The end of summer is upon us.

Well, I think the family has officially had its last summer outing for the year. Friends invited us up to a lake cottage that they had been given use of, and we just got back. It was a pretty good time. The kids and menfolk went fishing and swimming, and my friend and I stayed at the house and read without anyone bothering us. We just sat on the deck and thought about nothing, which is about as good as it gets at this point in life. Did I mention we made smores? Because that's the most important part about spending a weekend at a lake house. It's kind of like the law, you know. What was interesting about this particular house, though, was that anything that was supposed to cook food didn't work so well. I started to grill steaks on the gas grill they had up there, but that didn't work so well, so I had to build a fire in the charcoal grill. Luckily, I had brought up charcoal, but getting the grills in and out of that thing was hard and I ended up burning my forearm with a red hot poker I was using to try and get the grill in place. Yeah, it sizzled when it hit my skin, but did surprisingly little damage to my arm; although, the skin does look a bit charred. Not just burned, but charred. So I guess that's kind of gross. So I finally got the meal cooked. Then this morning, my friends was trying to fry potatoes in this electric skillet they had in the house, but that thing didn't work for shit, either. I basically think the people who own the house decide that when something stops working so well, they just take it up to the lake house. Also, there was no air conditioning, which I don't understand. I don't know why anyone living in modern times would deny themselves the pleasure of air conditioning. There's no reason for them to not have a couple of window units or even a portable air conditioner, so it was hot and muggy to say the least. My friend and I pretty much spent the entire weekend drenched in our own sweat. So I guess that's kind of gross. But all in all, it was an incredibly pleasant weekend and thoroughly enjoyable.