Happy Father's Day!

Wow.

A testament to how busy the past month's been, I see I haven't posted in over 30 days.  Oh, well.

A wonderful Father's Day weekend was enjoyed here @ S116.  Daughter and I went to the waterpark over in the next town (thanks to Daughter's mom sending her season pass, and the park running a FD special), and the cloud cover made for a very pleasant afternoon.  Some highlights:

• We rode most of the tube slides, including one that, midway, deposited Daughter and I into a swirling 'toilet bowl' - where you make 3-4 revolutions before 'flushing' through one of two small entrances, if you don't first get stuck sideways by the raised fiberglass guide.
• A gentleman behind us, whom I was initially having trouble understanding as I am not so fluent in Ebonics (and June Cleaver has moved on to that Mayfield in the sky), and I had a swell conversation when a park employee asked the two of us to keep the queue in place while he went to 'unclog' some folks caught in the 'toilet bowl'.  By the time we got to the top of the tower, we'd found we had attended the same church at one time.
• I probably could've expanded my Spanish fluency yesterday, if'n I'd put my mind to it.  On another slide ride, we were near the last course of the tower steps, when I saw that we should be on the left side for our blue tubes, and the family with a green raft across and down a couple of steps needed to be where we were.  Though I'd heard them conversing amongst themselves in Español, I didn't want to assume too much or seem patronizing, so I said "Excuse me - I think we need to switch sides with you" - which was met with a blank stare. So I shifted gears and said "Necesitamos cambiar al otro lado, por favor", pointing out the color coding, "azul, verde" on the stair risers (that had just started at that level).  After about a second of shock from hearing el gringo speaking in his tongue, the man smiled and we switched sides with his party.
• Daughter, on the next step up, whispered in my ear: "What did that mean, Daddy?"
• We used SPF-50 to good effect.  I was one of the whitest persons in the park yesterday, and today still substantially so.
• You'd think you'd see tons of hot babes at a water park.  Not so much.  Despite the place seemingly being full, I don't think there were three women I'd have been interested in sitting down and conversing with, or anything else.
• I don't know what my T-level is (you'd think with all the radio ads these days, I'd go get it checked) - but I do know that compared to the general population - as viewed within the context of a water park - I'm apparently experiencing a serious ink and hardware deficiency.
• Is there an analogue to, say, interior designers, for dermatological art?  It seems like lots of folks have a sort of hodge-podge of designs randomly scribbled in various sites of their torsos and appendages, without any cohesive theme.
• We saw a dude with the Fort Worth skyline across his shoulders, obligatory skulls, Asian characters, longhorns, a guy with "Hecho en Mexico" (which, I think, just underscored the obvious), and several with American Greetings captions below their armpits, some Scripture, and one that possibly was a condensed chapter from War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov.
• As well, lots of folks had metal in places that I would probably only have if my Zebco or Daiwa stalled on a cast.
• I'm by no means buff - far from it - but I took some consolation that at 6'1"/187# (down from about 210 a couple of years ago), I was in the minority segment of the park patrons without a roll over the waistband of my swim trunks. 
•  I'm also not the type to wax or shave my chest - I think I have an 'average' amount of chest hair, and negligible back hair.  One guy we saw looked like a Dian Fossey subject - but, he didn't have any ink.