Travel As Equals

One of the great things about living where we do is you can drive a few hours away and literally be in another country. Our trip to Montreal was fun and quick. We did a ton of walking, which was a little rough on my mom. It was good to see my brother and his wife, who flew in from Milwaukee. A few observations from the four day trip:

• It's a tense time in Quebec, which is gearing up for a big election on Sept. 4. The Parti Quebecois, which in the past has called for Quebec to secede from the rest of Canada, is leading in the polls. There was a big debate Sunday night when we arrived in town, and the signs are everywhere, along with the corresponding graffiti on said signs. It's unclear whether PQ will push for another referendum on secession; it's happened in the past in 1980 and 1995 and was shot down, albeit by a very close margin last time. Doesn't make any sense to me, especially in these economic times. We'll see what happens.
• We visited the Montreal BioDome (no signs of Pauly Shore anywhere), which replicated the various ecosystems of North America, complete with vegetation and animals. One of the exhibits featured bats in a cave, which was ironic since we got home and two days later (last night) a bat appeared in our living room. I spent a half  hour trying to knock it down with a broom before I finally was able to smack it and knock it silly; we then relocated it to the outdoors. The last time we were blessed with a bat was four years ago; hopefully it'll at least be that long before another one gets in.
• On Wednesday, we walked a mile from our hotel up to Mount Royal, which is a big hill/national park that you can climb and look out over the entire city. It was pretty cool. We later walked down to Old Montreal for a cruise and then dinner. Deb estimated that we walked about six miles that day. Incidentally, as we were walking back to the hotel after going to Mount Royal, we stumbled upon a demonstration in the park across from the hotel. Apparently, this happens on the 22nd of every month as students protest against various societal ills (tuition hikes, animal abuse, etc.). It actually extended throughout the city, as we discovered in Old Montreal (see photos for some evidence of this).
• The drive back was uneventful...until we were 20 minutes from home and Lily puked in the back row of the minivan. Poor kid. She gets carsick every so often. Oh well. Good to be home.

Bat Out of Hell 2

Let's pick up where we left off, shall we? Saturday night, Deb and the girls slept in the guest room and I slept in the living room with the lights on, watchful for any wayward bats. Not a peep. Went upstairs in the morning, found nothing there, either. Went for a lackluster 12-mile run, went to the park for a kids' concert that was cut short by rain, and just hung out the rest of the day. In the evening, Deb went to see "Mamma Mia" with some friends while I put the girls to bed and sat down to watch "In Bruges."

Around 8:30, a bat suddenly appears in the living room and starts circling rapidly. I nearly jumped out of my shorts. Guess I wasn't hallucinating Friday night when I saw the bat in the living room. I scramble down the hall to grab a broom and make sure the girls stay in the guest room with the door closed. I stationed myself at the door to the living room (again, no actual door there to be closed) and wave the broom every time the bat comes near to keep it cornered in the living room. After a few minutes of this, I call my mother-in-law downstairs to see if she has any ideas. She comes up and at first was going to call the police to see if an animal control officer can come over, but then decides to call our neighbor Bruce, who's pretty handy. He comes over with a net. In the meantime, the bat's getting tired and starts landing on a window screen, obviously hoping to get out. I didn't want to venture near enough to open the screen for fear of getting bitten, so I keep my distance.

Then the bat starts circling again. Right as Bruce walks in, I smack the bat and knock him to the floor. Bruce tells me to pin it down and he goes over to put the net over the bat and the end of the broom; meanwhile, the little critter is making this high-pitched cry. Bruce takes the captured bat outside and we set it free. I went back in, soaked in sweat, and start closing the windows, because that's the only way I figured the bat got in. I had sealed off the upstairs already. Deb got home a little while later and got a little freaked out after I told her the story. We slept in the guest room again.

This morning, I was back to work. I called a pest control company out of Peabody (Northeast Animal Control) that I found in Yellow Book and the guy eventually came by the house around 4:30. After talking to us and looking around the house, he had a couple of theories: When we had the gutters repaired and new boards installed to replace the rotting ones, a bat or bats may have been trapped inside. The only thing is I would think those things would have been fried up there with all the heat lately. At any rate, we didn't want him to rip out that new wood to look. The other theory is that a bat may have snuck in when we opened a door recently and has just been hiding out the last few days. I'm hoping that we just had the one bat and that we were able to get rid of it.

The bat guy checked out the eaves in our bedroom and didn't find any evidence that bats had been roosting in them. I sealed off a couple of possible entry points with duct tape for now and we just have to wait and see what happens tonight. We put the girls back in their room and I'm going to sleep upstairs with a broom nearby to see if we have any visitors; meanwhile, Deb wants to sleep downstairs. She's still a little freaked out by it all. Can't say as I blame her. So far, all is quiet as of 8:30 p.m. Hopefully, there will be nothing of import to report tomorrow.

UPDATE: It's Tuesday morning and I'm glad to report that the night was uneventful. Let's hope it stays that way.

Hop aboard the crazy train:

• Man, this anthrax investigation just gets weirder and weirder. I feel bad for that other Army scientist whose name was dragged through the mud back in '02. Meanwhile, the scientist who killed himself still hasn't been definitively tied to the mailings. But the details that have come out about him get progressively more bizarre.
• I'd say the bus trip from hell would certainly include a guy stabbing to death and beheading the guy sitting next to him. But then he went on to eat pieces of the victim's flesh, according to a police recording. WTF? The suspect was described as a hardworking former church employee who never showed any signs of anger or emotional problems. So what, he just went nuts? Yikes.
• Almost as crazy as that story is paying $14 million for photos of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's newborns. Seriously, they're infants. Give them a little time before they start to look like their parents.

Back to the Life

We're baaaaaaack. Originally, we had planned to leave the Shore yesterday and hang out at Matt's place in northern Jersey before finishing the trip this morning, but Hannah came down with a nasty sounding cough so we just decided to come straight home yesterday. We made decent time until we got to Connecticut, which was slow in the usual spots and then really crawled once we got on Route 128 from the Mass Pike. We straggled in just after 6 p.m.



It was a mellow evening, catching up on TiVoed programs and the Web and then reading until 1 a.m. Then at 1:30, I heard a strange noise in our bedroom. I looked toward the corner where we have a nightlight plugged in, somewhat in a daze from being awakened from sleep and without my glasses. Then I saw it: A bat! Our bedroom is a converted attic and as such has some sloped ceilings, and the little bastard was bouncing around the room, no doubt trying to figure out where the hell he was. Meanwhile, Deb and I were fairly freaked out. We quickly decided to grab the kids and sleep downstairs. We don't have doors on our bedrooms upstairs (don't ask; long story), but we have one at the bottom of the stairs, so I closed it to keep the critter up there.

Deb and the girls camped out in the guest/play room and I took the couch in the living room. I was pretty amped up and it took a while to conk out, but finally I did, only to be awakened by another noise. Sure enough, it was a bat flying around the living room. At least, I could have sworn it was. I had my glasses on this time, but it was dark and I honestly could have dreamed the whole thing. But at the time, I was convinced we had another bat in the living room and I took off for the guest room to join the rest of the family. This time, it took me a lot longer to fall asleep; I was on the floor next to Lily while Deb and Hannah were on a futon. By this point, it had to be after 2 a.m. and eventually I fell asleep, but I kept waking up from time to time. At 5:30, Lily needed to go to the bathroom, so I went with her and checked out the living room while she did her thing. Nothing. It was starting to get light out, so maybe the bat skedaddled to its hiding place. Or maybe there was no bat in the living room. I have no doubts there was one in the bedroom. Of course, when we finally all got up about three hours later, I searched the house armed with a broom and a paper bag but found no signs of the bat down- or upstairs. We suspect it got into our room through the eaves that we use for storage in our room; the door has a slight crack in the top that would suffice for a bat to fit through. A year or two ago, Deb was certain she saw a bat fly by her head after she had gone to bed; I was downstairs and came up but could find no sign of it, so naturally I was skeptical. A thorough search the following morning found no sign of it then, either. Now I'm thinking she probably saw a bat. Now we'll probably have to find someone to come in and get rid of the thing and block its access to our attic.

So anyhoo, there's also the matter of our vacation. We left last Friday, July 25 and got to my bro-in-law Matt's place in the early afternoon. We went down to the lake nearby to take the kids swimming and have some dinner. We then hit the road around 9 to head for the shore, arriving a little after 11. The fun started Saturday. Some highlights:

• We enjoyed the pool and hot tub at the resort (Seaview Villas in Galloway, NJ) throughout our stay.
• We hit Brigantine Beach (near Atlantic City) twice. The water was noticeably colder this year than in past visits; not sure why. I tried boogie boarding for the first time, as did the girls, and it was a lot of fun. We don't get those kind of waves around here, but I'll definitely do it again sometime.
• The weather was hot and humid, but not overly so. I got out for an 11-miler and two 5-mile runs while I was there, in addition to weight workouts in the gym.
• After my recent pining for Pete's Wicked Ale, the liquor store we went to actually stocked it, so I picked up a 12 pack and thoroughly enjoyed it. Although it was heavier than I remember it.
• Matt and I played 18 holes with his in-laws Wednesday at one of the two golf courses at the resort. I started off okay and finished horribly; my driving ability totally deserted me after the first few holes. Fortunately, my short game was pretty good so it wasn't a total loss. I need to get to the driving range and figure out what's wrong.
• We went to the boardwalk in Ocean City to take the kids on amusement rides and then get ice cream. Another thing I noticed this time around, both on the beach and on the boardwalk, is the seagulls have gotten a lot more brazen. They'll hover over your head and snatch food right out of your hands while you eat.
• I got a ton of reading done. I've been slowly picking my way through Sacred Games, the 924-page magnum opus by Vikram Chandra about Mumbai gangsters. I started it months ago but have made little progress, about 130 pages, as I try to read in the few minutes before I fall asleep. I read mainly old MOJO magazines on the first few days of vacation, but I started getting into the book and in the last three or four days have read about 430 pages. I hope to finish it by early next week.
• We followed with great interest the Manny Ramirez saga all week, as he did everything in his power to get traded out of Boston by the deadline and in the end was successful. The Sox sent him to the Dodgers in a three-team deal that brought Jason Bay to Boston. There's no doubt he's a great player, but he's also a distraction that while hilarious, must have driven his teammates nuts. We'll see how he does in LaLa land.