made it down to Romulus for Kris' cousin Merry Lynn's Graduation Open House.  For whatever reason, this is the only picture we ended up taking of the day-long visit downstate - it was brutally hot and humid out, and despite the fact it was an outdoor party, we spent a lot of time indoors, taking advantage of the A/C.  This meant ducking into nearby Uncle Wayne's house, where we' bump into his bear-of-a-dog, Captain.

This month saw some pretty nasty weather, especially for one's yard.  We hadn't gotten any rain for weeks, but the humidity levels were off the charts, so the grass was dying from lack of water, but the ground was growing fungus due to the sticky atmosphere.  I ended up dropping $50 on fertilizers and fungicide in order to combat the spread of this crap throughout my yard, but I was able to restore it to full awesomeness in about a week or so (by the time we got back from Eight Point, the grass was back to its usual dark green. . . I just never got around to taking an 'after' shot, my apologies.)

While spending some birthday money at the Midland Mall (and hitting up Barnes and Nobles for some leather-bound Collector's Editions for Yours Truly), the rain - which had been absent for so, so long - finally decided to show up.  With a vengeance.

Re-sleeving some vinyl.  This is waaaay more fun for me than it should be. . .

Alayna had a playdate with her BFF, Maddie, and I decided to take the girls up to Plymouth Pool for a swim session. . .

I didn't think they'd hit the waterslide up right out of the gate - it usually takes a little bit of coaxing on our part to get the girls to do it - but Maddie's presence must have instilled some confidence/courage in the Cannonball.  Those girls went right over to the waterslide and couldn't be pried away from it for over an hour.

Fortunately, it wasn't too busy today, so there was rarely a line for the slide.

I can think of far shittier ways of spending one's hot, summer days. . .

Bought a stylus scale recently in order to better calibrate my tonearm weight.  I was aiming between 2.5 and 3, so I was pretty cool with this.

One morning, Alayna decided she wanted to try making pancakes all by herself. . .

Too bad she can't do the dishes by herself. . .

More culinary aspirations.  Abby made stir-fry in a wok.  What the hell.

And, in closing, here's a couple shots of our central garden in the backyard. . . 

This ground cover is out of control.

- Brian

The Continuing Adventures of the S.S. 100 Proof and Its Crew of Scalliwags

Ahoy, readers...

 As I may or may not have already pointed out already that I'm not all that much of a 'sportsman,' it should come to no surprise that I'm never been referred to as 'one hell of a fisherman.'  Not once, guys.  And to be honest, I've never had a problem with this.  I really don't care for fishing, and whenever someone talks about fishing, I just mentally tune out.  It bores me.

Fish smell bad, and the whole affair just sounds out-right boring.

This is what I envisioned 'deep sea fishing' to be like.  I was kinda right.

Well, despite all this, I was invited for a bout of deep sea fishing with my bro-in-law, Brian, and my dad during their annual vacation down here to America's wang.  I figured, at the time, that I'd do a lot more cooler diving than fishing, and that would've been enough for me, honestly.  I love being on boats - I feel like a pirate.

Anyway, we had initially planned on driving out to the Atlantic Ocean the morning of Mother's Day (I know, I know - we're classy guys).  We'd have to get up early in order to make the hour and a half drive and reach our charter boat by the 7am launch time.  Unfortunately, the night before we set out for the sea, a bad storm swept through to the north, creating horrible sea conditions out east - four foot squalls, high winds, and overall terrible fishing conditions.

The captain called us and said he wouldn't recommend going out.  We were devastated.

Then we decided to take matters into our own hands.  If the seas were bad to the East, what about the West?  We grabbed our laptops and quickly began searching up charter fishing boats on the Gulf side, out of the Tampa area.  Lo and behold, there was one man whose reasonably-priced vessel made berth out of Clearwater, and they were willing to take us on at 7am the next morning:

Captain Billy Burke of the S.S. 100 Proof.
 

Fish funds.

So, with rapid-fire precision, we proceeded to withdraw funds for the venture (Capn' Billy Burke only took cash, folks), iron out the remaining details, and retire for the evening.



I was pretty anxious to get going, and so obviously my body decided to pull one of those waking-up-every-ten-minutes starting around one o'clock in the frickin' morning and lasting up until the 4am alarm went off.  I drove back over to Dad's condo and, as I aimlessly drove around looking for a parking spot, Dad, Brian and Blake loaded up the rental van.

Not as tasty as it looks, folks.

By 5:15am we were on the road, and after a faster-than-expected drive out to the Gulf, we hit up a questionable 7-11 for our morning breakfast of microwaved egg sandwiches, coffee, bananas, and energy drinks.

My gut was not happy.

The docks.

By 6:30am, we had made it to the docks, and we soon came across the 100 Proof and its captain.  Ol' salty Billy Burke looked like an old baseball glove that had been left in the sun to rot for the past thirty years.  He was about as social, too.  Within 10 minutes - at the very most (Capn' Billy Burke didn't play around, folks) - we had cast off our ropes and set off for the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico.


Behold our saga:

Leaving the marina. . .

It was supposed to be overcast all morning, which was - so I'm told - good for fishing. . .

Capt. Bill's deckhand, Mike, actually did all the fish-related work while we were out on the water. . .

Dad preps his camera in the cabin

Fish talk with Blake

The cabin

The lavatory to the right, the bulkhead at the top

More of the cabin

Trolling out of Clearwater

Hitting the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. . .

Ready for action.

It took about a half hour to reach the spot where we'd start fishing

 

Dad, mid-fight

Landing a King Mackerel

 

More King Mackerel fall to superior predators

Blake wages war with the sea. . .

Blake would have caught the biggest fish of the day, but a shark had a different idea in mind (watch the video below):

 

Mike spears a Bonita before bashing its head with the lid of the ice chest.  Never got tired of watching that.

Master fisherman.

Master fisherman.

Master fisherman

Master fisherman

After two hours of fishing, my body was done with standing.  With only two hours of sleep in my system, it was time for a half-hour nap.

Blake had the same idea.

Hanging out in the cabin on the way back in to Clearwater.

After two and a half hours, the fish stopped biting and we began the long voyage back towards the marina.

LAND, HO!!!

Be prepared.

Clearwater Bay

Mike the Conversationalist

 

Camera duelin'

The Marina

Coming ashore. . .

 

Capn' Billy Burke sprays off the dock

Spoils of war

 

Blake with the Trophy Fish (the largest fish, a Bonita, caught on our charter - not sure who caught it, though)

Icing the fish

Dad and the Trophy Fish

Yours Truly and the Trophy Fish

Trophy Fish!

What's left of Blake's first catch of the day. . .

Snacks.

Brian, Blake, and more dead fish. . .

More Trophy Fish

Haul of the Day

Filleting up the Spoils

 

The Mooch

Salty ol' Capn' Billy Burke.  Jolly as always.

Bagging up the fillets

Fate of the Fish

After we paid the Captain and Mike, we loaded the van and headed back towards Orlando.  I, once again, caught some shut eye so I didn't pass out on my feet, and when we got back to the condo, we grilled up those poor, unfortunate fish that had met their fate at our hands:

Commandeering Bradley's Legos. . .

Abby and Nana, engaged in a common pastime. . .

Stealthy.  As a ninja.

Not sure if Abby is down with this. . .

F.Y.I. These things are still as addictive as crack. My kids may have to receive these for their birthdays/Christmas this year. . .

We ate the Holy Hell outta those poor fish.  And it was awesome.

- Brian