Frank was lucky this year:  both of the kids were home to help celebrate Father’s Day.  Of course, travel schedules were such that we didn’t actually celebrate *on* Father’s Day but that seems to be a minor point.

Duncan is staying in KC right now while he figures out the best way to spend a few years before going to grad school.  (Over achiever…. wonder where he got that from?) Jesse stopped in for a few days on her way to her summer job in California.  Yup, she’s working as a technical assistant in Monterey for CSU Monterey Bay’s summer theater program.  So if I’m buying a plane ticket to get her between Vermont to CA, that plane just happens to stop in KC.  For a few days.  Both ways.

And so for 3 days we were a family of four again.  Duncan and Jesse got lots of sibling time while Frank and I were at work.  This allowed Duncan to give her a belated birthday gift – yes, it’s a zebra mask.  No, I’m not in on the joke.  No, I don’t think I necessarily want to be.

And what does my family do on warm Friday nights in the summer?  Go to a Royals game!  We swapped our symphony tickets for Friday night to Sunday and instead picked up our BBQ take out (with some veggie stuff from Panda Express for Duncan) and headed to the K.  It turned out to be the Big Slick celebrity weekend so famous people with KC roots turned up for a “softball game” and other crowd pleasers.  Eric Stonestreet, Paul Rudd, Rob Riggle and Jason Sudekis also tried to lead the 7th inning stretch rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” but were only mildly successful. Still it was an entertaining evening even if the Royals lost to the Red Sox – afterwards there was fireworks!

Saturday was to be our celebration of Father’s Day.  Frank really wanted to go to Boulevardia – a beer and music festival in the West Bottoms – but the projected 100 degree heat index made the festival organizers cap admission and so there were no tickets to be had.  So instead, we headed north to Excelsior Springs for their wine festival.  Okay it was hot, and we were going to spend the day drinking Missouri wine, so maybe it didn’t start out as the most promising plan but off we went in the new convertible with lots of sunscreen and very low expectations.

So therefore we were more than pleasantly surprised when we arrived at a nice shady park with about a dozen wineries represented, some blues musicians playing in the background and very few other people.  For $25 each, Frank, Duncan and I got to “sample” lots of wines – some were *very* generous pours – and Jesse got to be designated driver and make fun of us.  Only one more year before we have to start negotiating over that role! We found several wineries that had really good wines (I might still need to add the “for Missouri” qualifier!) and I actually found a winery that makes a Norton that I like!  No small feat!

We tried to stay hydrated and somewhat sober, enjoyed the great music, avoided the sun, and went home with a case of wine and a sense that our new home state may not be a local wine desert after all.  Dad’s choice for the evening was some steaks on the grill, more wine, and a family showing of “The Kingsman” on pay-per-view.  Who could ask for more?

On Sunday, Jesse had an early flight to start her new adventure so it was off to KCI at o’dark thirty.  While it was Father’s Day for everyone else, we were past that so it was off to church and then Duncan and I hit the symphony (final performance of the year including Tchikovsky’s first piano concerto with a Cliburn finalist pianist – outstanding!) Frank wanted to clean out his garage which, after weeks of rain, had an inch of mud covering parts of the floor – with grass growing in it! So the neighbors all think we are the worst family ever because Frank was “working” on Father’s Day.  They don’t realize that his garage is his passion and they didn’t see the Moscow mule mugs that the kids gave him.  They also couldn’t  fully appreciate what a fabulous gift of having family time is for us empty nesters.  It is still somewhat of a rarity and we treasure every minute (even when we are swearing about having to clean up after them again!)

I am currently traveling this week for work to one of my favorite conferences ever – the annual gathering of the International Association of Social Science Information Service and Technology (IASSIST).  I look forward to this week every year not just because some of these folks have become dear friends over the years or because there is always a banquet where I have my one opportunity to dance with abandon.  Tonight I realized that one of the things I like best about this conference is that is a gathering of very perceptive, educated, erudite people from a variety of disciplines, mostly within the social sciences, who are able and very willing to carry on intelligent and congenial conversations on a variety of topics from the value of the plural phrase “all y’all” to the relative merits of first past the post versus proportional representation voting. All while enjoying a few alcoholic beverages as well as each other’s company.

Don’t get me wrong.  It’s not that this is my only opportunity to have conversations with astute, learned, well-informed people; I have friends and colleagues at home who also can generally fit that description.  But tonight’s conversation over pizza and fries between a Dutch citizen living in Britain, two Canadians, and an American historian on the relative similarities between secession opportunities for Catalan, Quebec, and Scotland and the effect of the various political systems on their future was not something in which I generally have the opportunity to participate.  It was nearly as entertaining as the Australian expounding on the merits of “y’all” as a contraction.

Bottom line:  I confess that I am not pretentiously particular about my palaver but I do cherish clever confabulation – and welcome the occasion to augment my lexicon.  🙂