And when you went out of your way to catch that ball

[austin_dern]

For Father's Day we had bunny_hugger's parents over, a grilling-and-chilling kind of day where we could sit around the pond in back and admire the wildlife as we get it while cooking stuff. This was meant to be low-key and it was nicely successful that way. We'd thought originally to have them come over Saturday, but they thought the weather might be better Sunday and were perfectly correct. Saturday wasn't a bad day, but it was cooler, and tried harder to rain or at least look like raining. bunny_hugger and I went to a movie instead.

Sunday was the better day for it, though, warmer and sunnier and quite well-behaved. We spent most of the afternoon at the table beside the pool and talking and waiting for food or eating possibly too much food. bunny_hugger made guacamole quite successfully, and her parents brought over a box of 285,000 Boca burgers and another dozen imitation-chicken patties (so we're stocked for dinner for the foreseeable future too), and before too long the birds and the squirrels forgave our offensive walking-too-near-them and came back to the feeders to eat.

This by the way gave me the first chance to see just how a squirrel gets past the bird feeder's baffle. The baffle was high enough the squirrel was actually able to climb around it. I pushed it down a couple inches and we'll see if that makes a difference. We're planning on getting a bigger baffle anyway.

After her parents left (they stayed longer than they really felt comfortable, because they did feel comfortable, but they're worried about the dogs) I phoned my father, who had a quieter day that he was satisfied with. It's the first time I was away for Father's Day since Singapore and grad school life, but, he got our cards and he's quite insistent that he doesn't want a fuss to be made over the day (which does come so close after his birthday anyway). He'd got together with a friend and by then was just watching TV while a cat tries to sit on him. So that had gone well, too.

Trivia: The United States Army's first military aircraft, the SC-1, was a dirigible about 52 feet long, with a silk gasbag holding nine thousand cubic feet of hydrogen, and a 7-horsepower Curtiss engine. Source: Wondrous Contrivances: Technology at the Threshold, Merritt Ierley.

Currently Reading: Squeeze This! A Cultural History Of The Accordion In America, Marion Jacobson. This is a much more scholarly book than the title suggests; it's the sort of book that can use the word ``recontextualization'' without any self-conscious embarrassment.