The End of Summer Vacation

Today is the last day before I go back to work. It’s been nice to have almost an extra week off after our trip to Victoria. It’s been an opportunity to get some things done as well as generally relax and recharge. The weather has been warm to hot, which has driven a lot of lightning storms in the afternoons and evenings. Here’s a picture I took when one of them had passed and the sun had peeked out:

The drama with the website DNS kind of killed a couple of days, but the frustration did give me the motivation to do some weeding in the back yard and to finally remove the remains of the retractable roof from the pergola. Now the crank and the runners and pulleys are gone, leaving the pergola much cleaner and airy when you sit on it. I think next year’s big task will be sanding and refinishing the deck and pergola. The cross pieces on the pergola are a bit rough. They might need replacing.

Once all of that was done, we cut loose a bit. Ian and I built his Lego Spaceship. That thing is a monster. I had a big laugh as we were building it: we got to a stage where there was a diagram showing pulling the centre rocket engine in and out. I did it, and was amazed to find that when you do that, the wings slide in and out. I built the darn mechanism completely unaware that that was what it did.

On Tammy’s suggestion, we went to Calaway Park on Saturday morning before the crowds hit. That was fun, and the weather was beautiful.

Then we went to Chinook Centre so that Ian and Miranda could go to the Lego store. Ian had money from Colin and Carol and Mom and Dad and in his piggy bank. So he bought another Lego Minecraft set (The Nether), and spent the rest of the day and evening building it:

Miranda also bought one (The End). By coincidence, earlier that morning I had been reading about a new Lego set called “Research Institute”, which was making waves because it is a set that was suggested via Lego’s Ideas site for essentially more sets with women figures that aren’t princesses. 🙂 I showed it to Miranda when we were there and she wanted it, but not more than the Minecraft set, so I bought it and built it myself. There’s an astronomer, a palaeontologist, and a chemist.

There has also been bike rides, video games (Miranda and I finished Halo: Reach together), water-gun fights, chalk drawing on the driveway and a lot of other things, too. Today, I think we’ll go down to Bowness to see the Heritage Day Street Festival and the bike races.