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Over confident, the Mastermind was.
This is his new domain. Not too bad.
#2 son was very excited to start Middle School.
We attended Darla's extreme picnic at the Long Center for the last symphony on the lawn. It wasn't as hot as we had feared. The food was all good.
Alicia made me a beverage using her hand made craft mixers.
We were prize winners!
Kat loves chicken wings. When we plotted our course home, she requested a stop in Buffalo to explore the history of Buffalo Chicken wings. The Anchor Bar is credited with the original Buffalo style wing.
Wings were good, service was slow. We'd also been told that DUFFS had great wings. So we went there too.
They featured many warnings about how "HOT" their wings are, "our medium is HOT!". But the NY palate for spicy is not the same. The wings were good, but even the extra HOT were not as spicy as Plucker's medium….
We caught the sunset from the rooftop bar of the hotel.
Then we made our way to Chicago.
People often ask how my family can spend that much time in the car. We sort of have a system that works for us. The X5 diesel has a third row seat, #1 son gets that to himself. The middle row has a DVD system, #2 son selected a few new DVD for the trip to watch on repeat. The daughter has her iPad Pro and listens to music. Kat has her iPad playing Chinese TV shows (about what I have no clue), she also takes care of snack and food requests (we have a cooler of sandwich supplies).
I just drive and listen to my music. We aim to do around 500 miles each travel day, about eight hours. We typically stop once, for fuel, food and bathrooms. We aim to complete that stop in ten minutes.
We saw oodles of Monet, Manet (special exhibit), Bonnard, Chagall. Miro, Van Gogh, Picaso, Dali and Dubuffet too. It was $150 to get in, so we spent a lot of time there. I did get my student discount!
Stepdog came by the hotel. We shared beers and a meal with friends that live in Chicago.
Then we drove to Nebraska.
We stopped by the farm. Kat had never been.
True midwestern corn shuckers.
To close out our summer art museum program, the fifth museum stop, the Sheldon in Lincoln, NE.
The building was designed by Philip Johnson.
The museum is small enough to not be overwhelming for the boys. It's a nice collection and we enjoyed chatting with the Docent that accompanied us.
(OK, the art above is by #2 son. I snuck that in there because it's quite fun).
Then we drove to Dallas.
It was 103 out when we arrived at our hotel. The pool felt great!
Karen came to meet us for a pint at picnic at Celestial.
And then we drove home. A good bit of the landscaping I installed a couple months ago is dead.
As I prepare to confront the Mastermind back in Austin/West Lake Hills... I have said goodbye to Albert the Groundhog.
Last summer, as we were racing to complete the bathroom renovation, we also found a large gopher hole dug into the side of the hill behind the house. It was decided that I should evict the beast. I thought I was clever, as I disposed of a large stack of shards and discards from all the porcelain tile scrap into his home.
But Albert clearly outwitted us all, he moved under the back porch. His new den is out of sight, and close enough to the house to benefit from of the heat during winter months.
I had to respect that sort of fortitude. We mostly let him do his own thing. He cooperated and posed for me before we packed up and left Vermont in summer of 2019.
Fall was already starting to drop the temperature. A slight bit of color was starting to show up in the trees.
We will be returning to Austin to face 100 degree days, and the Mastermind.
#2 son has started to name off places and activities he noticed had been skipped so far this summer. He specifically mentioned the deck at the Elmore Store and Lost Nation. We knocked both out.
I'm finishing the paint freshen up and I even replaced the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink.
I had been struggling to lift a low end on this large stone paver. I mentioned to Kat "I'll have to think like an Egyptian". Then, the solution came to me. Instead of lifting the low end, where there was no access, I need to lift the high end, using a series of wooden wedges. Then I used a lever to get up high enough to insert a stone to act as a fulcrum. Then we dropped the paver and the low side did pop up! Thank you Egyptians and your pyramids of inspiration! We then filled the void with stones and lots of mortar.
The kids don't always want to be forced out of the house, and into nature. But they are usually quite thankful afterwards.
We've discovered a new swim hole that is just four miles from the house. It's such a relief to have a quick dip in the river after working outdoors.
We met friends at Hill Farmstead. Mom enjoyed her last Shirley Mae of the year.
We worked on a path down towards the large section of falls at our place in Danville.
More time was spent on the LVRT.
Black Barn Farm Party 2019
I brought a Jester King to share with friends.
We've had a problem with trees this year. Two tall live trees had fallen, and two really tall dead trees were threatening to fall. We hired a tree guy to drop them. He did get them to fall right where we all wanted them (not on the house). The ground shook when that big one landed to earth.
Yesterday was 71F and SUNNY, we had a picnic at Keiser Pond, down the road from our place in West Danville.
Then we ran to Glover to catch the Bread and Puppet Theater. #1 son was less enthused, "I didn't expect it would be so POLITICAL!".
and this marks our last full week in the North East Kingdom of Vermont.