Weekend

Not a bad weekend, though, as always, way too little of it. Only one long bike ride, and a modest one, but that's okay. Saturday was a day of supreme laziness, just couldn't get going on much of anything in the morning, and the afternoon was spent disassembling the old swing set, cleaning the garage some more and trimming back lower branches from the massive maple. (Maples are so beautiful, and they make such a mess -- dropping blossoms, seeds, and leaves all through the year.) Got the hammock out and immediately lost it to my daughters. Yesterday, mostly more of the same. Cooked a whole chicken on the grill for the first time, and it came out great.

Made it a bit of a baseball movie weekend, too. Watched "Eight Men Out," truly one of the greatest baseball movies ever, just a masterpiece by John Sayles telling the story of the Black Sox. Last night, we watched "The Pride of the Yankees," the Lou Gehrig story starring Gary Cooper, and if you don't think an old '40s black and white melodrama can still bring you to tears, well . . . there wasn't a dry eye in the house when he said, "I am the luckiest man in the world." (In between, we snuck in The Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera," just so it wasn't all gloom and doom around here.)

Plans for the Fourth? Why, going to Lake Placid and watching ski jumping, of course!

Today, however, I am the only person in my house who has to get out of bed.