Loyal Reader Number Seven

It's (finally) Loyal Reader Number Seven's Very Special Day! And here she is. Although she's been a Loyal Reader - one of the most loyal of my Loyal Readers, in fact - for quite some time now, we've never had her picture available before, so she's never had her own Very Special Day. Thanks for sending us your picture, thanks for the many interesting comments, and thanks for being a Loyal Reader!

In fact, this won't be just a single-day Very Special Day. LRN7 also sent us an interesting picture of a robot, which I'm planning to feature prominently in this space tomorrow. I'm hoping she'll post a comment tomorrow telling us all about the robot, since all I have right now is a picture. Try to bear the excitement until then.

It was another sunny day in Lardville. At least they tell me so. I'm on my way home right now, but Loyal Reader Number Four assures me it was indeed sunny. And pleasantly warm. Every day out here is perfect, but it's not getting tiresome. Oh, no, not at all. Actually, I hear it might rain a little in the winter, but I'm not sure I believe it. Time will tell.

Anyway, the Pool People were there again today, installing the tile. As usual, I can hardly wait to see it. They tell me it looks nice. We weren't quite sure what to expect, but it's nothing like that at all. They also apparently installed the waterfall, which turns out to have come in a box, so it's apparently prefab. I'm speechless.

Of course, I'm not writeless. I guess prefab is okay - it will probably work much better than if they had constructed it themselves. I just never imagined there was such a thing. I never imagined prefab fireplaces either until a few years ago, and they certainly have them. In fact, I've owned several, and they pretty much all worked. Other than the one in Gardenville, which always, and I mean always, smoked in the house, in spite of my explicit instructions to Take it Outside.

I'm listening to James Lileks's Diner podcasts today. He's been talking about family vacations in the 60's, with the family piling into the wood-grained station wagon, tying the luggage to the top of the car, and stopping at the A&W drive-in for lunch every day. Ah, memories. That sounds exactly like my family vacations, except that my dad would NEVER strap luggage to the top of the car (might scratch the paint) (he was right, of course) and we ate lunch out of a cooler. We stayed every night at a Holiday Inn, pulling in at about 3:00 in the afternoon. We swam in the motel pool, ate at the motel restaurant, and played on the vibrating bed before turning in (parents and girls in the two beds, boys in a rollaway and sleeping bags on the floor). We were up at about 6:00, ate breakfast in the room our of Kellogg's Snak-Pak boxes, and got back on the road by about 6:30. I loved those trips. I've been excited about the open road all my life.

Lileks also talked about the A&W food, which made me hungry. We're having dinner at about 7:30 these days. That's pretty late. Why is it that the root beer at the A&W restaurant was so much better than what they sell you at the grocery store? We had an A&W drive-in near our little house in Berkley, Michigan. I drove my unreliable British Sports Car over there a couple of times for a quick bite on a muggy Michigan summer afternoon. Ah, memories.

I loved that car, when it ran.

Well, that's about it for today. See you tomorrow.