Jeremy WhiteEach year, my family vacations in beautiful
Door County, Wisconsin. In fact, my wife has been there every year but one of her life. It's a great vacation; we stay at a fantastic timeshare that my wife's parents own.
One year - the first time we took our older son there - we had what we refer to as "the vacation from Hell". Our son developed asthma and croup that week. This was long before we understood either ailment, so all we knew was that he was miserable and that three days of sleep deprivation mess you up. We finally fled in misery, late in the night, in a complete fog bank. It felt like a bad horror movie ☹️. We still have fond memories of a Shell station near Green Bay that was far enough inland to be out of the fog. Nicely, every year since, we've had idyllic vacations there, with great memories.
This past year, though, we've decided that the Prince of Insufficient Light darned us to Heck. Our vacation was mostly cheerful, but every day came with at least one thing that was not quite right. The weather was mostly nice, with only brief periods of rain. Of course, one of those brief periods were right during the 6 hours we needed to be out of our unit, when we traditionally bike through Peninsula State Park. So no bike ride for us this year.
Last year, our older son, who loves pancakes, airplanes and flying, went down to the local EAA chapter and got to eat pancakes and fly a plane. It was great - so great, in fact, that we took our younger son, who doesn't much like pancakes, but wanted to fly, down to give it a whirl. Of course, this year, they didn't have any qualified pilots, so there were no flights, only pancakes. No airplane flight for us this year, and 2 hours of wasted driving.
Next, we love to go see a sunset show at the Peninsula Players. This is a fantastic treat; professional theater, right on Green Bay. You can get a glass of wine and sit by the shore and watch the sunset, and then go in and watch a great production. This year, for whatever reason, they moved the Sunday production (which was the day we could go), to 4:00 instead of 8:00. The play was great, but no sunset for us this year.
Also, my in-laws traditionally hang out with the kids while we go out for a nice Italian meal. Each year, we've had a great experience, with great service and a relaxing meal. This year, the hostess ticked us off and the waitress double billed us. When we played our traditional post date game of pinball, the pinball machine was broken in a subtle way (you had to tilt to get it to move down the side alley). And the darning went on like that, day after darn day.
Of course, there was a lot of sun and sand and sailing and cheerful times, and if these remain the only things I have to complain about in life, boy am I one lucky son of a gun.
But I'm glad to be back at work, and hopeful that our efforts to ship CrossOver Games 8 aren't going to be darned in any way. Nicely, the early beta reports all look good, so I'm hopeful it's avoided the curse...
Cheers,
Jeremy