This was an eventful weekend. On Friday I took 1/2 day off to set up my above-ground pool, to which I've been referring as a 'white trash pool'. My friend Matt was coming to help me and he decided it was important to play the white trash theme to the hilt, so he showed up wearing a wife-beater, bearing bags filled with twelve tall-boys of Miller High Life, a pouch of Red Man and a porno mag. I so love his sense of humor. At this point, I really have to hand it to my buddy Matt, because he didn't take the easy way out with Playboy or Penthouse...no, he purchased low-rent porn, a magazine called Swank. No, I'm not linking to it. You know how to Google.

I know what you're thinking, but no, he didn't make an oversight. It's true he didn't bring fireworks but it was because I told him I'd buy those. It was only this which kept him from rescinding his offer to help once he'd learned that I did not own a tube top.

We got the pool set up, though it took us rather longer than the half-hour to one hour that the instructions said it would. Then we filled it with a few inches of water so when I worked out the wrinkles in the bottom, the weight of the water would hold it firm. Alan told me not to get upset when I couldn't get them all out, that it would never be perfect and that good enough was good enough.


Ha.

Alan underestimates me.

It is 18' round and 4' deep. I have always thought to myself that I wanted a pool, and when I saw this one on sale at BJ's last year for under $300, I thought it would be a great way to (pardon the pun) dip our toes into the water and see how much work it was versus how much we actually used it, before we deliberately bought a house with an inground pool, or one with a backyard conducive to an inground pool and spent thousands on one. So far, we have more money in the grading and chemicals than in the pool itself, but I am hopeful we will get some fun and good exercise out of it.

I didn't christen it Saturday because we road-tripped to Augusta for dinner with Alan's parents, who were celebrating their 50th (golden) wedding anniversary. The entire immediate family was there and we dined here. (They don't seem to have their own website so link is to Yelp.) The food was fabulous. I'd ordered water but Mrs. Bowman got a Cosmopolitan, and it looked so yummy when I saw hers, I ordered one as well. Good call! She and I both got combination platters with two types of seafood (catfish and shrimp for her, oysters and shrimp for me) under the mistaken impression that we'd be getting a little of each. Nope - the regular shrimp dinner had twelve shrimp and my combo came with ten, plus seven or eight oysters of which two were huge. Neither of us could finish despite the deliciousness! I'm technically supposed to avoid shrimp, one of my top favorites, because of the cholesterol, but this was a special occasion so I made an exception.

On the ride there, Mrs. Bowman said that it wasn't the number of fifty years that really gave her pause, it was realizing that they'd been married more than 70% of their lives - wow! My cousins Norm and Ann were married over fifty years and my beloved Uncle Artis and Aunt Betty hit that mark a couple of years back - pretty amazing.

I still haven't been able to swim in my white trash pool because yesterday and today have been overcast all day, and intermittently rainy, so I'm using the time to balance my chemicals, with which my friend Rick is helping. So far it's looking pretty good as far as pH, water hardness, about 5 other things I'm supposed to watch...also, I have managed to blow up the floats that Nancy and I will be using Saturday afternoon, weather permitting. She and I are having a spa day in the morning to celebrate her birthday, which was in late May, and plan to do some floating and wine-drinking afterward. Fingers crossed for sunny weather!