The end of summer is coming fast, which means cramming as much fun as possible into the last few weeks we have before school starts again — including an anniversary jammed into the middle of a week of VBS.

Vivian and I took a time-out for lunch on Wednesday to celebrate fifteen years as husband and wife. We dropped by Isla del Mar in South Omaha for some ceviche and sushi together, getting absolutely stuffed between a set of lobster rolls and a towering La Torre Imperial.

Of course, I also had my fifteenth anniversary comic, sharing illustrated highlights of the past year together. We also exchanged gifts for our crystal anniversary. I gave Vivian a crystal bell passed down from my grandmother, and she gave me a crystal monogrammed whiskey decanter. Now I’ll finally have to make use of a previous anniversary gift and fill it up.

Then that evening, we broke into some actual Bar Harbor Lobster Bisque before bed.

On Thursday, we got a new water heater installed since our old one decided to start leaking water all over the basement. Then on Friday, I took the day off work so we could spend the day down at Mahoney State Park Aquatic Center getting a little wet for the afternoon. We spent a couple hours taking turns on the water slide, fighting waves in the wave pool, and watching Hannah try out a diving board for the very first time. We had some ice cream from the concession stand halfway through our visit, and then we headed up to Breadeaux Pizza in Ashland afterward to have some pizza for dinner. We managed to eat two entire pizzas between the four of us. Somehow, we were just that hungry.

While in Ashland, we dropped into the Glacial Till brewery to get some cider. There we managed to bump into Congressman Don Bacon of all people, who was having some kind of event and showing around Matt Vickers and Aaron Bell, two members of parliament from the UK.

I got to have more fun on Saturday attending the O Con Expo (formerly O Comic Con) in Council Bluffs, formerly known as the O Comic Con, which hadn’t been held there since 2019. My dad decided to do some “cosplay” and had me help paint his head so he could go as Aang from Avatar: the Last Airbender, a show he actually happened to be fond of.

I brought Hannah and her friend Sam with us to spent an hour or two there exploring the event. They got to sit on Boba Fett’s throne on the way in. Then I got to introduce them to Kevin Clash and Townsend Coleman, (the voices of Elmo from Sesame Street and Michelangelo from the  1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, respectively). We also met Mindy Sterling, who gave each of us a (Hershey’s) kiss, as well as David Sheridan (“Officer Doofy” in Scary Movie) who autographed a plastic knife for Hannah.

We had a pretty laid-back Sunday catching up on such things as mowing a lawn or two. Then on Monday, I went to the Pachyderm Luncheon with Don Bacon down at Ahmad’s. He brought along a couple Ukrainian refugees and spent some time talking about the budget deficit and the war in Eastern Europe.

I got the chance to ask him about his vote against an amendment to restore the jobs of pilot who’d been fired for refusing the Covid vaccine. He said, “I do want them to bring back in their pilots. That is a fact. But the federal government has no legal authority to compel an airline or force an airline to bring people back on.” I think he’d also been getting heat from his vote online, since he also said, “a lot of people on Twitter, if they’re big big dogs on Twitter, they get money when you click on it, so they’re going to create something that makes you mad.” I think he appreciated the opportunity to tell his side of the story.