Life Aquatic
It was an interesting place, but it’s hard to understand how Clarksville can have such a better one. There was a floating obstacle course the kids got to take turns running, but otherwise it wasn’t much more than a couple of indoor pools. It’s not surprising to see they’re having trouble keeping the lights on.
After the swim, I went to my parents’ house to take a look at their home theater receiver and TV. So far it seems like they have a couple bad HDMI ports from a surge or something, but I’ll have to mess around with it a bit more before I know for sure.
From there, I picked up some things from work, then made it up to Summer’s for dinner. She grilled some big, thick burgers, squash, and zucchini that all turned out great. We finished with the Game of Life, then settled in for an episode of Stranger Things before everyone was pretty well tuckered out for bed.
This is annoying.
I successfully canceled our hotel in Branson for tonight, and we got everything packed back up for the trip home. After a whole lot of sweating, I managed to get everything to fit into the trunk so I could strap my new Aeron chair to the hitch cargo rack. It felt solid enough that I called the guy back and met his wife to pick up his other chair as well. Why buy one when you can have two for twice the price? Even better, I got it for half what I paid for the first one due to a couple lines in the fabric of the seat.
We slept in a bit longer than I had hoped after being out late for the movie. We eventually made the trip into the city for another couple shows at the Adler Planetarium and to check out the rest of the exhibits. This time I ignored the full parking signs and went straight to the planetarium parking, and a guy let me in for the same $25 rate I paid a couple days ago in a parking structure over half a mile away.
Today started off particularly slow and late. My Aunt Diane called after she got out of church so we could set up an early dinner. We left the hotel in the early afternoon to go shopping at an Old Navy that offered less of a deal than I expected, and then killed the rest of the afternoon there until we met my Aunt Diane and Uncle Rich at Greek Islands for dinner.
It was finally water park day. Beth got us four tickets to the Mt. Olympus water park in Wisconsin Dells, which seemed like a larger version of Branson. It was basically a series of water park resorts all in a long strip of land near the lake. Each resort was relatively small by itself, but every single place on the road had a novelty statue at the very least, and many places had indoor water slides.
I only got about three hours of sleep, so I was dragging all day long. We survived the night without any permanent injury or loss. In fact, the shower was tall enough for me to wash my hair without bending over backwards, and it had more pressure than the one at the Red Roof Inn we stayed at the night before, so overall I guess it was a success. I still ended up paying over $15 an hour to sleep, but at least I had power and a shower.
We got up and went to Greenbush Bakery to pick up a bunch of donuts that were donated to Beth’s event. I guess I thought she was running the show, but she was one of several volunteers. We actually beat them there right at 6:30, so I felt good about that. Beth had a bit of a meltdown when she found out where they put her vendor booth, but we eventually got things set up to go. I was too tired to be of much help after that. I had no idea there was such a large community of people with concern for canine cancer awareness. It felt a little silly to me, but I understand it at some level.
Still exhausted, we walked to the dim sum restaurant in the hotel parking lot for an early dinner. It seemed to be pretty authentic, to the point that the menus were in two languages, one of which was not Spanish. It was a kind of à la carte menu, and we ordered five items to share. I think all but one of them were steamed. The last was fried and seemed more Americanized. Overall it was pretty good.
When I got home, I moved the rest of the tadpoles to the 55-gallon tank. I counted around 250 alive, and only really found one corpse. There were some others that didn’t seem too active, but there’s a ton of movement now that they all have way more space to swim around. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with over 200 frogs, but it should be entertaining. The pair I took to Oakland have gotten way bigger than any of the ones I have at home, which I guess is due to less crowding and better water quality. Hopefully the larger tank will fix both of those issues, though I still need to go buy some more filter media.