Friday was our office picnic, and it was a nice sunny day, not too hot. I ended up drinking a few beers, chatting, and having a nice time. I even ended up playing a little cricket. One of the Indian sorts brought a cricket bat and some tennis balls, he didn't bring a widget, we made do with a cooler. We didn't have the bondage gear, either, but then we were using tennis balls. One of my teammates is from Trinidad, so he knew the game, too. I bowled a few times, swung fruitlessly a few times, and caught the ball once, at least I can say I've played cricket, even if I don't know when to say Tally Ho, Jolly Good or Cheers Mate.

It was byob, and a six pack of Shock Top Belgian White was on sale at Wegman's, the description of it intrigued me. The description was the best part, it's a bland version of a Belgian White (not near as good as Blue Moon). Today I realized it was an Anheuser-Busch product, I should have known. Speaking of Blue Moon, my second was Honey Moon Summer Ale, from the Blue Moon family at Coors. It was pretty tasty. The third beer of the afternoon was Labatt's Honey Lager, another corny tasting cheap New World swill that might have tasted of honey. Not recommended.

The sun and sports took it's toll on me, I felt exhausted for the rest of the weekend (it was good weekend regardless). I did make an Indian meal on Sunday (in the continued spirit of International Brotherhood) with premade cans and pouches of Indian stuff, and garlic naan from a Golden Temple mix. The naan was the best part of the meal, even nearly twelve year old liked it.

Before the interweb, if you came across something cool and non-mainstream, it was a treat to meet someone who also know of it, there was a feeling of shared brotherhood. Nowadays, type in a few words in google and you find hundreds of people who have your same unique feelings. Case in point, Chris McCandless of Into the Wild fame. We read the book in the early 90's, and Mrs. Ha was always haunted by it. When I went to the library for the video exchange Saturday (gloriously solo, on my push bike), I saw Sean Penn's version of Into the Wild. It was a good watch, though it took us two nights to get all the way through it. I think he was overconfident to a fault, and difficult, I cringed when I saw him wade through an icy river in spring and then smash his rifle butt a few times, what a great way to screw your scope up. Getting back to the internet, there are pages all over the web dedicated to him, with a wide range of opinions, from ignorant asshole to inspired holy man.

Speaking of the Holy Fool, I just read Jack Kerouac's American Journey, a short book on Kerouac centering around his writing of On the Road. Maybe it's because I'm older, more settled and happier, but I enjoyed it less than McNally's Desolate Angel.

The last Magic Treehouse we read was Night of the New Magicians, in which Jack and Annie head to the Paris Exposition of 1889 to find four magicians before an evil sorceror does. It's hard to criticize children's books, but this is a weaker one, with too much recursion.

I'm off work on Thursday and Friday, without the cell even. We're heading down to Pennsylvania for a family reunion for a few days, I'm looking forward to the change in routine. I'm hoping to get some wrenchin' time in on the bike.

In push bike news, nearly seven year old wanted her training wheels back on, even though she rode 30 feet by herself. It's just going to take some confidence.