Summer Hiatus = OVER

I hope y'all had as good a summer as I have had. While we don't take the summer off like school people, we do adjust our schedules on account of the *climate change*.

The kids did the town's sh1tty, but cheap(!), rec camp for the month of July. It was over 4 hours long counting the busing to and from my doorstep. Generally after that the kids would have lunch, decompress from their punk moods (which they always come home with from these age-graded, socializing activities), we'd do some of their *work*, and then we'd head out to our town pool.

In August my son did an all-day Cub Scout camp for a week; he did chess camp one week; and then last week he and his sister were shipped up north to their grandparents' house in Massachusetts.

There were many other highlight adventures too. I took them into Manhattan a few times. Central Park and even Battery Park are TERRIFIC for kids! We enjoyed free GOOD seats to a Mets game. Although I must admit I didn't know a single player on the Mets besides David Cone...

We busted all the way down the Garden State Parkway to visit my third cousin and her family in Stone Harbor, NJ. But the highlight of that trip, for the kids anyway, was spending the afternoon and evening on the boardwalk of Wildwood, NJ. The Raging Waters waterpark was the best we've been too if only because they have no *height restrictions* on their slides. Unfortunately my camera was secured in a locker otherwise I could have videoed my peanut, 30 lb daughter going solo off a great slide that released riders about 10 feet above the water....heads were turning left and right in search of the irresponsible parent!

On that trip we also hit Philly on the way home to see assorted jabronis. And I also took the kids up to UPenn to see the old stomping grounds from my deformative years. For those of you unaware, Penn has probably the most spectacular urban campus in the country notwithstanding the hideous girls. That's what 200k in tuition gets you for sure there anyway now...

We did a whole lot more but you get the point.

I myself got some serious work done around the house and at least in the brainstorming department for my new edu-endeavor HomeschoolDad.com. It's golf season too so I've hit more than my fair share of balls in between playing a few rounds here and there. My swing has taken another hard-earned leap forward which I'll discuss at another time. A couple weeks ago I was fortunate enough to play two Top-100 courses in the same week. I was invited to play Piping Rock (#88) in nearby Locust Valley. And then two days later I played Bethpage Black (#20 or so) - shooting a decent 87 from the back tees (7,400 yards, par 71). At Bethpage I drove the ball like the old Tiger Woods but pitched and putted like a bogey golfer. The course is flat-out LONG....if you can't pound the ball off the tee AND handle 200+ yard approaches you probably won't play it more than once. And you'll need a calculator to add up your score!

Long Island actually has some really, really good golf courses (8 or 9 of the Top-100 in USA). Of course they are all private outside of Bethpage, Eisenhower, and a handful of others. One positive development is that I keep getting invited to play private country clubs - quite often actually. In a couple hours I'll be teeing off at Southampton GC which is adjacent to Shinnecock out in the Hamptons. I guess since I'm getting older more of my peers are financially established enough to join clubs. In fact my wife wants to join one of the two country clubs close to our house next year. The cheaper and probably better one has initiation fees of somewhere between $7,000 and $17,000 and the weekday membership that we are considering is $8,300 per year. The more expensive one is about 30k upfront and a whopping $12,000-$18,000 per year. I can talk some more about this later....(Wife wants to join AND quit her job!)

Other developments include purchasing and wielding a chainsaw(!); buying a Sony Internet color TV; procuring a weight bench; reading some good books - as I always do; and spending $1,997 on Eben Pagan's, an internet marketer, training.

Alright I have a tee time...