"A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?"

I'm not one to try and hurry seasons along. When the seasons change, I always think of what I like about the new one. I like all of them, even summer, as odd as that sounds coming from someone living in Alabama. I love that it stays light so long, I love that I am was growing tomatoes in my backyard, I love that it's light when I drive to work in the morning, I love that I can sleep with a fan on, and I love the excuse to drink as many pina coladas as my brain can manage to wrap itself around. Mostly the last one. But this year ... y'all, the heat has turned people into what I can only call Crazy Zombie People Who Are Trying To Destroy My Brain With Their Crazy. And it's close to working. Because the Crazy has reached epic proportions and no amount of rum is curing this. Maybe the problem is that I'm the only one drinking it? Solution: The government needs to change all of our water fountains at work to rum fountains. Fall needs to get here. Soon. The Summer Crazies are making me insane.

Stream-Of-Consciousness Vacation Thoughts That Would Have Been a Weekend-Long Live Blog If I Wanted The Criminals to Know I Was Away From Home

Thursday, 6 AM: The only reason to get up before noon on the first day of vacation is because my sister, the pool and the adult beverages are 8 hours away and not in my backyard.

10 AM: This whole "travelling with a broken CD player and malfunctioning Zune" means that The Professor and I have two options: babble for hours (that would be me) or listen to stupid morning radio shows. HOW do these people get paid for that job? I'm way funnier (in that they are about as fun as watching paint dry) and I have much better taste in music. I just can't play any of it right now.

11 AM: Solution: Stopped to buy a converter so I can plug my laptop into the car. Peace and harmony are restored. This means it's nap time.

4:30 PM: Sister hugged, beverage in hand, pool in sight. We're making Big Plans for the evening that involve a trivia show, more beverages, beach walking, a meteor shower, and midnight swimming. People, we are serious Partiers. BE WARNED.

1:00 AM: We won the Trivia game, but The Meteor Shower That Wasn't has won in life, in that it is apparently an invisible meteor shower? But all's good, because my brother-in-law has taken over making my drinks. I probably should only have 1 of these if I plan to be able to walk tomorrow.

3:30 AM: Do I think I'm still 21 or something?

Friday, Noon: Yeah. Should've stopped the brother-in-law after one drink (where "one" equals "the first one *he* made for me, not the first of the evening). Life Lesson for us all: Just because you have a Master's Degree does not mean you possess a whole lot of intelligence.

3 PM: My niece put in season 1 of The Simpsons and then - OH DEAR LORD - informed me they have the first 10 seasons on DVD.

6 PM Cooking dinner, almost finished and Sis realized we have no wine chilling for dinner. How will we survive? Either push dinner back by 10 minutes or switch to Rum & Cokes earlier than planned.

8 PM: We will live dangerously and go to a LATE movie. Dear Inception: I hope I still have the brain power at 10:30 PM to understand what the hell you are about. I'm not holding out a lot of hope.

1 AM: Holy Dreamworld, Batman. I may never sleep again. Or maybe I never want to wake up? Either choice seems equally dangerous at the moment.

Saturday, 12:30 PM: The Simpsons is officially the stupidest show ever. Thank god for the Internet. The Professor is loving this, though. Wonder what that says about us?

3 PM: We only had the equivalent of 10 bottles of wine in the house. Obviously I needed to buy more while we were out scouring the area for seafood to make bouillabaisse. No crustacean will be safe from our big pot; no Red safe from our glasses. Red Crustaceans are doubly cursed.

7 PM: Sis just decided we've got this bouillabaisse making thing down, maybe could do it in our sleep. We won't, since we're drinking with candles burning and all. But she's right.

11 PM: If you pour the wine into a beautiful pitcher, it will taste better.

Sunday, 10 AM: We're going to race mother nature and take a trip to the beach as soon as we can all get ready. Who do you think is going to win this?

1 PM: We won - the beach was awesome. Then we came home and lunch has now defeated me. Vacations are for naps, right?

4 PM: Sis and I are making a quick trip out to buy something on sale, and as we're leaving she says gleefully: "By the time we get back, it'll be time for a drink". I love the way this woman thinks. PS: The Simpsons live on.

6:30 PM: Even The Professor has reached his limits on watching The Simpsons. I honestly didn't know this was possible. He has also resorted to rum & juice. Light on the juice, I believe.

6:45 PM: While cleaning the beautiful wine pitcher from the night before - preparing to refill it - Sis finds the warning on the bottom that says "for decorative purposes only; do not use to serve food or drink". Plus side of this: if we grow a third eye anytime soon, we'll know what to tell the doctors!

11 PM: Dr Horrible + Rocky Horror + bottle of red = Best Way to End a Vacation Ever.

Monday, 4 PM: Back home. The cats - oddly - didn't seem to notice we even left. I'm glad no one tried to rob us. The cats would've been useless on the defense front. At least they were smart enough to stay out of my rum.

Discovered:

A restaurant in town that has "Crab Cake BLTs", which are made of crab cake, melted cheddar, lettuce, fried green tomato, smoked bacon on grilled Texas toast. If they replaced the Creole Remoulade with a Thai sweet chili sauce, I would probably kill myself eating these sandwiches.

Property Improvement Tour Part IV

So, let's go through the run-down of what I've already spelled out:

1. Replace Lawnmower.
2. Repair Harley.
3. Replace Dishwasher.
4. Repair A/C.

Around the time that the lawn mower died -but before the dishwasher died - The Professor began talking to a Neighbor who who happens to have been a boss for a concrete company for some many years, and happens to do some work on the side. Also for lo these many years, The Professor and I have wanted to expand and screen in our back patio. It's not really big enough for everything we have crammed out there. And I want a June Bug free June. Old June-Bug Infested Back Patio: One night, The Professor came home early from his evening walk and tells me he's been talking to Concrete Dude, who as we speak is going around the house to our back yard. An hour later, we had a plan that included a six gajillion metric tons of concrete and my backyard. The Professor was giddy. All he could think of was the 300+ square feet that he would no longer be required to mow. Yes, please go read that again: Over 300 square feet. 3/4 the size of my living/dining room combined. Our total patio now clocks in at 425 square feet. Ok, I may have been a little giddy too. Fast-forward two weeks, to the evening that Concrete Dude is supposed to come out and start tearing up the ground to prep it for this glorious Outdoor Escape we will build. That just happened to be the same night that Friend J got electrocuted because *someone* <> flipped a switch the wrong way while he was hooking up our latest new dishwasher. I briefly thought of cancelling - we seem to be bleeding money this summer - but The Professor got all rational with the "We're fixing things out of that Emergency Fund you made up build, it's not a crime to use 5% of it!" followed by the "We have the money saved for the concrete already, too!" and finally toppled me over with a round of "Let me pour you a(nother) glass of wine". So. We have a Mass of Concrete in our back yard. And it is a thing of beauty...or as much as a Mass of Concrete can be, anyway.