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bright purple berries

With the summer officially over the beach house is not being rented any more so this past weekend we took the opportunity to head there for a long weekend.  The Columbus Day holiday allowed for a long three day weekend and the first opportunity to see the beach house after the long summer rental.  We were hoping to go during the Labor Day weekend, but surprisingly people rented the week before and after.  Getting a late start on Friday was not much of an issue.  So late after summer the usual exodus to the beaches over the weekend didn’t happen.  The only trouble we had was around Annapolis and that was general rush hour traffic.

When we arrived the house was in great shape.  Actually most of the summer rentals are repeat customers, some have been coming for over 10 years to the house.  So they treat the house almost as if it was there own.  The yard was of course in pretty bad shape.  During the summer someone does come out and mow it, but that is the extent of the yard care.  Weeds had flourished in most of the flower beds and the bushes were gangly.  On the inside we removed all the baseboard heating radiators.  They must have been original ones because of how corroded they where, with the new heat pump they are no longer needed.

view across Lake Comegys

Other than that the weekend was pretty open and relaxing.  Sunday’s big thing was the Redskins game at 1 against Carolina.  It was a crappy game in my opinion.  The Skins suck and lost the game by three points.  They couldn’t block, couldn’t score, couldn’t tackle.  They even had a safety scored on them when Clinton Portis couldn’t get out of the end zone.  On top of that the Cowboys won against Kansas City in over time and Wisconsin lost a heart breaker of a game, one they easily should have won.  Ohio scored two defensive touch downs and ran one kickoff for a touchdown.  Definately not a good weekend for sports.

But on Sunday Nancy and I did get out for a long walk Sunday afternoon.  We walked down to Silver Lake, down along the beach and headed back home up Rehoboth Avenue.  I was surprised by the number of people that made it to the beach over the weekend.  While walking we ran into a lot of other people biking, walking and just enjoying the pleasant weather.  Even the beach was packed, no one was in the water, but many still went down to the water for a lovely afternoon.  Down Rehoboth Avenue we did a little window shopping in the stores that were still open, after the Columbus Day weekend many more will close for the winter months as the crowds get thinner.

Monday we took the opportunity to do a little shopping before making our way home.  Not that we can’t get stuff back here in Virginia, but not paying taxes is a nice little benefit, every dollar helps these days.  We even had time to stop off at this ice cream shop just outside of town.  It is actually a dairy farm and they make their own ice cream, highly recommend it if you are in the mood.

I wish I could have gotten into the water, but it was a nice weekend regardless.  We always manage to get a little work done and have a lot of fun while up there.  We ate well and drank like sailors.  Most nights we would sit outside talking and finish the bottle of wine we opened for dinner that night.

a cold walk on the beach

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Took a quick trip up to the beach house this past weekend to get some work done on the house.  My Dad and his wife have decided to extend the patio into the back yard, so that meant a lot of digging.  Matt, Bobby, and myself dug about 8 square feet 6 inches down.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if the ground was not frozen two inches deep.  We couldn’t just take shovels and dig in the dirt, we needed a pick axes to break apart the frozen ground into large chunks.  All this digging on one of the coldest days of the week.  Temperatures didn’t get above freezing all day and there was a constant biting 15mph wind making things worse.  Fortunately the excavated dirt didn’t have to end up in a land fill.  We made a flower bed along part of the side fence, waste not want not.

Jesus geese

We also got some some work done on the deck. All the boards have now been replaced with Trex boards.  As a beach house the environment beats wood to death in a couple of years.  The Trex will provide a maintenance free and splinter free(!) surface for years.  The posts got a make over of white Vinyl too.  With the sun quickly falling and the wind picking up, the temperature was becoming unbearable.  So at about 5:30 we decided to call it quits for the day.

With the Super Bowl on Sunday (Steelers won in a good game) no one was sticking around for more work.  Sunday’s weather turned out to be in the low 60, sun shinning with a clear blue sky, and very little wind.  If we had that kind of weather on Saturday, we definitely could have gotten more work done.  But the bitter cold temps made work pretty difficult.  For me it was a little motivating, at least if I kept moving I was warm.

For  a work weekend I was able to get away for a walk early each morning.  On Saturday I headed down to the beach.  Surprisingly there were about a dozen people walking or running along the shore.  At least the cold weather froze the sand and made walking on the beach easy.  On Sunday I headed over towards Silver Lake and found a plethora of geese, ducks, even a blue heron.  I was not the only one taking photos either, I ran into a few birders at the lake.  They told me about a red billed duck sitting at the edge of the lake.  I saw it but didn’t think anything of it, apparently this duck is rare this far north in winter.

It was a lot of work in the cold this weekend but I love heading to the beach house with the family.  It was a great surprise to see Bobby, Tracy, and of course my niece Ellie.  Cute kid, growing up so fast.  The work is never done so we have already planned for another family work day in mid-March.

LOTS of ducks