We were anxious about thirteen year old's planned camping birthday party, it had been raining and thundering all day long before the scheduled start time. Mrs. Ha and I ended up cleaning as best we could, figuring we might end up hosting thirteen year old and her four tweenage friends. Miracously, the rain stopped and the late afternoon became very nice. Newspaper_girl, Porsche_girl, sa_girl, and swim_girl all had a good time, with little structure at all. They spent most of their time playing with balloons, including water balloons.

Sunday morning we stopped at the Lake Shore, it was nearly overflowing (I think it's called a seiche, due to the wind from the North), the beach glass area was under several feet of water, and the dog did not like walking out on the pier.

In other kids news, we found out that upstreet_boy moved to a Carolina a few weeks ago. We didn't have a chance to say goodbye, and may never see him again. Then again, it was in violation of a custody order, so he may end up back in town (we still probably won't see him).

In other birthday news, thirteen and I went out to get her present, she wanted a camera. After checking out Staples, Office Depot, Radio Shack and Target we found one at Walmart. She likes the mode selector on our Kodak, and she wanted pretty, a metallic green Kodak M320 fit the bill, and was very reasonably priced. Plus, at least a nickel or two will end up back in Rochester, instead of China or Japan.

In more birthday news, my inlaws from Pittsford stopped by the other night, the birthday stuff continues. They brough 12 cupcakes, the scavenger dog managed to quietly eat six of them. I should look in the wrap for poopy cupcake wrappers. I'm tired of birthdays.

In other outdoor news, we had a work picnic Tuesday afternoon, pretty much self funded, since $$ is very tight. The picnic was nice, my nut brown ale, doled out in small amounts, was well appreciated, and after working as assistant grillman I see that I still have my food service chops. Fortunately the various dietary restricted people (no beef, no pork, no cheese, turkey burger, veggie burger) were understanding enough about cooking their stuff on the same grill, with the same tools, as the verboten stuff.

It was odd, a bunch of Asians were meeting in the park at a picnic table next to us, and I played the game of generic Asian or corporate developer for a while.

In media news, I finished Sledge's With the old Breed, a tale of a Marine 60 mm mortarman on Pelelui and Okinawa. Highly recommended, he spares little about the hardships of combat, including rotting, maggot-ridden corpses everywhere, including in potential foxhole sites.

In other book news, the same evening the dog ate the cupcakes I was following the girls on a firefly hunt up the street, when I saw some interesting trash. There was a dsl/router, a big framed picture of Saint Paul's under the blitz, a smaller picture of global temps, and a huge bin of books. I ended up with about eight, a history of gold, "You are Being Lied To", and some mil hist running from Nazis to the first Gulf War. None looked that valuable, maybe I'll read them and then trade them in.

In bike news, I spent an hour at the DMV to legally re-register my bike, I have the gray tag now. I also fixed my gas leak, a line was unplugged, I wish all the fixes were that easy. It's still idling way too high, my current plan is to replace my accelerator cable and then try to fix the idle, whenever I mess around with the cables or the carb, I mess up my idle, might was well do that first.

For the first few years, I didn't have a stock air filter and used pods, with strips of flashing under them to restrict the air flow, and it worked great. But I found a stock air filter, rebuilt my carbs, and now have way too high of an idle. We're talking oil burning on a hot day too high.

I'm looking at a 3 1/2 day weekend, since I'm leaving around noon, and taking Monday off. It will be nice, but I have a lot to finish today.