Obviously, I like the store to be busy because I want us to be successful and I want to keep my job. However, it is also nice to have a bit of a lull and start thinking about the next season. Soon we’ll be clearing out some of the summer gear and making room for the fall and winter equipment. I have my eye on a couple of hats and a rather nice shirt that I may pick up once they go on sale. While I find hats rather uncomfortable, I know how important they can be if I’m out in the sun all day. I don’t greatly care that my hats are particularly stylish, so instead I look for something that will provide me with as much shade as possible.

I was able to come home a little early today, and so I think I’m that I’m going to fire up the grill and we’ll have chicken for dinner. I make a particularly great beer can chicken, which has the added advantage of forcing me to drink half a can of beer before dinner. Time to go and do something unspeakable to a chicken’s rear end. (Can’t wait to see what searches pop up in Google for this page now!)

No, that wasn’t the fun bit.

We drove about an hour and a half to go to one of the area’s biggest arts and crafts fairs. That really makes it sound rather smaller than it actually is. There are hundreds and hundreds — thousands maybe? — of artists of all sorts plus games and rides for the little kids. Enormous amounts of food to purchase and a concert in the evening. It’s one of those unusual events that all of us can enjoy — us old fogies, our teenagers and our younger children too. It always reminds me of going to the State Fair in the midwestern state where I grew up, although it certainly isn’t on that scale — I don’t actually think anything could be on that scale.

Anyway, we bought a very nice decorative shelf unit to store the CDs that until recently, have simply been piled up on the sideboard — it’s not huge, maybe it will store a hundred or so, but it will make a difference. It’s stained rather than painted, but it does have quite a distinctive design. Sort of a turquoise blue with a lot of the southwestern palette colours, forming a pattern that runs across it. We bought snow cones and corn dogs, and then ate a particularly delicious variation on cannolis, with a cream filling that was lightly flavoured with Grand Marnier. We had a great time.

More to the point, all the kids were very tired on the ride home. So I got to choose the music for once.

The oldest two kids can definitely help with this, but they have things to do also and so they aren’t always available. My suggestions of tidying their rooms, installing shelving in the garage, or seeing if they need help at the local salt mine, were all greeted with derision. My kids suggestions of spending an incredibly large amount of time staring at the computer and balancing that with an equally large amount of time watching DVDs, didn’t do much for my wife and I either.

I really do envy those families whose children have a wide range of wholesome hobbies and pastimes that everyone can approve of. Gosh, if only one of our kids would spend hours practising the cello or volunteering to help old ladies across the road, they could keep themselves busy the whole summer. Unfortunately, it falls to my wife and I to come up with a plan.

All suggestions gratefully received.

We met in college where she was doing a degree in chemistry, and I was still having trouble working out what I wanted to choose for a major. Eventually I did sort myself out and ended up with an eminently useful degree in English, which of course. I’ve never used. My wife however makes full use of her chemistry degree and is a manager at a small pharmaceutical company close to our home. Unlike me, my wife is fabulously well organised, and is without question the one who makes sure our rather complicated family arrangements-who has to be driven when and where, who has a music lesson, who is sleeping over at a friends house, who likes their sandwiches cut diagonally, instead of in rectangles-are all taken care of.

I on the other hand, am reasonably effective at small household repairs and I work hard to make certain that our children develop good taste in music. Really, if a child has reached the age of 10 without understanding that London’s Calling by the Clash was a high point of the late 20th century, then, a parent is failing to do their job correctly.

Our oldest son, number one, just finished high school, while our oldest daughter, number two will be starting high school in the fall. Number three is a fifth grade boy and number four is a girl going into third grade. Now that the summer is here were busily trying to make plans to keep them occupied. The oldest two will be at summer camp for a couple of weeks in August, while the younger two will be at day camps for a good part of the summer.

Number three just finished the little league baseball season and we were very pleased to discover that his coach awarded him a good sportsman medal. (We are choosing to ignore the comment from a friend, who said that the good sportsman medal goes to the kid who got his ass kicked!), I hope he is going to continue playing this summer. He had a really good time playing, and his coaches were great.

They are certainly going well-equipped… they bought a whole bunch of lightweight equipment and clothes that should carry them through both hot weather and cool nights. I don’t know very much about that part of the world, but I must admit, I would be a bit iffy about camping there. However, they seemed very confident, and have obviously done a lot of research.

My wife and I traveled some before we had kids, but we never managed that kind of trip. Most of our travel at this point, is one or two day trips within a pretty tight radius of where we live. Perhaps as the kids get a little older we’ll become more adventurous.

First, I suppose it would be sensible to tell you a little about myself. I think I’m going to refrain from naming anybody else in my family on this blog in case they later grow up and get embarrassed about something I’ve written. However, I’m willing to be a bit more public about myself; after all, the blog has my name on it!

I am the manager of a small store in the Midwest. We sell all sorts of camping equipment, recreational clothing walking shoes, that sort of thing. I quite enjoy the work, and I certainly like meeting some of the people who come and shop with us. We try and sell pretty good equipment, rather than junk, so although we’re not the cheapest place in town, people know they’re getting a pretty good deal.

In my spare time I like to play guitar, although I’m at a pretty basic level. I also read a great deal, mainly current affairs, humor, and a wide range of mysteries and thrillers. I used to read intelligent fiction when I was in college, but I seem to have lost the patience for it nowadays.

Oh, I suppose I should talk about my family… I’m married, and we have four kids, the youngest of whom is seven. I’m still trying to decide how much I’m going to talk about my family, so I’ll leave it there for now.

OK, I’ve started!