Weekend Report

Lot's of sports news this weekend and I don't know why. For some reason I was sucked into the French Open not once, but twice. Both times I sat riveted to see Nadal beat the pulp out of his foe. Why I felt I had to watch it, I don't know. I don't even like tennis.

Second, track and field yesterday. Got to watch a few races and see Walker set a new American pole vault record. And, like tennis, I don't like pole vault. The last vault I enjoyed watching (in high school) ended with my teammate breaking his lower leg. It looked like an "L" and it went out from the knee sideways. Yeah. No thanks.

Then we have swimming. We set up our little inflatable pool in yesterday's heat. The water was ice-cold but bearable. For about 15 minutes.

In other news, William is doing his best to stand and walk on his own. Almost there, but not quite. Elizabeth has been learning jokes and making her own. Here's one:

Q: Why did the dinosaur put ketchup and another dinosaur in the potty?
A: Because he wanted to! And yes, she made that one up herself.

And finally, we have the non-sport sport of home improvement and repair. I spent part of Saturday afternoon in the sweltering heat working in the shed (thank God I had a fan). Changed the mower blades and cleaned the mower deck. Yvonne planted a new rose plant that should survive better than the old one (and be less of a hassle to maintain). Sunday was spent setting up the pool and buying more supplies for the front step repair. I'm not too excited about replacing them, but it needs to be done. And I think we have enough stuff to do it right (and nice stuff to make it look great).

Edit - Almost forgot, a tidbit of reading/writing news from Publisher's Weekly:

Liz Scheier at Ballantine won a four-way auction for Michael Thomas Ford's Jane
Bites Back, taking world English rights to three books via Mitchell Waters at
Curtis Brown. The novel presents an undead Jane Austen, frustrated by nearly 200
years of writer's block and 116 rejections of an unpublished novel she finished
just before turning into a vampire; she's becoming increasingly irritated that
the rest of the world seems to be getting rich and famous off of her works and
her life. The two follow-up books will be derived from the first. Waters said
Ford, the author of many books for young readers and adults, is likely to
publish this under a pseudonym; pub date still undecided.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6568141.html?nid=3323