The morning started with a
State-of-the-Pattersons Speech by Great Lucie and Dave, noting among
other significant evens Linda and Lloyd's 30th wedding anniversary,
Melissa graduating from high school, Alissa's 4.0 GPA in
her first year of college, my election as President of the
Association for Computing Machinery and, most significantly, the
addition of Owyn Lucy Patterson to the clan.
Our dog Molly loves the reunion, because of the all the food cooking in the house and all the droppings. After having tasted bacon, however, she changed her strategy. When Great-Grandpa Patterson was took a place full of bacon to the table for breakfast, Molly launched herself higher than she had ever been before, and in a Jordan-esque move snapped the food out of Great-Grandpa’s hand. Alas, poor Molly got the toast from his right hand instead of the bacon from his left hand, but the crowd gave her a 10 for effort.
Great-Grandpa Patterson got an Odyssey 2 ball 2nd generation putter for Father’s Day. I thought it was cute that he thought a piece of equipment would improve his game more than lessons, for example. That was our view until we tried putting with it. In the practice round I could make every 3-foot put, and even made one 40 footer. Its user interface made it much easier to align the put, and it feels like it has a bigger “sweet spot” on the putter so that it is more forgiving when you stroke it. There are two white circles the size of a golf ball on the top of the putter, so you only need to align them with the real gold ball to figure out where you want it to go.
Since the four of us were obviously all going to try to share a single putter, I bought another for the family to use. We put them to good use. I got my first par in the dozen times I have golfed over the years, and Don made a circus put on the 18th hole: it was 25 feet from the pin and it traveled in nearly a half-circle right into the hole. It terms of lowering your score, which is the goal of golf, this putter is probably a bigger innovation in golf than the titanium driver clubs.
In addition to golf, Alissa, Brian, and Paul
went surfing. Later
Alissa, Sue, Melissa, Pat, Laura, Linda, Linda, and Lucie painted
beautiful pottery
at the Petroglyph that was fired and
picked up later that week.
In the evening Linda led an expedition of
nieces and nephews
to the Boardwalk to try miniature golf. That was followed by a trip to
a bar where they were kicked out and then to
a tattoo
parlor. Below is
Brian's tattoo:
Adding a little more to the story, the tattoos were removable and the bar was a Karaoke bar where most of them were too young. The nieces and nephews had such a great time that they invited her to come play the next night.
David, Zackary, Owyn, Chloe, Jack, and Cowboy returned home, leaving us with 15 Pattersons and 1 dog.