catch phrase

we ended our last day by hittin up the hardee's for some hand-scooped shakes. (the DQ --traditional beach night treat-- had a line out the door and into the parking lot.) the moon's not out yet, but the stars are close and friendly, so i said goodbye to them.
today was beautiful. lots of swimming.

too much swimming. while it's decidedly NOT swimmer's ear, i can't hear a thing and haven't since i came in (just for a breather, but my ears didn't clear and the rest of the fam soon followed me out) from the after-lunch swim session. it's like that sick, disoriented feeling you get when you're not wearing your contacts, but with your ears.
curse my tender sinuses!

my parents went for pizza and not too much later every cell phone in the house began to ring. when we finally found one in time to answer it, my mom told chris that she had lost my father. she ordered the pizza, but when she turned around he had disappeared. he later showed up in a nearby shop, swearing he'd told her where he was going.

later, after shakespeare got bitten by a snake on meerkat manor and the aliens started coming out of the corn on signs, i instigated the shake run.

we gotta pack up cause liz and jordan fly out tomorrow, but i'll leave you with the last castle.


yet another example of why you have an artist for a brother-in-law.


jordie's gallery/observatory. (i don't really remember what we decided it was.)



maria and bryan headed up the commune. (connected by a trade route, running parallel to the shoreline, to the main castle.)

we built this yesterday. liz and jord were "castled out" but chris started right in. i jumped at the chance to get in on the ground floor, as it were. i played engineer and worked on the outer defenses. the whole family helped.
and it took until nearly 10 for the face to become deteriorated. even the commune lasted well beyond our hopes. we had to have a flashlight to see what was going on when the tide finally started coming in.
the closest thing to a compliment i heard was a question of whether it was a temple to a pagan god.

we didn't build today. the weather was much too nice for us to not be in the water, and most backs were already itching from a few days' toil in the sun.

tomorrow we head back to durham for a bit and fly back to utah sunday night.
what a shame.