Burnt to a Crisp
Fri, 6 Aug 1999

Just before the start of the summer,
Lydia announced that she had figured
out her plans for what she'd like to
do all summer.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Easy," she said, "I want to stay home
and do nothing, all day."

"Nothing doing!" I replied.

As things evolved, she has managed to stay home and do nothing for about
half the days so far; what with our trip to Lake George and various other days
here and there. However, this past week, after spending two weeks at Sheila's
Camp where she served as aide-de-camp to Sheila and Joanne, she began a
two week session at the College of St. Rose. This is a full day program.

In the mornings, she's been playing her trumpet and in the
afternoons, making paintings. She's not too thrilled about the trumpet ("Jeez
Dad, they make us go into a room by ourselves and play our instruments for hours
and they only come in and watch us for five minutes, every hour or so."). But,
she loves painting. ("So far, we've done Realistic, Abstract, Surrealist and
Action paintings. I think I like Action the best, but I seem to be best at
Realistic.").

What I like best is the trip in the morning. We leave the house
early and set out for the college on our bicycles. After the 3/4 mile uphill
ride to Madison and Lark St., we look around for a good place to have
breakfast. The first morning we tried the campus dining room. However, all they
had was hot and cold cereal, muffins and bagels.

"Jeez Dad," she said, "the bagels are really stale. I can't eat this stuff."

"Well Lydia," I replied, "my muffin's not the greatest either. Wanna switch?"

"No thanks!"

The next day we went to Quintessence, and had the $2.45 special. Two eggs,
coffee (or milk) toast and potatoes. We were in and out in 20 minutes for $6.00
and change.

"Hey, that was good, don't you think?" she said.

"Yep." I replied.

Today, because we were taking the car instead of our bikes, we stopped at
the Truck Stop Diner down by the river, where we did a replay of eggs and
accessories, but it cost almost $10.00.

"My sandwich had fake bacon." she told me. "The eggs were o.k., but the bacon
was the worst, and it wasn't even real. Now can we play video games? I want to
do the car race game. You know, the one where you sit in one driver's seat and
I'm in the other and we race against each other."

"O.K. let's check it out." I answered.

"Wait a minute. It costs $1.00 per person for 45 seconds of playing time!
I'm not going to pay that kind of money, besides, we don't have time now. We'll
be late for your trumpet lesson!"

"Oh Dad, don't be such a putz. One quick race around the track and then we'll
head back to the campus."

"Nope. No way. Listen, roll down your window and hang out the side of the car,
and I'll drive as fast as possible from here to the music building."

"Oh, sure. Well anyhow, it's not as good as the real thing. There we can crash
up against the wall, or smash into a tree, burn to a crisp, and get up and do it
all over again."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," I replied. "Hold on tight; I'll get you there in
less that seven minutes!"