Death and Spiders. And Dinner. And Stuff.

The last few days have been total insanity. There is too much to even remember it all. But lets start with K.

She came out to the lake to help me out with some stuff yesterday. She was in one of the motor boats, and I was in another one. Then all the sudden I hear "Ow, my knee, my knee!" And I look over there, and she's gone! I didn't hear her fall into the water, so for a moment, I am terribly confused. Then, like a scene from a horror movie, a hand comes up and grabs onto the edge of one of the boats. I run over to where K is on the ground, rolling around on the gravel and saying "Ow, it hurts!" Turns out that she had tried to step out of the boat, but the gravel slid out from under her foot and she twisted her recently-recovered knee. She had at least enough sense to notice, while rolling around on the ground in pain, that there were spiders crawling around all over the place. But she was in so much pain that she didn't even care!

We spent the rest of the day doing family-related activities, including a photo shoot (thanks to Uncle P) and a lovely dinner in celebration of my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary! Dinner consisted of crudites (including crab cakes, a beet/goat cheese/blood orange sampler, tempura shrimp, and steak tartare), a trio of soups (gouda and wild mushroom, pheasant consumme, tomato gin), a salmon filet/venison chop entree, and berry cobbler with Tahitian vanilla ice cream. Delightful! Breakfast this morning was another family event which involved quite a buffet spread as well!

D and I went for a bike ride this afternoon. We went to Castlewood State Park, and rode a combination of the Stinging Nettle, Al Foster, and Cedar Bluffs trails.

Yes, I took another spill. This time it was quite amusing, although it had nothing to do with spiders. We had gotten stopped on an uphill, on which it is quite challenging to get going again. We were riding across this particular hill, so standing on the trail, the hill slanted down to the right. I had my left foot clipped in, and my right foot on the ground on the uphill side of the trail. As I pushed off to try to get moving again, I leaned a little too far to the right, and just tumbled over, down the hill. As did my bike, which somehow came to a stop resting upside down on its seat and handle bars! Awesome!

That's all I have the energy to write about right now. There's lots more I could say about this weekend, but it's just not going to happen.