The weather yesterday was craptacular, it started weepy and ended up humid.  Great start, great finish.  Its amazing how much the upcoming weather means to at the end of the week.  At the beginning I could care less, good or bad I am still looking down the upcoming work week with quiet resignation.

Around Thursday the weather radar starts to come online and by Friday it takes on a much more significant importance.

“Check weather.com and see what the weather is going to be like tomorrow.” Karin asked in a casually last night.

I happily fired up FireFox and silently hoped the news would continue to look good.  I don’t mind crappy weather, but I find myself still in Spring fever mode.

As I read off the predicted weather we both begin to think about what we want to do around the yard the next day.  Our yard is for lack of better words, a blank canvas, a stock carbon copy of so many other homes.

The backyard is barren of any trees, the front has the typical builder evergreens that no one in their right mind would never plant intentionally. Our two improvements are flower boxes and a fence.  I know what you are thinking — “Wheee!”

We feel the same way.  It doesn’t help of course that neither Karin and I are huge garden people.  I would like to be, but so far it just hasn’t panned out.  Our motivation at this point is almost embarrassment over the lack of change from when we moved in.

The general talk and plan we decided on was to get some flowers for the planters and plants for the side of the house.  I recently acquired a spade and am looking forward to laying out a curving spline with the hose to create some sort of bed on the side of the house.

Sounds like a great plan, somewhere in there we were also trying to plan a dinner party at a great German restaurant called the Bavarian Lodge in Lisle, IL — Karin was going to try and work in an early movie with her friend, my neighbor and I were going to talk seriously about fence staining, and on top of all that Maverick wanted to play catch with the football.

I thankfully prioritized correctly and went to play catch, but after about ten minutes Mav had had enough.  I however was just starting to enjoy the warm sun and cool breeze.  Then I had an idea.

A memory really of a kite that Grandma Betty bought for Maverick last year gathering dust in our office closet.  The wind was perfect and with an open space walking distance away, I knew what would be next on our agenda.

Bringing down the kite I was happily surprised to see that it was of decent quality.  Nylon, stitched and sporting a twenty dollar price tag.  A dragon kit, with a long tail.  Sweet!  In no time we had it in the air and soaring well over our heads.

Despite Maverick’s concerns I decided to let the line out to really get it some altitude.  It flew like a champ — Rock solid to be exact.  No threat of crash and burn here.  I so wanted to lie down and stare up into the azure sky and watch it fly but the fiery eye in the sky was exactly where the kite was flying and it was brutally strong.

It’s been probably 17 years since I really have flown a kite like that.  Sure I’ve helped Maverick with crappy inexpensive kites here and there but they have stayed well under 20-30 feet so I don’t really consider them to be real kite flying attempts.  I had forgotten how peaceful flying a kit can be.  I will have to do it again soon, preferably next time later in the day when the Sun won’t thwart my relaxation attempts.