I cropped this picture out of a picture of my whole family and to be honest….I don’t love the close-up.

(Sunday Paper, Year IV, Issue 35)

I took more pictures than I usually do this week.

Some of them were good pictures.

I thought to myself, hey, let’s try something new.

So this is the first time I present to you The Week in Pictures.

I doubt it will be the last.

Saturday

I mentioned in last week’s Sunday Paper that the reason we were in New York to go to the Mets game was my cousin’s wedding.

There was a period of time during the cocktail hour - out on a deck overlooking the water with the sun setting in the background - when my family went a little picture-crazy.

I posed for so many pictures I wouldn’t have blamed you if you thought I was the bride. (I was not the bride.)

But, as is often the case when I feel foolish standing there and taking pictures with people looking (they probably weren’t looking and nobody probably cared), I really enjoy looking at the pictures after the fact.

We took nice pictures. Above is one that Kathy took of her and me.

It was a nice wedding.

Sunday

I was up so late Friday (for the extra innings Mets game) and up early on Saturday (for a walk with Kathy), then up late Saturday (for the wedding) and up early Sunday (to drive back to Massachusetts) that by mid-day Sunday I was exhausted and there were no pictures…

Monday

…but if I had taken a picture on Sunday it would have been of Tate, who we were so happy to bring back home after leaving her on Friday. I really missed her a ridiculous amount for just two days…I will never leave her again.

And then on Monday people kept saying on social media it was National Dog Day so I took this picture of Tate (not a big poser) while she was distracted looking out the window, keeping watch over the neighborhood dogs and walkers, as she is wont to do.

She’s such a good dog.

Wednesday

On Wednesday I was supposed to go in to not-at-home work early and then a meeting got shifted closer to lunchtime and I ended up having a morning with Tate and we sat on the deck while I did a little at-home work. It was really pleasant - I will be doing this as often as the weather allows when I work at home. The work I was doing did not involve the internet, so I could work on the deck without any problems…but it turned out that the wireless was working on the deck that morning. It hadn’t all summer. If the wireless works out there consistently now, that’s a game-changer.

Wednesday night, not pictured, I was at The Comedy Studio. Working on some newer dog jokes. They went over well this week.

Thursday

Then on Thursday I caught this unbelievably cute moment.

Tate hasn’t been thrilled that the girls have gone back to school…she spends her waking time kind of pining for them. (Sometimes she enjoys my company…but I’m kind of her fifth choice for a companion in the house a lot of the time.)

This picture was after she peeked out the window looking for the girls…I mentioned above, she doesn’t love having her picture taken…I think the fact that she just resigned herself to the photo is further evidence of how she was feeling Thursday.

Friday

Friday I had to take a CPR class - something I did every couple of years back in my teaching days….and as I found out later Friday night, also on the same day! (As you can see at right, I made the discovery through my Facebook Memories - August 30th is apparently a popular day for schools to offer CPR training.)

It’s a different beast these days, the CPR/First Aid training in a school.

This was a fun little twist to break up the CPR Training, though: About five minutes after the instructor began the class….ANOTHER INSTRUCTOR SHOWED UP! What fun while they sorted that out.

Saturday

And then Saturday, for the first time in a couple of weeks, I did some yard work. Because we were away last weekend I hadn’t done anything since I was feeling really good about the condition of the yard…and it has since gotten in-less-good-condition.

So Saturday I worked hard to get it back in good condition. I’m happy with the work I did.

BUT the big news is I put on my big boy pants and drilled some holes. I don’t know if I wrote about this (because I took the summer off from writing) but back on Memorial Day weekend I painted the new front deck - our old one was kind of falling apart and we replaced it but it was plain wood and I wanted to paint it white. So I did that. And I vowed that before the end of the summer I would post a new address number on the wood there…because the old number sign came down when we re-sided the house last summer.

I put it off and I put it off - mostly because it involved drilling holes and I didn’t like the permanence of that if I messed up. (There was also glue I was going to use that involved mixing two tubes of glue together and that intimidated me a bit.) But I practiced the drilling on some spare wood left behind by the workers last summer, and finally Saturday decided to pull the trigger on the glue and just do it.

So Memorial Day and Labor Day Weekends provided a nice little bookend to the home improvement I did this summer.

Just…don’t touch those numbers if you ever visit me.

I’m not sure they’re very secure.

Notes

*I won’t do the regular sections today since we kind of covered writing and comedy above. But I should tell you tickets are on sale for the September edition of Comedy Night at Exhibit ‘A’.

*And of course you can Like the page on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

*Also not pictured above: I did get out and exercise often this week. Feeling pretty good about it.

*I haven’t had ice cream since the Mets game a week ago Friday night. I had half of an ice cream cone at the game. Also feel good about that.