The following came from Don Sherwood on Old Homestead Road this morning:

Saw a wind surfer board out on the big pond today and picked it up. Owner can call me at 684-3397 to claim it.

Thanks, Don

We're having another nice day here at the pond - although the forecast is for rain and wind late this afternoon and tonight - but it's looking good for the weekend. It sure is nice to have summer weather after all the rain and cool temperatures earlier.

I don't know about you, but in our family, this is the season for getting together with friends, cousins and miscellaneous acquaintances who wouldn't dream of stepping foot in Vermont any other time of year. We are meeting cousins later this week, and this weekend I'm meeting an e-mail friend from Maine that I helped with some research a year or so ago, and there are two similar acquaintances that I'm expecting a call from when their plans are settled for visiting Vermont. In between, we have our usual family duties to attend to - top of the priority list right now is meeting our new granddaughter later today. We'll take pictures, of course.

Right now I'm going out to get a little more of the deck railing painted. Fred scraped for me yesterday. He does a much better job of that than I do - and I like to think I do better at painting - so we work well together. We used pressure treated wood out there and then painted it white, after a year of weathering. It is still difficult to keep paint on it. We went with latex originally, but this time I'm using oil based paint. I know it's not recommended to use oil over latex, but it's been a couple years since we last painted and much of what I'm painting now is bare wood, thanks to Fred's expert work.

And so to work!