Weekend

I was reading on the lawn, the smell of cookies wafting out the screen door, when I heard Haley shout, “NO! This can’t be happening!”
  
Curious about the cause of the outcry, Charlotte walked in and also let out a shriek.
  
I decided I’d have no choice but to follow suit and investigate.

What I found was Colin, wearing nothing but my apron, baking cookies.

This was an interesting first endeavor into the world of domesticity to say the least, though in the end it was quite successful- anyone who can read can cook, and Christine had quite a reliable cookie recipe in her collection.

Now, instead of waiting for more Oreos to arrive from the supermarket on the Big Island, a hungry Colin can make his own chocolatey snack.

Eager to make more progress on the oven project, I enlisted Aidan to come to the North End with me to look for the sand we had heard was at the end of Petrel Path.

Carrying shovels and large plastic bins, we wandered the entire northern half of the island in search of the stuff but came back, hot and thirsty, with none.

After some rest and some water, I decided to try at West Beach.

Colin and Emily came with me, and we quickly filled seven large bins.

Because the day was so warm, Emily and I decided to go for a swim, which was surprisingly more pleasant than usual as the water had been warmed by the sun.

We came back to the dorm and laid in the sunshine, further enjoying the weather.

Damon and Janet were cooking dinner, and they made a beautiful meal of grilled chicken, whole-wheat pasta with sundried tomatoes, parsley, lemon, feta, and toasted almonds, and a gorgeous garden salad.

Dessert was also extra-special: Janet’s Crepes a la Civilizacion featuring bananas and nutella.

Because of the good weather and the relaxed Sunday schedule ahead of us, Charlotte, Emily and I decided to sleep on South Hill.

We had a lovely night, with numerous shooting stars, strange optical illusions involving the moon (which appeared to melt and drop into the sea), planes flying overhead on transatlantic routes, and the sound of the surf crashing into the rocks.

When we returned to the dorm on Sunday morning after sleeping late, we told everyone about the moon’s strange behavior, and it was quickly explained away by Janet as being caused by the bending of light due to atmospheric something-or-other.

We spent a lazy Sunday reading in the sunshine, with Colin making more of his now-trademark cookies, until the time came for us to go to the dock and greet some new arrivals: three Upward Bound students and their advisor.

Once everyone was comfortably onshore, Damon, Elisabeth and I took the skiff to West Beach to collect our seven bins of sand. We had very little time in which the tide would be high enough for us to work, and we found that each of the bins weighed at least as much as we did, so we were only able to bring two of them back to the dock with us.

After that was all in order, Elisabeth and I decided to go on a trail run before dinner.

We ran a mile or so down Petrel Path and I felt so lucky to live in such an amazing place and found myself regretting not taking up running on the trails earlier.

I am also falling in love with barefoot running, loving the way my feet interact with the surface of the earth and glad not to experience pain in my shins the way I do when I wear running shoes.

Christine and Charlotte made a lovely meal of traditional Swedish cuisine, and as we munched away we all introduced ourselves as we do each time our group changes.

While the dishes were being washed after we’d eaten a rich dessert of Kanelbullar (amazing puffy Swedish cinnamon rolls), an after-dinner Wobble Session arose, perhaps spontaneously.

The oven-building crew decided it was time to go collect the sand at the dock to start building the form for the dome, so we went down the hill with the hand cart.

After struggling in pairs to lift the bins of sand into the cart, we began to drag it, and the handle slid right out of the braces that hold it in place. Nope!

We carefully lowered the bins out and replaced the handle.

This was a job for the tractor, to be sure.

When we asked Mark if we could borrow the trailer, he advised us to load the bins into the bucket (very carefully, keeping the bucket as low as we could without catching it on anything, driving slowly, and wearing seat belts at all times).

This was a good technique, and soon we were pouring water into the sand to start building.

When I asked Colin to find me a 16-inch stick so I could keep track of how tall we were building the dome he emerged with a meter stick from the lab (“Does it need to be 16 inches or do you just need to know how big 16 inches is? We’ve got plenty of these in there.”)

While Aidan, Charlotte, Emily and I dug our hands in the dirt, some of the others played a sunset game of ultimate (after which they casually tossed a disc in the yard). The whole atmosphere was lovely.

When our dome was of sufficient size the next step was to create a release film for the mud layer which could later be burned out.

I had read that wet newspaper was ideal and that wet leaves were trickier to work with but also functional.

Damon offered some scrap paper from the lab, and soon we found ourselves plastering our sand film with water-drenched pages of someone’s scientific paper.

If they only knew the fate of their research…