Kayaking, Independent Baseball, and Greenwood Lake

So the foreign girl at the counter at DTUT has a boyfriend...   some greasy looking guy... sort of takes something out of our little exchanges when I get my green tea.  Oh well.

So I've had a really great Memorial Day Weekend so far.  Friday night was a long overdue cleaning of my apartment.  I threw out five big garbage bags of...  just random crap.  I seriously have issues about holding on to stuff.  When I moved out of Fordham, my desk alone produced about three for four garbage bags of stuff, which is difficult to comprehend given the mass of the desk and the known and accepted laws of phyisics.

On Saturday, I was back at the Boathouse.  The water was choppy and the wind was whipping up pretty good, but a handful of brave souls still came to kayak.  One girl took a nice flop into the water by the dock, and I pulled her out by her lifejacket like I was one of those shipping cargo cranes... up, over, and down.  Mary came down...  I don't think I mentioned Mary and Andy.   Mary is this english woman who came down last weekend for the first time.  We started talking and it turns out she works for a publishing company.  She's going to take a look at my book and everything... how do you like that for dumb luck.  Kayaking:  fun AND productive.  Anyway... she gave me her e-mail address and number.  Then, later on, another woman comes down and tells me her friend just called her and told her how much fun she had, so she had to go.  It turns out that it was Mary, and so this girl Andy and I started chatting it up.  She was incredibly cool, and after she kayaked, she actually hung out to volunteer almost the whole day.  I think she's be a lot of fun to hang out with, but I'll wait until Mary looks at my book before I make any move that might be perceived as sketchy.  You never know and can't be too careful.

Anyway, from kayaking, I went to the Big East Baseball Finals in Bridgewater, NJ.  Brian and Rich met me at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, and I drove out to Jersey.  They had the game in an Atlantic League ballpark, which is one of those Independent minor league teams.  I'll tell you.. it was such an enjoyable experience--$8 tickets, $2 for parking.  I'd easily go back again.  Brian's brother Jimmy was there with his wife.  I swear, Jimmy makes me laugh more than any other person I've ever met.  Something about the dryness and deadpan delivery I just find endlessly amusing.  His wife asks him where the bathrooms are... and its a dinky little stadium where everything is like two feet away, and he goes, "Its on the Concourse Level."   Hysterical.

Anyway, after the game, I hung out with Anna...   everyone else pretty much left for the weekend, so Anna and I were left to chill Saturday night and Sunday.  Saturday night we... painted.  It was bizzare.   She doesn't have any brushes or canvas, so she just paints on cardboard.  She can be so weird sometimes, but I guess it was cool.  We had nice conversation and it was just good company.  I left and came back the next morning for a random roadtrip.  We just decided we were going to go on a driving adventure, and somehow, that turned out to be a search for my grandmother's old country house in Greenwood Lake.  I drove up 17, and somehow I found it.  It was really strange being up there, because everything seemed so much smaller than I remember it--meaning I was obviously pretty small the last time I was up there.  Two different people had occupied the house since we sold it about ten years ago, but it was kept up very well.  When I got up there, I called my grandmother to tell her were I was and she got a little choked up.  Still, she was really glad to hear that the house had been kept in such good condition.

What was really disappointing, though, was when we walked down to the beach on the lake.  There was this little pier that they built about 20 years ago when I was younger and they put in sand behind it.  It was small but cute.  As we walked down the stairs to get there, it was obvious that they hadn't been kept up, but I wasn't prepared for how bad the beach was.  It was in total disrepair, like it hadn't been touched in that long.  The deck and pier is collapsing into the water, and all the sand is gone, with weeds overgrowing the concrete.  It was really sad to see...   makes me wonder what happened.  The raft we used to swim out to was gone, and it looked like part of it was sunken on the far side of the deck.  Anna took some pictures, but I don't think I'll be showing them to my grandmother.  I'm curious to figure out what happened and when.

Anyway, before we hit the house, we stopped at a marina.  Turns out that a pontoon boat rental is only like $150 for three hours...   The whole time we were there, we were thinking that it would be cool to come up here for a few days with a group of people, and it wouldn't cost that much money. 

After the Lake, we headed out towards Warwick, but on our way, we passed Wawayanda, which is this state park that has a beach.  I went with my grandparents a few times and I have pretty vivid memories of it.  We ate lunch at the beach and then we rented a rowboat.  I don't know if she just timed the current wrong or what, but Anna had quite a struggle with the rowing.  :)   

From Wawayanda, we went to a Farmer's Market in Warwick.  They had good icecream, and we stopped to watch the farm animals they had in their corral.  They had a goat and some sheep, and some baby goats as well.  I think that might have been the highlight of our trip.  Anna's got some good pictures, but I don't know how to post them.  If I figure it out, I'll put them up. 

Anyway, after we headed home at about 3...  but made a stop off at the Cross County Mall.  I went 4 for 4 on things I had to buy...  swim shorts, nice sandles, work shoes, and those wet sock things that you wear in the water. When I got home, I went for a run and to the gym... putzed around...   and now, I'm at DTUT, procrastinating on writing up some more material for my Tuesday lunch with Mary the publishing woman.

Tampa

So I'm a terrible blogger...