Weekend!
So I get home yesterday and my stuff is gone. Like, my laptop, my phone charger, my suitcase full of clothing, the dirty clothes in the dirty clothing backpack/rucksack. My toothbrush. The tin of mints by the door.
Gone.
So I look around and say “perhaps the front desk knows something?” and I call the desk and say “This is Mister Bird in room umpty-ump” and they immediately take on the most apologetic tone of voice in the world and say “Hello, Mister Bird. There was an incident.”
As it turns out, the pipes broke. None of my stuff was damaged but there was water damage to the wall behind the bed, they needed to move me out tout de suite and would I *PLEASE* accept an upgraded room for the inconvenience.
So now I have a fireplace.
That might have been a good enough place to end the story if only it weren’t for the fire alarm going off at just after midnight. I found myself strangling my alarm clock, thumbs pressed firmly against the snooze bar and I realized that the beep was from the ceiling. Which would have been fine if it didn’t take another 10 minutes to stop beeping once they established that it was a false alarm. Which would have been a good enough place to end the story if only it weren’t for the next three times the alarm went off before 6AM.
All that to say: I am sleeping in this weekend. Maybe I’ll catch “She”. Or “Her”. Whichever it is.
So… what’s on your docket?
OK, OK, OK… So, like, one of my favorite things in the world to do when I go home to Tennessee is drive to Memphis (about 3 hours from Franklin), maybe go to Graceland (I won’t tell you how many times I’ve been, and I’m not even an Elvis fan), and eat Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken downtown. Words cannot express how much I love that chicken, and the fried pickles too. I mean, maybe the fact that I drive 3 hours to get it, and that I actually bought the t-shirt, can express how much I love it, but words cannot. A couple weeks ago I went to Tennessee, fully planning on driving out to Memphis for two breasts and a wing with fried pickles, beans, coleslaw, and a slice of white bread; my mouth was watering on the friggin’ plane, but then life intervened, and I was not able to do so in the week I was there. I was seriously bummed (though I did get some Prince’s Hot Chicken in Nashville, so the trip was not a complete failure).
So, the other day, a friend of mine to whom I’d suggested Gus’s when she was driving from Austin to North Carolina via Tennessee said to me, “Hey, what was the name of that place you like to eat in Memphis?” “Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken!” I replied. “Did you know that a Gus’s opened in Austin yesterday?” [Sound of wheels screeching as breaks are slammed to the floor.] “What?!?!?!?!?!?!”
So this entire week I have collected people to go to Gus’s with me, and tomorrow I will be eating WORLD FAMOUS fried chicken with friends. I don’t know what I’m doing with the rest of my weekend, but that doesn’t matter.Report
Fishing awesome.Report
I feel the same sort of way about this place, except there isn’t one here and there never could be without it sucking.
If I ever go visit the good Doctor, I’ll probably eat my weight in lobster rolls…Report
Assuming the car comes back from the shop tomorrow as expected, I will be doing errands, chores, homework, and chillaxing, in that proportion (as allotted by my complex energy-time algorithm).
Should it not, things will shift to (in order) chillaxing, homework, and chores.
Part of me is not-so-secretly hoping they decide they need to keep the car until Monday, even though *really* that would be incredibly inconvenient and problematic.Report
What’s the public transportation like there?Report
Ridiculously bad. When I first moved here it was moderately bad – ie it totally sucked, but you could at least get from downtown to the state college, even though getting back was dicey, etc – and then in the mid 2000s someone who was probably high or malevolent redrew all the routes.
So now, you only take the bus if you HAVE to. That’s why the car is in the shop actually, because I now have an internship at said state college and so we need to nurse it along for a semester, becoming a two-car family, instead of trading it in for our new one like we were planning to do. I was telling one of my friends at work about all this and he said, “You really should take the bus. Just because it would take you an extra THREE HOURS in each direction is no excuse.” and then we both cracked up for a minute, followed by mutual sad sighs. (It really would take 3 hours. And it’s maybe 20 minutes’ drive.)Report
Wow.
Sounds like walking and taking the bus come out about the same? Route, road conditions, and materials requiring transportation permitting, you might be able to do it by bike in 45-ish minutes…Report
In about 2.5 years the light rail stations within two miles of my house are scheduled to open (and amazingly, RTD has been doing well at opening things on schedule). Once that happens, I plan on bicycling to the train station and going somewhere by light rail every Saturday for 15 or 20 weeks just because I can. The University of Denver. The Tattered Cover and Denver’s main library downtown. The Tech Center. Downtown Littleton. The Jefferson County government complex, even though it’s three times as far by rail as it would be to just drive. Out to the airport and back. Assuming they run the circulator buses that I believe have been promised, the Zoo and the Museum of Nature and Science. Heck, I may go ride through Aurora even though there’s no place there I can think of that I would want to visit.Report
@dragonfrog We live in the foothills of the Rockies. I have friends who could do it in 45ish minutes on a bike, but I am not that fit, especially since I grew up at sea level (we’re at ~6000 feet). The other problem is that to work full-time, be at an internship about 15 hours a week, and still take one more class on the side, I really need the spare minutes between 40 minutes both ways and 90… bi-vehicular it is.Report
Woot! They need it until Saturday at noon. Which won’t get me out of anything but totally gives me an excuse not to do anything except laundry tonight.Report
Stuff!
Tomorrow is Jack’s first basketball practice. Unlike previous seasons, this doesn’t mean I get 45 minutes to diddle with my smartphone, ’cause I’m the coach.
Saturday Hannah has a basketball game, then there’s a break, then Jack has a basketball game, where, yeah, coaching, and then after *that* game I have to ref a game (that’s in the 11-14 division instead of the 8-10) and then after **that** I jump in the car and go down to my sister’s place to hang out with my nephew before he goes back to San Jose State and play games with him, her, and old college roomie Greg. I’m taking the kids and a couple bags of their gear so that Kitty can get some house stuff done. We’ll be spending the night there.
Then, Sunday morning, I’ll undoubtedly watch the Niner game there, then come home, and if I have anything left in the tank I’ll start working on Jack’s desk (spoiler alert: yeah, prolly not)Report
Looking like Mrs. Likko and I are going to have to wait until at least after basketball season to enjoy the pleasure of the Cahalans’ company!Report
We might be able to do a Sunday..?Report
E-mail.Report
Got kind of a long term career-related project I’d like to tackle this weekend. Kind of obliged to root for San Francisco.Report
The new ecigs were a rousing success. I should be getting some additional supplies today.
I’m hoping to get some cleaning and organization done today.
Baby slept through the night last night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Went to sleep at around 11:30 and woke up at 8:00.Report
Congratulations! All baby-related problems are smaller if you can get that one longish chunk of sleep most days.Report
My birthday party is this evening. I’m not feeling super festive just now, mainly since I got broken up with last night (yay polyamory!). It was the right thing to happen, but it’s never fun.
Saturday we’ll probably go by a friend’s place for chili, chilling, and later firework watching depending how late we stay.
Sunday is No Pants Subway Ride, then volunteering at the bike workshop.Report
I hope you had/have a decent weekend, despite the lingering unfun.Report
This weekend so far has consisted of unpacking some more of my stuff, taking my new dogs to get tested for heartworms, and getting some cleaning done. The rest of the weekend will probably involve more unpacking, more cleaning, and fixing a curtain rod that was pulled down by the previously mentioned dogs.Report
You got dogs while moving?Report
Yes. My son is staying back with my folks to finish up the semester, and he probably will not come here until the end of the summer. I figured some dogs would help keep the house from seeming too empty, so I got a pair of corgis. I happened to luck out and find a breeder that had an 8-month-old brother/sister pair. She had kept them to show, but she ended up getting a job that made that impossible. Since I was interested in both, she held them until I got up here to get them. They are two awesome dogs.Report