Eighty: Pontoon

Columbus Day. 26F, party cloudy, light wind, 40% waning crescent moon at 5.30AM at Ham Lake (not the town close to the Twin Cities, but just the lake southwest of Akeley and southeast of Nevis).

Yesterday, Claudia went shopping/visiting with her friend, Mary Hanson Hammer Stilmacher. Evidently they went to the Brainerd area. I worked mainly outside bringing wood in for winter, clearing the area north of the garage for a possible parking area for the pontoon, and securing the doors on the Mule.

Today's big event is scheduled to be the arrival of our pontoon, due at noon. The seller, Ryan Restad, from Fargo, is bring the pontoon from a place called "Ice Cracking Lake," which is between Park Rapids and Detroit Lakes. Roger and Karen are here (Rog is retiring in a few weeks; more about that later), and I think Roger is more excited about P-Day than I am. We were at dinner at R&K's last night, and much of the conversation was about whether to put in the P today, despite for forecast of a high temp of 35F and snow. Consensus was "yes" but today could be a different story after seeing what is involved.

I had a dream last night about the P's arrival. Two couples, perhaps in their 60s, showed up towing the boat. None of them were friendly. The guy in charge (probably RR) was insistent on parking the pontoon at a storage facility, rather than at our house, or even launching it in the lake. I found later (in the dream) that this was all a plan to disguise the fact that the P didn't float. Hopefully, my habit of dreaming the future with mostly accurate foreseeability will not hold true to form.

Tonight or tomorrow we will have R&K over for pot roast. They are fantastic people, and we couldn't ask for better neighbors. As mentioned above, R is retiring soon from the USPS. Karen will work for perhaps another 3 years. In the meantime, they are planning to build a house on one of the lots south of us. Their first plan was to build immediately south of us. However, Claudia suggested that we buy the lot south of Roy's place, then swap with R&K so they could build there (their previous first choice). That way we could expand our lake property. The idea was met with some agreeable opinion.