Hi all,
Zack had a great time in Belize. Many beautiful dives and hikes. He came
back with a backpack full of many zip locked baks full of mildewing cloths.
It never gets dry down their in that jungle humidity, so the solution is zip
lock bags. Nothing our washer couldn’t handle. He was covered with
little fly bytes (the slept outside their last night), but has recovered
well. But first he stayed up for 48 hours to visit with friends when he got
back. Then he slept for 20.
Now Zack and Jessica are off on their quick Montana tour. Left Thursday
evening and will be back Monday evening. Jessica didn’t have many vacation
days left from her job, but Zach really wanted to show here the sites, so
off they went. He really wanted to take our sporty Eclipse, but his grades
were not up to par. Laurie lent them here Vibe, since it gets better gas
mileage than the van. Zack had not yet earned the money he needed for this
trip, so he and Nick worked out a Nick loan (Nick is Zack’s favorite
banker). Nick gets $20 interest, and if he is not paid back within 20 days,
he gets Zack’s 1/2 of the xBox game console they bought together.
Nick went up to a Sci-fi convention in the cities with Laurie yesterday.
His first convention since he was knee high. He reports back they went to
couple of interesting panels (talks) and a couple of bad ones. It was one
of the bigger conventions, but he said Laurie knew just about everyone
there.
Zack is less enchanted with the brown cat since he got back. It had
urinated on his bed and his paintball gear. A few days ago he borrowed
Panther back from Laurie so the 2 cats could play together for a bit. The
cats wrestle in a usually playful but sometimes out of control fashion, kind
of like 10 year old boys. Zack and his friends were conjuring up some
unique fireworks by combining many different powders into various
mega-bombs. I had nothing to do with it, since we are not exactly outside
of city limits, and I had to at least to pretend to be legally responsible.
During the firework activities, the sliding glass door got left open and out
the cats went. When we noticed, we pretty quickly found Panther not too
far from the house, but the brown cat had vanished. After circling the
house and yard 3 times, we officially declared he was MIA, and we somehow
managed to emotionally pull ourselves together and get on with our lives.
Zack managed to not shed a tear. But a few hours later, one of Zack’s
friends, Reid, found the cat who had wandered back from the hidden cat land
and let him back in the house. We now call Reid our anti-hero.
Nick got his ACT scores yesterday. 99% in all categories (that is the
highest score). When Laurie came over, we told here he had scores in the
mid 70%. She was surprised and tried to cheer him up, then glared at us
when she reviewed the report.
I’m leaving on my trip to Montana on Tuesday, and be out there for 1->2
weeks. Looks like Zack will not be coming with, as he jobs lined up as soon
as he gets back tomorrow. Fortunately, Laurie will be around to keep an eye
on the house and the party prone boys. Will be interesting to see if we
still have a brown cat (or a house for that matter) when I get back 🙂
Love Bruce