40 more minutes till “as time goes by,” one of the british sitcoms that i’ve grown to LOVE. one time erica told me that she loves to watch british sitcoms on saturday night and i thought that was a little odd, but now i’m HOOKED. “as time goes by” stars judi dench, and the show ran for nine season. i’m thinking about buying the entire dvd set. this week they showed the very first season, and it was fun to watch. the premise of the show is that a couple, judi (jean) and lionel, had met during the korean war and had a romance but then he had to ship off and he wrote to her but she never got the letter and she thought he hadn’t written and he thought she hadn’t written back. so this week was all about them meeting again, 38 years later, and it’s highly entertaining.
at first the show seemed a little dull, but now i’m captivated. before we went camping on friday, we bought a DVD recorder in order to record friday night’s episode.
oh yeah, we went camping.
it was fun, camping, except hot. very very very hot. we were going to leave some time yesterday, but it kept getting later and later because we had a bunch of errands to run, and it took a long time at best buy trying to find a good dvd recorder. it’s actually a dvd/vhs recorder, and it’s AWESOME. because we have it, shows look better than they did on the tv. it “uploads” them to…digital quality? i’m a little sketchy on the whole thing, all i know is it’s great and we managed to set it up and program it before we left yesterday.
at about three. in the afternoon. kind of late, but not so bad…except we drove down the street and i realized i’d forgotten the butter (not real butter of course, but the healthy, really good for you stuff that makes your heart stronger and helps you leap tall buildings in a single bound)…and the syrup (for the FABULOUS oatmeal pancakes that kevin makes)…and all the BREAD AND BUNS for the burgers and sandwiches.
you must be thinking HOW DID YOU FORGET ALL OF THAT? Well, we we just in such a hurry, and i filled two coolers with stuff and i thought i’d remembered it all.
nope. kevin suggested that we stop at the store instead of going back home, so we did that, and then we had to stop at the gas station…so we didn’t get to the camp site until about five. in the evening. but this was a very good thing, because it wasn’t quite as boiling hot by then.
we set up camp at Site M, in the primitive campsite, and there was one other group of people there. a few people with a dog.
things went well initially; we set up quickly, we made a lovely dinner, had some (VERY ILLEGAL BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE ALCOHOL AT THE CAMPSITE) delicious wine, and went to bed when the insects started viciously attacking us.
and then, after an hour or so, the noise started. the group of people were playing a game or something, and they were very very loud and they went on and on and now i wonder, why did’t i yell SHUT THE HELL UP! because of course they’d have been able to hear me since i could hear them. but i didn’t, plus it was kind of hot in the tent.
and then they had to tromp to their car, i have no idea why, which was parked a ways away from the campsite (which is one reason they call it PRIMITIVE camping, plus there are no showers and no running water), and they were talking loudly as they walked by our site and then they shined their flashlight INTO OUR TENT and one of them said DON’T BE SO LOUD OR THEY’LL SHOOT US.
if i’d had a gun, i would have.
not a great sleep, but it was cooler and quite lovely this morning and we started hiking at 8:45 which was early for us. we skipped the pancakes because we wanted to get hiking. and it wasn’t bad on the trail, except christine would have HATED it, but i don’t think she’d enjoy the hiking in any climate whatsoever.
there were a few ticks, even though we sprayed bug spray with 100% deet all over our legs, but they weren’t so bad.
we hiked for a couple of hours, and then we thought, what will we do here now? we hadn’t brought the kayak because it would have taken even longer to leave the house if we’d taken it with us, and we didn’t bring the mountain bikes and i’m pretty happy about this and am not sure that i necessarily ever need to mountain bike again, so there wasn’t much to do. we spent time sitting around, which is usually quite enjoyable and one of the best parts of camping, because it’s so peaceful and pretty, but it was just too hot.
so we left. and here i am now, we turned on the air conditioning here at home, and life is good.
we’ll have to camp when it’s a little bit cooler. we can make more use of some of the cool camping stuff that kevin’s dad gave him – it’s stuff they used when their family camped when kevin was a kid, including a great set of knives and utensils, and a bunch of nested plates and a coffee urn. nice. and in such great shape, considering that their family of seven people used it a lot, i’m guessing. if i’d had something like that, i’d definitely have lost and/or broken quite a bit of it by now.
meanwhile, there’s another episode of “as time goes by” in just 25 minutes, except on saturday nights it’s always a commpletely different season than the one playing during the week. there’s another show called “the vicar of dibley,” starring dawn french, who was part of the comedy team of french and saunders, and jennifer saunders created “ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS,” one of my favorite shows. the vicar is entertaining.
lots of tv and air conditioning tonight.
i hope you’re keeping cool.
ok then,
saturday grace.
p.s. kevin just came in and announced that he’d checked my site and i hadn’t written in a week, BUT YOU’RE LIVING THE LIFE RIGHT HERE BESIDE ME, i told him.