Late Night at the Lake
Summertime in Familia was a time where a lot of outdoor activities went on. The swimming beach at Lake Famila was open, along with the newly opened concessions shack, where residents could go to take a swim when they wanted to cool off. Then, of course, there was Happyland Amusement Park, which was open from May through September and open 7 days a week during the summer months when school was out. Finally, there was what Charlene and I called "Familia Days", a festival that spanned four days around the 4th of July that celebrated the founding of Familia and the reason why it was founded. For kids, this meant that there would be free admission to Happyland during the festival along with a paid adult admission, a fireworks display over the Twin Lakes on Saturday Night, and other activities that were meant for the adults in town who were a lot like Charlene and I.
In addition to all of this other stuff, there was also activity over by the Twin Lakes during the summertime. Kapernians from all over Mason Island visited during the summer months, usually either to go fishing, or to camp out at the campgrounds located on the eastern shore of Lake Charlene. The Twin Lakes were reserved exclusively for fishing and boating in general, aside from the small swimming beach over at the campgrounds. It had been like this since before Charlene and I bought the land that the Twin Lakes sat on and we intended to keep it that way. Lake Familia was used primarily as a water source for the town, with a water treatment facility built on the western shoreline to ensure all the water that came out of taps in Famila was clean and drinkable. Of course, Charlene and I didn't really need to go to the public beach since we had a swimming pool in the back of the house enclosed by a sunroof. This came in handy whenever it was hot and humid outside, such as tonight for example.
It was the middle of July, typically the hottest part of the entire year on Mason Island, and the southwesterly breeze was pumping in the warmth and humidity from the southern islands quite effectively. Even at 11 PM at night, it was still near 90 outside, with dewpoints in the mid-70's. It would feel absolutely miserable to be outside for an extended period of time, unless you were in a body of water. Throughout Familia, air conditioners and dehumidifying units ran constantly, including at our house, making things feel a lot more bearable than they would be if we stepped out the door. This was part of a heat wave that started a couple days earlier and wasn't expected to break for a few more days. This meant Charlene and I wouldn't be going outside as much until then.
The only hope of getting any sort of relief from the heat in the meantime would be if a storm complex were to develop and move through the area in the overnight hours. There was a complex well off to the west of Familia on Center Island that formed with a weak disturbance there, but that was several hours away from Familia, and there was no guarantee that it would survive the trip across the Center Island/Mason Island Channel.
Instead, I stayed upstairs in the bedroom, watching reruns of the original Star Trek on "Retrovision: Earth", which was a channel devoted to airing various television programs that existed prior to 1990. I had watched the original series off and on as a pup and moreso as an adult, finding the series both a bit cheesy at times, but also interesting at others. I had no idea what Charlene was doing at the time. Eva was over at The Oasis along with Melissa, both of them working together with my sister working on-stage and Melissa going over paperwork. Since it was a Friday Night, I knew that they'd be gone for several more hours and would likely get home well after Charlene and I had gone to bed.
At that moment, the only thing I thought about was watching Star Trek. One of my favorite episodes was on that night where the Enterprise went up against the Doomsday Machine...or as I liked to call it, the floating joint in spa-a-a-a-ace!* I didn't mind though, I was watching it on my 60 inch LED TV, lying on the bed as the central air conditioner/dehumidifer unit kept the bedroom at a comfortable 68 degrees with a dewpoint in the mid-40's. Compared to outside, this felt like heaven.
