Wherein I was on a boat

This past weekend, I had the privilege of going to a friend's lake house. It was my second time there, and this time I didn't even sound like a broken record complaining about how I hate my job! Because in the meantime, I acquired a different and much better job. So it was much more relaxing, as I wasn't dreading the coming of Monday (these days, Mondays are just distracted and end with Pub Trivia). Also, Hillary was there this time, which improves all things.

The weather was overcast for the first night, which sadly nixed our planned star cruise. Normally (I say that as if I've been there more than once before), you can turn off all the cabin's lights, take the pontoon boat out onto the lake, and get a spectacular view of the Milky Way. As a perpetual victim of light pollution, this still impresses me. Anyway, though we missed out on the stargazing, we did get to make a bonfire. I tormented a marshmallow before abandoning it to the furnace's depths, where it bloated into an Akira-esque tumorous horror. It was pretty great.

After a night sleeping in one of the squeakiest beds on Earth, we went a-boating, helping our friend's family haul their boats out of the water for the winter. Oh what travails, this nautical existence! Actually, we basically got to sit and be ferried across the lake a couple times and enjoy the scenery, which was wonderful.

You forget how nice it is to be out amongst trees after a couple years in the city, even one as relatively well treed as Minneapolis. I suppose I don't actually forget how nice it is; rather, it's simply always surprising how refreshing that burst of green and huge expanse of blue can be. Plus, you get to discover things like your phone's panorama mode, which is very impressive for a phone that can't zoom.

The remainder of that day was spent walking around the lake and making pizza. We also found several issues of Cosmo from the 1970s (worth clicking for full size), with such articles as "When You're Having an Affair and Feeling Fat":

This intrigued us, as flabbiness would seem to be low on your list of concerns if adultery is involved. Reading the article, we were still kind of confused - the writer seemed to use "affair" to refer to any kind of romantic engagement outside a committed relationship - whether or not marriage, or indeed any monogamy, was involved. Was "affair" the 70s version of "hooking up"? Was everyone at the time swinging so hard and so often that affairs were presumed and indulged by major magazines? That seems unlikely, and my mother has confirmed that "affair" meant the same thing back then as now. This remains a bit of a mystery. So, ladies, if you're feeling adulterous, a library with a good archive of trashy 70s magazines may be your best bet.

Amusingly,1970s women's magazine editors don't seem to have developed List technology. We found no mention of 458 Ways to Please Your Man, or 137 Signs That He's Cheating and You Should Stab Him With an Icepick, Girlfriend. Truly, those were simpler times.