August travels

It has been a month of weekend trips for me. While I only took off a single day from work, I managed to cram in three terrific trips. As mentioned earlier, I visited my parents and Ohio friends at the start of the month. My father, lover of old motorcycles and old cars (and old tractors, old phonographs, old waffle irons...) drove me to the airport in style. I told him that wearing a scarf made me feel like a 1940's movie star.

Each summer I go to the beach once with my friend E and her kids. Her husband despises the beach, so this arrangement lets us both get some sun-and-sand time while splitting the driving. Every year we marvel at how the kids get older, the car trip gets easier, and the waves less scary. (#3 is directly related to #1, of course.) This year I also took two beach day trips on my own, which let me perfect my beach lunch (tomato and mozzarella salad, with German rye bread) and test a new beach with a reduced entrance fee.

Last weekend, my friend C invited me to visit her parents' weekend cottage in rural Virginia. The cottage looks out on a three-mile wide river near the point where it enters Chesapeake Bay, so there were lots of beautiful views and wading in salt water (while keep a careful eye out for jellyfish because I am a wimp). I hadn't  previously met any of the other people there, but they were all kindred spirits because we are in the same financial planning community. Some of them hang out on a forum, so it was cool to meet people that I previously only vaguely knew of virtually. Drinking gin-and-tonics with interesting, fun people while looking out over the water is pretty much the perfect thing to do.