That was a surprisingly busy weekend, in which I was even able to watch and listen to a little football. Sadly, it wasn't the Penn State game (since Hannah Montana was on instead and six year old wanted to watch it). It was the Bills, losing on the last second.

The girls each had a sleepover, six year old Friday with the AFs, and eleven year old Saturday night at the westsides. Complicating things, six year old had a birthday party Saturday morning, down on a Finger Lake. The AF's informed us that the two six year old's got up at 4 in the morning to play and talk, so we offered to take theirs so they could sleep.

We didn't have enough notice to take six year old present shopping, as she wasn't sure she wanted to go, so I got something for her to give. It was a little hard, as I barely know the parents, so I don't know how they feel about guns, or movies or games or any of that. I went with the failsafe, some Lego, an exciting rescue set with three minifigs. You can really overthink buying presents.

The lakefront cabin was amazing, I'm pretty sure it's a doctor's family, with lots of rooms and decks down the slope, almost Rivendellesque. At the lakeshore, there were lots of fossils, mostly bivalve thingies, but a trilobite part and a segmented worm thing. The geology is mostly sedimentary rock, slate I think (though maybe shale, I can't tell the difference). It's been in the family a long time, sadly, downstaters and out of staters are pricing the Finger Lakes out of the range of your average working class slob in upstate New Yorker. At one time they were nearly affordable.

Eleven year old pestered me to take her for a kayak ride, but chickened out when she saw spiders in it. One of the first grader boys wanted to instead, so we paddled out a ways and back (he did most of the work, too). She did get a ride on the Boston Whaler, but we saw no whales.

No surprise, on the way home the six year olds fell asleep.

No movies this weekend, but a fair amount of reading. I've mentioned the local library's geeky bias before (I think they have all Buffy on DVD, as well as a fair amount of anime. Is six too  young for Buffy?) I wandered through the books and found a whole shelf of Diskworld in the fantasy and science fiction section. This weekend was
Feet of Clay, which was good, about the usual for a Diskworld story, enjoyable if not very deep.

I also finished Severed, a book on the Black Dahlia murder, with attendent gruesome photos. Poor kid.

In history, I read The Glider Gang, written by a glider pilot who landed in the south of France, the Netherlands and across the Rhine. It's an okay read, not as good as First Men In, with less drama. They still didn't get paid enough.

It was a rainy weekend, I got soaked kayaking Saturday, and Sunday was near constant rain. We made the most of it, I did some major cleanup of the attic, finding lots of clothing and shoes we can sell at this weekend's garage sale (even if the shoes sell for a quarter a pair, there are a lot of them). We also have bikes for sale, and I'm going to sell a lot of my bottling equipment, I hate bottling and love kegging (oh yeah, kegged my ale, I have to clean out the tap and fridge and start drinking!).

Tonight I get to listen to classic rock for three hours and bring home some cash. I reckon scratch off lottery tickets are in my near future.