Vacation, Part IV

I cannot remember how many vacation days I have this year. Nor how many I have used up. I do know that instead of my regularly allotted 15 (basically, three weeks), thanks to some kind of company glitch, I received 30 for 2004.

Anyhoo, I am on vacation. I have been on vacation since last Friday. I can already sense that when next Monday rolls around, I will not want to go back to work.

I will deal with that when the time comes.

For now, let us rewind ...



Mona told me about this patch of sunflowers, so Thursday night, after tennis, I drove down to it. Had to hike through a field (freshly mowed, thank God!) and then make my way down a somewhat steep hill. But, what the heck, I was still hot and sweaty from tennis, so it was all good.

I have no idea how many sunflowers were/are there, but they are beautiful. And it was getting close to 8 p.m., and the evening sun was going down, but there was just enough light to snap several shots before I saw it:

The monarch.

And I had taken a few pictures of some bumblebees/yellowjackets, and I was feeling quite happy about that, but when the butterfly appeared: That was it. I kept following the monarch; it would land on a sunflower and do whatever butterflies do on sunflowers (are they pollinating?), and then a bumblebee would hover nearby, and the monarch would fly to another sunflower. And repeat the process. And so I started trying to predict when it would fly away and snap a shot of the butterfly, midflight, but usually I would fire the shutter just as it was flying away ... and I got 2 pictures with, like, half a butterfly, off to the left.

And then I got my shot. And so I had to leave because, well, how could I even hope to get another one?

: )

That was the beginning of my vacation. The next day, I slept in until 11:30 a.m., then awoke to find that traffic on my normally busy-in-a-smalltown-busy-sorta-way street was busier than usual. Cars and lots of semis. So I knew something had happened on the interstate.

A train derailment. Off a bridge on an overpass. Dumping at least 8 train cars and lots of coal onto the roadway.



Amazingly, no one was killed. Or hurt, even. No cars were buried/smashed in the wreckage; no train crew members were affected.

Just a matter of something went wrong, and a near-disaster occurred, but no one was injured, and hopefully the problem will be fixed.

Miraculous, really.

: )

I saw 2 Cubs-Cardinals games in a 3-day span. And when the Cubs lost by a score of, what, 6-1 (?) on Friday, by playing as if they were too hot to work up a decent sweat or something, I decided that I was officially writing them off. Until late-August. Unless they had shown any signs that they were going to make more than a half-hearted attempt at winning the National League Central.

Then, over the next 2 days, I decided that the Cubs needed my support now more than ever! How could I possibly give up on my team? So, on Sunday, I threw on my Cubbie bear jersey and headed out to Busch Stadium.

Cubs 8, Cardinals 4.

The 2nd half of the season is gonna be fun, I have decided.

Oh, and during the game, for a few minutes, Kameron had ahold of the sleeve of my jersey.