Come on, vacation!

As the weather finally warms up here in the Mitt (Michigan), I'm ready to go places and do things.  My wife is one to make our plans well in advance, so we've already got a lot of things lined-up for this summer.

My wife got 4 free tickets to see the Detroit Tigers play the Oakland A's on May 30th. I'll be taking my son and two of his friends, which should be fun. I'm also taking my camera because the seats offer a nice view of the field.  (Go Tigers!)

We have a couple of camping trips scheduled, one in July and one in August.  In July we're going to try out Higgins Lake campground for a change.  We checked it out last year and it looked pretty nice.  In August we'll be back at our usual camping spot in the Rifle River Recreation Area. (a.k.a. "The Area")

There's also a trip to my favorite amusement park, Cedar Point.  (I could write a post all about my favorite Cedar Point memories)  We're going for an unprecedented THREE DAYS this year!  I'm very excited about having so much time; usually it's just one day and we hurry to get on as many rides as possible.

I also get a real itch to go fishing in the spring.  It usually starts as soon as the snow melts away and I clean-out my tackle box and put new line on my fishing poles.  This year it's even more so because I recently bought a small rowboat - something I've been wanting for years.  I'm looking forward to some quality time fishing with my son, although I think I might have to bribe him initially; he's been fishing before and is lukewarm about it.  He's happy when he's catching fish (not a guarantee, of course), but he'd still rather be playing X-Box.

But I really want to get my boat painted first.  My boat has all the original registration stickers on it dating back to 1968 (yes, it's an OLD boat), so it's kind of a restoration project for me.  I'm trying to faithfully match the original Lund red trim (that's a tough one to match) and pale blue-green interior color-scheme.

In the meantime, there are a few projects that need to be done:

• Paint the garage (#1 on my wife's hit-list)
• Lay down bricks for a mini-patio in the backyard
• Plant the garden (I already finished roto-tilling laying down the plastic)
• 'De-foresting' the area behind the garage so we can paint the garage
• Setting the brick barrior lines along the house front
• Wrangling-in my black raspberry vines so they don't wander too far
• The various tree-trimming and weed-wacking that always pops up

Boy, that sounds like a LOT of work!

(Come on, vacation!)

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