Happy Thursday

First of all, a couple of reasons why I am lovin’ the humidity out here:

1. You don’t have to dry off after taking a shower.
2. It takes 3 minutes (tops!) to blow dry your hair (if your hair is brown, over a foot long, and belongs to my head).
3. You have a warm security blanket around you at all times – it’s like snuggling up with a blanket on the couch, only in summer instead of winter!
4. Soft skin – I haven’t had to use my Curel once yet!5. Raindrops falling outside my window and on the roof…it’s such a lovely sound.
6. I no longer feel the need to drink 15 glasses of water a day! I don’t know if that’s related or not, but I’m pretending I do and that it is.

We had a wonderful day today. Despite staying up pretty late (we’ll just say well past midnight), Daniel and I both got up between 6 and 6:30 am (which is between 5 and 5:30 am in Utah time—so there!). Daniel went with Grandpa and Samson for a morning walk/trash picking excursion, and I went for a 30 min. jog, seeing many beautiful houses, trees, lawns, and a couple of cute squirrels along the way.

Back at home, I took a quick shower and ate breakfast with Grandma and Daniel while Grandpa read the paper. I had orange juice, oatmeal with blueberries and bananas, and a delicious peach—the best I’ve tasted all year!

After breakfast, Daniel and I went upstairs to read our scriptures, and both ended up falling asleep again, but Grandma woke us up before 10:30 to get going with Grandpa to their local rec center. Grandpa bought us some visitor’s passes, and gave us the grand tour of their weight room, swimming pool, tennis courts, yoga room, play room, janitor’s closet, and…well, you get the idea. He seemed to know quite a few people in the gym, and was happy to introduce us to each and every one. I was glad the gym was a small one, as Grandpa seemed determined to introduce us to almost every piece of equipment inside, in a fashion such as I would imagine one would introduce the alphabet to a 5-year old. This despite the fact that—alas—after 3 years of navigating the inner labyrinths of at least 3 gyms, I am well aware of the function and title of almost every pain-provoking machine, and even of the appropriate accompanying amount of emotional adrenaline, fear, resentment, or anticipation.

At last, Grandpa went into the weight room/cardio room (I hate it when they’re combined, but what can one do?), and Daniel and I changed into our swimsuits and went to the indoor pool. The bigger section was about 50 meters long and 25 meters wide, and divided into 8 or so laps. However, only 4/5 of them were open for swimming. The rest were polluted by an ancient spell cast by an underwater demon. Oops, been reading too much Fablehaven. Actually, they were closed because a sign and a lifeguard Daniel asked said so. Anyway, fortunately, the pool was not crowded at all, and eventually Daniel and I both got lanes to ourselves. I swam my usual 18 laps of mixed strokes, and enjoyed doing a few special water-stretches and activities between. I believe this was the first time I’ve gone swimming all year, and I enjoyed it so much that I’ve resolved to go swimming at least once every week when I get back to Utah. It takes a lot of time and can be crowded, but I’d forgotten how much fun it is! Anyway, it’s always good to vary your type of exercise so your body doesn’t get too accustomed to just doing the same thing over and over. Speaking of which, Aunt Shelly is taking me for a bike ride tomorrow, also the first time I’ll have been on a (non-stationary) bike this year! Whoopee for change!

After swimming and showering and fooling around with Grandpa (he came in and told the lifeguard that we were his grandchildren, and not to let us drown…), we drove home. I washed my hair, and then ate lunch—a lovely bacon/tomato/lettuce/cheese sandwich with Grandma’s homemade bread.

After lunch, I did a lot of reading on my bed (I can tell already that I’m going to be pretty depressed between the time that I finish the 4th book in this series and that the 5th book comes out), and watched one of my new Best Picture movies from the collection Dad got me for my birthday. This one was the Best Picture winner from 1954, the year Mom and Dad were born. It’s called On the Waterfront, and was definitely winning material. Great cast, great story, lots of believability and tense situations, some touching bits of tragedy and parallelism, a triumphant ending and love/goodness/decency conquers all. It was especially nice to watch the main character change from an aimless, lazy, irresponsible bum to a courageous, independent, moral freeman. I would definitely watch it again, ideally with Kleenex and ice cream.

I went over to Aunt Shelly’s in the late afternoon, and talked with her and helped to fix some green beans which Daniel and Andy had picked from their garden. Daniel was teaching Andy some chess strategies, but I believe they had already played MarioKart for the allotted hour of the day. I was not too sad to have missed out, I must say. Eventually Uncle Billy, Grandma, and Grandpa joined us for dinner, which was beyond fabulous. We had sweet potato French fries (which I absolutely loved!), squash and green beans, and what appeared to be giant hot dogs, but were called bratwursts by those-who-knew. I had a big fat turkey one, and it made every hot dog I had ever tasted pale in comparison. By the way, be prepared to read a lot about meals in my account of our vacation—Southern dinners with our relatives in Tennessee are pretty much the stuff of legend in the Miller family.

After dinner, we talked for a long time, as you may expect, and had dessert, which was cold banana bread with chocolate chips—very chewy and yummy, though I had to drink a lot of water to keep from getting thirsty.

After another half hour or so of talking about…whatever, we ended up playing Catchphrase in the Hughes’ living room, with Daniel/me/Uncle Billy/Aunt Shelly on one time, and Gma/Gpa/Andy/Becky on another. We played three games, and our team won all of them, though the last game was close enough to be settled by a matchpoint. Very intense. Julie came home when we were winding up, and we talked for a little bit while the boys played pool. She had to do two presentations in the past two days, and seemed happy to be done with them.

At last, around 9 pm, Daniel and I headed out, and we’re now stalling before bed time by reading, checking our email, watching TV, and writing long blog posts. I’m actually impressed that I finished this in less than half an hour.

We’re looking forward to tomorrow—yoga class with Grandpa at noon, bike ride with Aunt Shelly, and we get to see Edward, Joseph, and Kirsti! Plus another one of those infamous Southern dinners—I’ve heard rumors with the word “pizza” in them, but nothing more…