Weekend!
The nephews are beginning to freak out about summer vacation being *THIS* *CLOSE* and the people I know who work for various educational facilities are alternating between “I’M FREAKING OUT EVEN MORE THAN THE KIDS” and “man, where does the time go?”
I’m a “where does the time go?” guy, myself.
When I was a kid, I thought it was funny that Grease 2 brought back all of the grownups to play the teachers in the sequel. Nope, they had merely found the one thing that they decided that they wouldn’t screw up, and it was that.
Anyway, it looks like the weird weather has finally decided to taper off (we just had the period where the sun was hidden behind clouds for as many as 3 days at a time) and we’re back to it raining when it’s most convenient again (like, after sunset). As such, we get to do the gardening! So, tomorrow, I get to pick up 60ish pounds of dirt and various seeds for the little flower garden we cultivate (looks like poppies this time… they’re only really pretty for one week but, man, that one week!) and the rest of the weekend will be spent in a flurry of various preparations for the summer and attendant insanity.
Truly, summers off are wasted on the young.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Photo is “Footrace finish line, 1925” from the Seattle Municipal Archives, used under a creative commons license)
I’m sitting at a feezing cold airport waiting to catch a flight to sunny Florida for a long girls weekend.
I miss my son already. As a single mother, my son is with me *all the time*. It’s so weird to be be away for six whole days.Report
I want to pry my son away from a screen (and to be candid, pry myself away too) and show him how fun the outdoors are with canoes and fishing poles.Report
“Huh. Grown-ups lie. All the time. Even about things that are immediately falsifiable.”Report
@brett I’ll be curious to hear how that goes. I have two sons, and each had very different reactions to my doing the same.Report
Busy weekend for me. Going to see the Pixies tonight. No Kim Deal but still, it’s the friggin’ Pixies. Going with a friend who loves them as much as I do but has never seen them in concert, so I’m excited to experience this through his eyes.
I have a history walk through one of my favorite Louisville neighborhoods on Saturday morning. My uncle has become the unofficial historian of one of our oldest neighborhoods (he grew up there) and he does these a few times per year. I’m dragging my oldest daughter along so she can learn a little bit about where our family is from.
Sunday I am leaving for two weeks in New Hampshire. This will be the longest I have ever been away from home. I’m amazingly calm about it, probably because my wife is coming up for the stayover weekend which will hopefully help with the homesickness. At this point I am most worried about missing the dogs.Report
Don’t know about you, but I am un chien andalusia.Report
The last time I saw them they did Doolittle in its entirety. Not sure if the same thing will happen this time but I’m just hoping they cover the hits.Report
It’s weird that their reunion hasn’t really been that fruitful in terms of new material. Some of their Boston-area colleagues have done quite well post-reunion – Dino Jr. and Mission of Burma have both done really good records after getting back together – and Frank Black has done some really solid solo stuff, so it’s not like he doesn’t know how to write songs anymore. Get him back together with an absolutely ACE guitarist like Santiago and a great drummer like Lovering and I would have expected some quality new songs, but that never happened.
Pro tip: in your “Doolittle” playlist, swap out the album version of “Wave of Mutilation” for the (UK Surf) version. Makes a great album even better by changing the flow.
I actually made it out to a great show last night, but I ran into an old friend and too much whiskey was had. I am hurtin’ for certain.Report
I haven’t heard too much of their new stuff. I’m a terrible fan in that department. We were just talking about that last night, how if a band goes on retirement-like hiatus it’s hard to re-engage with their new music when they come back verses a band that consistently keeps putting out music every few years.Report
The new stuff wasn’t awful, exactly, it was just..bland. I don’t know.
Maybe I should give it another chance. I probably didn’t give it a fair shake.Report
@glyph
This makes me think of something my son said in his last email:
“In other news, a couple weeks ago, the band Helmet came through SLO touring the 20th anniversary of the album Betty. I ended up going since that album was one of the first CDs I ever bought, and they were going to play it all the way through. They were pretty good, Paige Hamilton was the only original member, but he still played really well. The crowd was hilarious. I was definitely the youngest guy in there; everyone else was in there 40’s. However, that didn’t stop this one guy from trying to start a mosh pit. It was really hard not to laugh at 4-6 40 year old guys moshing. Either way, it was a good show, and I’m glad I went.”
I immediately thought of you when I read that.Report
Yeah, at the show last night one of the members climbed up onto an amp stack at the side of the stage and was mock-“conducting” the band using a drumstick.
Then, he very carefully clambered back down.
I turned to my friend and was like “In 1991, that guy would have leaped off that stack into the crowd; nowadays, he’s gotta watch his knees and worry about whether he’s got the insurance to handle the lawsuit.”Report
I was a huge fan of Doolittle when it was out. My son saw them at Riot Fest a couple years back and was extremely disappointed with the new stuff. Probably was some stuff that had been laying around for awhile and was there to record when the gang reformed to cash in. That is why I generally try to stay away from that stuff.Report
I don’t know, it seems to me re-formed bands are getting better at quality control on the new stuff. Like I said, Dino Jr. and MoB have kicked butt; I personally didn’t care for m b v all that much, but it got great reviews; the newest Swervedriver was good, ditto on Mazzy Star; Echo & the Bunnymen did at least two really good records post-reformation. Wire went away for a decade-plus (and a good chunk of the ’80s too) and they came back strong.
I’ll give the newest Pixies another shot and report back.Report
I keep telling myself I am going to download some stuff and give it a real chance…but grumpy old man Mike seems to have less of an appetite for that kind of work.Report
I love the song they did with Chrissie Hynde (Back on the chien gang.)Report
My Husband is flying to China for a two week long trip. I’m going to be living the bachelor life! Hogging all the sheets and playing Twilight Imperium and Civ V until midnight, ahh the wild free life.Report
What’s this Twilight Imperium?
I need to know these things.Report
I got a Pebble! Does anyone know what apps I should get?
Also, because I so frequently forget by the time Sunday rolls around, has anyone actually read Salman Rushdie’s books? Are they any good? I have some Audible credits to burn.
We have a new mattress coming in today (I hope), which will be good. It’s supposed to take 48 hours for it to… do whatever it’s going to do between taking it out of the packaging and actually being able to use it.
The weather here has been delightful.Report
Will – what kind of mattress did you get? We got a pillow top recently from Costco and I’m starting to become concerned it is a dud.Report
Ordered this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00702GYGU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
We’re going to be replacing all of our mattresses. I figure I will get one, see how it goes. If it goes well we will keep getting that kind of mattress.
How recently did you get the mattress that you got?Report
We got our mattress about 2 months ago. It’s not terrible but it appears to be sagging a little in the middle. That’s a bit concerning.Report
@will-truman I’d be interested to hear how you like it in a month or two, when we might be in the market for a new mattress (depends on how existing futon mattress does on a platform bed once it’s freed from the horribly broken frame it’s been living on for a couple years…)Report
Will be happy to. Data will probably be limited, though, as it’s going to be Lain’s mattress and so not aggressively tested.Report
My gosh, yes. Rushdie’s work is incredible. I read Haroun and the Sea of Stories to my kids when they were little and they loved it. Midnight’s Children is my fave, but you can’t go wrong with any of them (though The Enchantress of Florence starts verrry slowly).Report
@will-truman Midnight’s Children is one of my very most favorite books. Satanic Verses is one of my very most favorite books. Fury is Yet Another Middle-Aged Famous Guy writing about his relationship with a much younger woman and it was SO ANNOYING even though because it was Rushdie it was written very well indeed on the paragraph to paragraph level.
So, uh, stick to the stuff with overt mythic involvement and you should be fine?Report
Who wants to see pictures of a 30 month old little girl with her new mattress and (more importantly) mattress box?
Here you go.Report
We have air conditioning! Woohoo!!!!!! It was a pretty miserable week until that slight cool spell.
Annoyingly, I specifically asked the guy if he was going to be turning off the power and he said no. But he turned the power off and I had to spend an hour getting my file server back online.
As a practical matter, in the 21st century, you should always ask someone before turning their power off. Even if you think they should know. And obviously, if they specifically ask and you say no, you should let them know if circumstances change.Report
Glad you have air conditioning. I just turned mine on last week, actually, though I’ve turned it back off this week as rain has kept the temperature down.
My graduate adviser, who’d spend some time at Northwestern before Austin, used to joke that the difference between Austin and Chicago is that in Chicago, you turn your air conditioner on when the temperature reaches 80 degrees, while in Austin you set your thermostat to 80.Report
That’s no joke.
I call it practical advice.Report
Girlfriend is away on a girls-only trip. Bachelor Weekend for me.
Bay to Breakers is on Sunday. This is my annual time to be grumpy about bro-dudes and dudettes invading my neighborhood and making a mess of the place.Report
I didn’t know you had a girlfriend to have a bachelor weekend from. Is this new, or have I been out to lunch?
I loves me a good bachelor weekend.Report
@tod-kelly
Our first date was in October. I just don’t talk about it much.
This is going to be a nice and quite weekend.Report
re Gardening:
This is my flax.
The blossoms last for only a day, but they make the most of that short time.
The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet
Though to itself it only live and die
More blossoms every day, more than the last.
And this came from here, from these.
My inspection records at my old office.
One of my favorite pictures.Report
@will-h the flax is beautiful; one of my favorite flowers. (Remember when the arcade game asteroids came out, and it had those incredible blue geometric shapes? Those blue lines were the color of flax blossoms, or so I thought at the time.)
This weekend, <a href="you belong among the wildflowers. You belong somewhere you feel free to harvest wild leeks and study the sacred geometry of ferns.
The links all go to G+ photo albums that I’ve taken over the last few days; my reason for being on the quiet side; it’s beautiful outside here in Maine. We had a long winter, and green has just begun.
Speaking of green monochrome, I’m particularly pleased with the fern shots, something I’ve been working on for years, and always been frustrated with previously.
Ramp pesto is delicious, though I do recommend parboiling the ramp for a couple of minutes.I’m happy that foraging season has begun in earnest; I like eating woodland foods, and I’m putting in my vegetable gardens. I still have to try a rough chop and cold-water soak with a couple of changes of water; this often helps wash the sulphur compounds that make alliums discomforting for some.Report
Damn, I messed up the first link. It’s some of the ephemeral woodland flowers, several jack in the pulpits, a yellow poppy that seems to have naturalized in the location, tiny yellow Canadian violets that wondered if @maribou admired come spring when she was in her own springtime.Report
@zic i used to love violets in the woods, whatever the color, but my favorite were the lady’s slippers (our provincial flower (which I link to for people who aren’t zic since I reckon you’ve seen ’em, being a Mainer.) ). rare then and even rarer now. this was in the days before there were orchids in every grocery store, so it was really startlingly different from most of the other flowers I saw as a kid.
I have a deep fondness for purple vetch, despite it’s being a common ditch weed. and for dandelions. and for lupins, which more or less grow as a field weed in PEI. The latter are probably my most favorite flower to just come across – when I was a sprout, I used to immerse myself in up to above my head and to where I couldn’t see anything BUT lupins and run around in glee.
(As an aside, the other thing we are mostly planting in our garden is forget-me-nots. and we threw some nasturtiums and impatiens in there for kicks. We like to plant things and then see what comes up. and then see what comes back the next year…)Report
I have a thing for dandelions myself, but I eat them.
Not the whole thing– just the roots.
It’s best to gather them after a rain, because you can get the taproot way on down.
I want to try roasting the root to make coffee from, to get away from drinking so much coffee.
Maybe mix it with some chickory, which grows wild around here.
I’m thinking there’s probably some proper ratio of dandelion root to chickory root to coffee grounds, and it’s just waiting form me to find it.
A bit disappointed I didn’t think of the cherry habanero ice cream first, but the dandelion / chickory thing is my baby.Report
I like ramps.
Great in fried potatoes. Probably go good in Spanish rice.
I was thinking of doing a saison flavored with May-apples.
Balance is important on that one.
Note: Briess Special Roast works great in a saison, at a rate of around 0.35 lbs. / gal. It gives it sort of a copper color, but at higher quantities like that, it gives a dry, crisp finish. Fantastic.
I was interested in photography, the black & white stuff, and I was going to take a photography class, but I’ve become interested in film.
Mostly the sort of thing with one character and no dialogue, 3 to 4 minutes.
Either squiggly animation in color, or very dark black & white.
Always looking for something oblique enough to interest me, I suppose.Report
We have a milestone to celebrate this weekend.
Other than some minor credit card debt, we are officially debt free. That feels more freeing than getting to shout stuff on the internets ever will.Report
That’s huge! Congrats!Report
@zic HUZZAHReport
My sister and brother in law are in town, so I’ll be hanging with them pretty much the whole time. Grilling up a mess of lamb tonight, and driving her down to the Oregon campus tomorrow so we can take our oldest boy out to lunch.
I will likely consume more alcohol in the next two days than I do most two week periods.Report
Went to see Mad Max, since all the reviews were good.
If you like action movies, you will like this movie.Report