The weekend visited a whirlwind of activity upon us, both at la casa de Puddin and at various foreign locales. Of course, by "foreign", I obviously mean "places I’ve never been" as opposed to locations in other countries.
Visiting other countries isn’t something I want to do on a weekend. If I’m going to visit someplace where the history and the culture vary significantly from my own, I’d rather set aside a good bit of time to really get a feel for it. For example, some day I want to spend 6 months in London. Is that wrong? Regardless, that why I only go to foreign places, like Poland, Germany, or Texas, if I have to for work.
On Saturday, we piled into the family truckster and drove north to Dayton for my first visit to Wright Patterson Air Force base. We took part in a tour of the Air Force museum there as part of a larger Cub Scout excursion with the Pack to which the Puddinpop and Mini-Me belong.
Oh, and by the way, if you’ve never been, there’s apparently two parts to Wright-Patt. There’s the actual Air Force Base part, and then the Museum part. If you’re trying to find the latter, but stumble upon the former, well, the nice checkpoint security soldier there will firmly, but very politely, explain how you the get the hell off their base and back to civilian areas. After, of course, they check your ID and give you Very Specific Instructions on how to make a U-turn.
How I managed to reach the age of 38 and never before visit Wright-Patt is sort of beyond me. I can totally understand why I’ve never been to Disney World: the place is in Florida, and is populated by creepy over-sized walking animals. Wright-Patt, though, is not even an hour away, and is chock-full of really sweet airplanes.
Anyway, we had but a mere 2.5 hours to spend on site, during which I drew two conclusions. First, two and half hours is not nearly enough time to do the place justice. Also, I’m uber(!) lame for never having witnessed the place’s coolness before.
In other words, a return trip will be required. Oh, and I may or may not have made vroomy-explodey-blast-offy sounds quietly to myself when we passed modern planes.
You never outgrow making jet engine/rocket noises.
After racing through the museum, doing the best we could to take in as much of it as possible in a brief amount of time, we piled back into the ole truckster for a dash back home.
The Puddinpop, had his very first youth basketball game that afternoon.
Even with some, um, challenging (I was very proud of myself for not swearing) traffic that we expertly avoided via river-side back roads, we made the game right on time. And the Puddinpop proceeded to have a killer time on the hardwood. Sure, his team may have lost, but he scored 3 baskets, the most impressive of which came after a steal, a fast break, a layup, and then putting back his own rebound three times.
Proud Puddin was proud.
The game, of course, brought to mind my own short-lived youth basketball career, which I believe took place in the 5th grade. I was bad not good. How not good? Well, put it this way: the few times I got the ball (somehow), I’d dribble right into the corner and hide, protecting the ball like a feral squirrel with an acorn in November.
My team didn’t win a game until I had my appendix taken out, thus sidelining me for the rest of the season.
On the plus side, though, my son bested my personal lifetime scoring total in his first game. An impressive feat for a 3rd grader sure, but you know, he only had to score once to do it. I wish maybe I’d set the bar a little higher than, um, zero.
After basketball, the fun stuff was over. It was time for some infamous party prep. Sunday we held the obligatory family gathering to celebrate the Puddinpop’s birthday (which is this week). Let me assure you that no party of any kind has or ever will be thrown at la casa de Puddin without a thorough cleaning, whether the house needs it or not (it usually doesn’t…the Puddinette runs a tight ship).
So, there was cleaning, cleaning, and…wait for it…cleaning before I finally collapsed, exhausted, Saturday night in front of some silly TV show.
The party went off without a hitch, though, and the Puddinpop, by all accounts, had a blast. Of course, the house is now overrun with Pokemon stuff, his obsession du jour. This is a situation I expect will get worse before it get better. But having my own fond memories of childhood obsessions, I’m not going to begrudge him his current "catch ’em all" collection compulsion.
But Pokemon—and assorted similar stuff—is another post.
And now that the cake and ice cream has come and gone, the work week is rearing its ugly head.
Which is fine by me. I can totally use the break.
Pud’n
Puddintopia 