NFTL - RDate 110.29

So, like...where ya' been? Oh, wait. That's your line. Truth is, I took the summer off. Well, not really off. I took the summer off from blogging. I guess that's not really right either. I tried like h-e-double hockey sticks to blog. But kept getting pulled away by more insistent forces. 

First there was an aggressive hosting schedule at the cottage. We'd been shut out from hosting in 2020, except for a little family here and there. And we were anxious to get back into seeing our friends and showing them all the neat improvements we had installed at Wiser Times. But as we're not yet really back into large indoor group gatherings, we spread the fun over several weekends. That meant more company prep and recovery time and more total time in the presence of others. It was great fun having smaller, more intimate groups at the cottage. Nancy and I feel we really caught up with people after the long COVID-driven absences. 

In between hosting gigs I mowed, helped Nancy upgrade the game room at the lake, traveled to Florida to visit my mother, mowed, took a nose dive into a trash barrel, recovered from cracked ribs, chased critters out of the cottage...and mowed. But I mostly remember this.

Before I knew it, it was September and I hadn't posted anything since May. 

So enough whining. Those were all choices that I made. Time to revamp priorities. As I laid out at length in one of my earliest posts, Labor Day Renewal is part of our American culture. But before I proceed with this heavy exercise, I'd like to catch up a little more.

More than a year has passed since my last Notes from the Lab post. And even though the streets, ballparks and restaurants were empty or near empty while we hunkered in our bunkers, stuff did happen. Like the virus-related stuff noted in my January post 2020 - Big Mistake or Bad Idea. But other things happened, too. Things that weren't just about surviving COVID. Good things. Well, mostly. That's where I'm going with this edition of NFTL.

Music Night (8/6/12, Last Updated 5/13/20): In my last update on this subject I explained how our little music club of now over 30 years was planning to go virtual to survive in the world of COVID 19. I and others were concerned that the sometimes tedious nature of mega-zoom calls might not mesh well with the leisurely, open style of our in-person gatherings. That, and would we be able to overcome the technical challenges? 

Well I'm happy to report that everything worked out fine. With strong support in the early days from our tech team, and a couple of adjustments to our methods, we were able to  continue our group activities without skipping a beat, so to speak. This is what our sessions looked like during COVID.

Of course, the pandemic impacted the lives of our group members much as it did everyone else. It was on our minds constantly, as reflected in some of our recent group topics - Social Distancing, Searching, Recovery. All fine collections, and more than a little therapeutic I would say. The move to virtual gatherings also had a silver lining that we didn't anticipate. Increased participation. 

Our group is widely distributed around the tri-county area. Over the years, depending on our venues, it's been difficult to get everyone together. Not so on Zoom. We were very glad to see some of our "outliers" more frequently. And based on the energy often displayed during the Zoom calls, it was apparent that all of our group were very happy for the opportunities to visit with humans outside their immediate households.   

And now I'm happy to report that - in our post-vaccination world - we're expecting to return to live Music Nights with our Christmas edition in December. We're all looking forward to getting our old groove back. Like not having to log in, check our mics, adjust the room lighting and wait our turn to make fun of each other. Exciting. With the Delta variant running rampant these days, nothing is certain. But hope springs eternal.  

Up North (8/15/12, last updated 5/13/20): The big news at our cottage the last year has been the lake itself. It's been busy. Here's a shot of our beach in the summer of 2019. As you can see, even then much of our beach had been reclaimed by the lake since the title picture of this blog was taken circa 2010.

But in 2020, the lake took more. Almost all of it. Here's a shot from August last year.

My poor grandkids had to build their sandcastles on this meager piece of shore. And as you can see in the background, it wasn't only the beach that took the hit. The lawn receded about six feet which was enough to take out two trees. Our beloved twin-trunk "slingshot" tree on the south side, shown above. And my hammock shade tree on the north side, shown below.

They both suffered the usual fate of such disasters, as shown in the following few pics. 

However, the scariest day of the summer of 2020 was when the wind came up suddenly and pushed the already high water up over the berm and flooded the badminton court, also known as our front yard.

At one point we had to put a plank out to get from the deck to the gazebo without wading.

This summer, the lake has been more generous, giving back our beach to about the size of 2019. A far cry from our largest beach, but quite an improvement. Here's a shot of the Kuhlman men enjoying the restored sand castle area.

The other story at the cottage was the retirement of our builder. In past posts you've seen the handiwork of this able craftsman. He built our gazebo -

Designed and built our "barn" -

Rebuilt the floors in the family room and sunporch bedroom - 

And most recently rebuilt the entire front of the cottage including the new deck. 

In summary, Dave the builder has been the key to the restoration and major upgrade projects for our little piece of paradise. Not to mention several other smaller repair and improvement jobs he did for us - new shower, new bathroom flooring, some roof repair and new living room carpeting. We wish Dave a happy retirement, of course. And we will miss his contributions. 

We are also a bit sad about Dave's retirement. Mainly because we have one more big project on our list - remodeling our game room. It needs new flooring, new walls, a new ceiling and maybe even a new door wall and back patio. Pretty major. Aggravating the situation is the fact that other builders are fully booked with work for months due to the post-COVID home renovation boom.

We still plan on finding a new builder eventually, and moving ahead with the reno. But likely not until the industry and the price of building materials return to normal. A year or two maybe. In the interim, we decided to upgrade the game room where we could without reconstruction. Here's what we did.

We started with this.

And went through this.

After ripping out the old carpet, installing a new oversize area rug, replacing the closet doors with drapes, changing out the large window drapes, assembling a new bed headboard, purchasing a new queen bed along with bedding, side tables and lamps, assembling and loading a new "wall of sci-fi/fantasy" shelving unit, upgrading the key table and - trickiest of all - installing wall-to-wall hospital curtains for privacy, we ended up with this. Who needs Dave?

Hell Month (6/29/13, First Update): In this early post I described in detail our family ritual of spending the month of May grooming the house and the yard for the summer. So that we would be motivated to accomplish the necessary tasks, we invited all our friends to a picnic on the first Saturday after Memorial Day. We've done this now for over 30 years. And while we still plan on hosting the picnic as long as we're able (or until someone else takes over the franchise), Hell Month has run its course. 

The most arduous tasks involved with Hell Month was maintaining our backyard deck, where most of the picnic action takes place. Sure, there were other activities, like prepping the lawn, planting flowers, laying in provisions, that sort of thing. But the big nasty was power washing, digging tree droppings out of the crevices and re-staining/refinishing the deck originally installed in 1969. Here's a couple shots of the old deck in its glory days.

A few years ago the deck began to show its age more, so we had the top surface boards replaced in an effort to pretty things up. 

But the weather and the big honkin' maple tree in the middle of the deck took their tolls. The cedar planks weren't spaced correctly, resulting in unwelcome standing water in some spots. And the wood began rotting. Making matters worse, the maple tree began shedding limbs with increasing regularity. So in the spring of 2020 we had the tree removed. All but the last 14 feet of the main trunk and the stump. Couldn't get the equipment necessary to remove those pieces in until the deck itself was removed, which we weren't quite ready to do. 

A couple of months later we decided to move forward. We had the deck and stump removed except for a small section of deck left to facilitate access to our back door. This reduced the back yard to dirt and wood chips.  

Finally, this spring the ground had settled enough for us to replace the deck, but not with another deck. We opted for a patio. Concrete. Durable. Attractive. And very low maintenance. While we were at it, we also replaced the driveway as it was as old and tired as the original deck. Here's the new look of the place. First the new party patio, complete with new planters.

And our new drink patio added at the end of the new driveway.

So without the deck work, Hell Month has officially been retired. And replaced with a little gardening, a little mowing, setting up a few chairs, and a trip to Kroger's. Well, not quite that simple, but pretty close. Beginning of a new era.

Feeling Good (1/30/17, First Update): In the original post I explained how important I think it is to have times where you feel really good. The way I described it was a feeling like "ooh, life is fabulous, can't grin wide enough, please let me do this forever". Since the beginning of the pandemic, it's certainly been more important to generate such feelings, and likely more difficult given the steady diet of horrible, scary news. 

Everyone's first goal, of course, has been to stay safe. That remains paramount. But once you're safe, what do you do? For me and I believe many if not most others, those "feel good" times often involve being with other people. During this period of reduced human contact, alternatives were needed. 

Zoom and other virtual meeting tools have played a huge role in helping us overcome our isolation. But while I like the Zoom experience, it seldom gets me to "ooh, life is fabulous, etc." For that, I turned to old hobbies. You know, those things for which one never seems to find time? For the last 18 months, I had much more time than normal not in the presence of other human beings. So I spent more time on music projects, photo projects, reading, catching up on my "must-see" movie backlog, and at times just sitting quietly contemplating the universe. The latter usually with a cocktail in my hand watching an episode of Ancient Aliens. A lot to think about there.

I've even rebooted my career as a musician. I cracked the case of my nearly 70-year-old 120 bass Scandalli accordion and have been working my way through my old lesson books. This has made my mother - and my grandkids - very happy. 

With my waning fine-motor skills working overtime, I've even starting to wade slowly into the pop music world. At least what I define as pop music ('70s and '80s mostly). It's been invigorating. I'd forgotten the joy of making one's own music.

I won't claim that all of these hobby activities have taken me to new heights of euphoria. But when I reflect on the fact that I've spent much of my forced isolation making progress on goals that have lingered for years, I get to feeling pretty good. 

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Enough catching up for now, so I'll close and move on. And I hope everyone finds ways to "feel good" while staying safe. 

Grosse Pointe Charles