Sunday, July 21

It has been a beastly hot week. Not much motivation to do much of anything outside. Even Fido the sun loving desert lizard just liked lounging in the shade. We finally got a little relief yesterday, with temperatures only getting into the mid-eighties.

Fido chillin’ in the heat.

Yesterday was a summer water polo tournament over in Holland, MI. Summer polo is kind of like the pickup basketball games I remember as a kid. Any warm body drifting by would get drafted. Molly’s team consisted of girls from eighth grade up through high school seniors and they ended up playing a boys high school team for the last game.

Holland is close to Lake Michigan and has a nice little downtown area with shoppes and restaurants. It appears to have been founded by the Dutch and there’s lots of Van der names floating around. True to their Dutch roots, Holland is a bastion of staunch conservatism in Michigan. After the last election, if you looked at one of those blue for Democrats, red for Republicans maps, Holland kind of glows red.

Downtown Holland.

Molly and Rachael, chillin’ between games in downtown Holland.

Holland has an excellent brew pub called the New Holland Brewing Company. They make a great oatmeal stout along with a host of other fine brews. Quite a popular place. Lise and I ate lunch there. When we tried to do the team post tournament dinner there, the wait would have been over an hour just to get in. But on Sundays, city law prohibits them from selling the beer they make on premise. They can, however, sell you a glass of whatever whiskey or hard liquor you want that was made somewhere else. They just can’t sell their own locally made beer. Now you can color that any way you want but it still comes out dumb. It sure isn’t very progressive.

Today was our first birding for a week. We went out to try for a prothonotary warbler along the Grand River. No warblers but we had great views of a barred owl. I had just finished saying that we still didn’t have barred or screech owls when I looked over and saw a barred owl sitting close to the ground. One of those Zen birding things. Almost made up for the blood sucking insects that tried to turn us into jerky covered with welts. I’m now at 224 species and Lise is at 219.