Yesterday a body of a white male was found washed up on the beach approximately nine miles south of one of my usual Lake Michigan stomping grounds, South Haven.   Current conjecture is that the body is that of a Chicago man that had gone missing about a month ago.  This is not a usual occurance in South West Michigan, so it is pretty big news.

The missing man was staying at a family cottage when he disappeared.  Not much more is known about his disappearance.

It is now time to remove the four stumps from the front yard right next to the house. I have my ax and shovel and get to work. This first one is a toughy, I ended up grabbing a 4×4 post and using it as a lever to pop it out. Pure Archimedian genius. The second one went similar to the first, a bit of digging, a bit of ax swinging, a little more digging, more ax swinging and finally back to the lever to pop it out.

Stumps three and four required a lot of digging and swinging of the ax. The ax finally won and I didn’t even need to use the lever. There is one more bush near the house that will be coming out. But not today.

I’m dirty and sweaty. It is very humid today so it was difficult to keep the sweat out of my eyes. Time for a shower and maybe a swim…or maybe a swim and then a shower. Either way works tonight.

In order to do some landscaping in the front yard I am forced to move 1,500 tons a bunch of river stones that the previous owner must have thought looked wonderful. These stones along with several scrawny bushes now must be removed from the front of the house. The bushes had been cut down to stumps on a previous occasion.

The next step is to move all those pesky stones. So shovel load by shovel load I sling those stones on to the back of a trailer to be carted off. Hours of sweaty work later I am finally finished. Boy am I glad!

Next step to this project will be removing the stumps. My ax awaits the opportunity to hew the tender roots of the four former bushes so I can mightily pull them from the earth. I’ll save them for another day.

I wonder how the beach is today.

Every summer a friend of mine who has a sand volleyball court in his backyard hosts weekly games. Usually we have enough players to play three on three or even four on four. Teams are ad hoc depending on who actually shows up and how well or poorly players have played recently. Last night was the start of the new season and all of the regulars showed up, three high schoolers [who are kids of some of the players] and three female noobs.

We had enough players for three teams of four. My team consisted of a male high schooler, a noob, a female regular and myself. We lost our first three games. They weren’t very close but they weren’t total blowouts either. The noob was pretty good she had a great serve that kept us in the games. In the last game of the night we pulled out a win. Finally!!!

It will be interesting to see who shows up next week. I wonder if any of the noobs will return. Well i guess it is time to wash off the sand.

Surfin’ Sid is offering an opportunity in the form of a contest on CentSports.   He is giving away all of his July net winnings to the crony [referral] who holds the highest balance on July 31st.

I’ve created a widget and placed it in the sidebar. The widget has a bunch of songs that I like and that relate to the beach bum lifestyle. It only plays a portion of each song, unfortunately. I’d love to hear what songs everyone else thinks that a beach bum would listen to.

I have the obvious Beach Boys and Jimmy Buffet on the widget. And the less well known Surf Punks. As well as The Safaris and Jan & Dean. And I included one of my favorite songs, Hotel California by The Eagles.

I think that I need to remove some songs because the widget takes a little long to load. So look for changes in the near future.

When you think of music and summer at the beach what songs come to mind?