I'm Pinnochio!

"I got no strings to hold me down.  I'm not tied up to anyone.  I got no strings on me!"

 That's the song that the wooden puppet sings when he magically becomes a little boy.  No, the reference to Pinnochio is that I have a really big nose...although that is the truth, and judging from my dad it's only going to get bigger...but rather that I am now unattached.  That would be in terms of my internet service.

In the interest of providing the very best in blog service my household has gone wireless as of about noon today.  No I can haul my laptop all around the house, or to the front porch (where I am now) and report all the goings on from my perspective.  You wouldn't expect me to use your perspective, now would you?  This should increase the frequency of the flow of information as now I don't have to sit on a hard and uncomfortable wooden kitchen chair in order to make these wonderful posts, but rather I can do it from the comfort of anywhere in the house, or the neighborhood...we'll see how far the range on the old router might be.  Perhaps I can post from the local watering hole?

Let's see...what is there to report...well, the Monday tennis session featured some spirited competition.  One of the regular members of the posse is off in Montana threatening fish this week so we have welcomed Jim into our midst, along with myself, Bill and the Hammer..  Jim is a pretty good player, and our session turned into all out war...at least I thought so as I (along with the Hammer) was slaughtered in the 1st set.  Bill and I came back to take the second in what turned out to be a grinder.  We had played 8 games and settled absolutely nothing (the score was 4 to 4) before the good guys won a couple in a row to take the set 6-4.  That left us only enough time to play a couple of games and a tiebreaker in the 3rd, which my team came up a bit short in.  Tomorrow we'll have the same group together to do battle again.

A week from today we will be hitting the road for our annual August trip to dump the kid out at school, along with the bulk of our life savings.  We will be leaving early next Wednesday morning and cruising to Bismarck, North Dakota.  A distance of only about 950 miles.  We have to take the northern route as next week is Bike Week in Sturgis, South Dakota, and I don't want to get anywhere near that.  It's like driving in a constant swarm of flies.  On top of that it costs about $300 a night to get a room anywhere along I-90 from Gillette, WY all the way to Mitchell, SD.  The next day we'll drop in on the folk's place in Wisconsin, then spend a day trying to load all of our sweet little daughter's possessions into the Family Truckster (they've summered in my parent's basement).  We drop her off a week from Saturday before heading for Post Lake, Wisconsin to threaten a few fish of our own.