Weekend Plans Post: The Last Potentially Normal Weekend
We hit Costco and Petsmart last week and have enough stuff to make it so that we won’t NEED to go back there this weekend… but, of course, Christmas is coming. So it’s not like I’ll have to return there for Hecho en Mexico Coca-Cola or a couple cases of bottled water, but I realized that the CEO of my company needs a Christmas present and I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO GET HIM. And he’s teetotal.
In the past, I found out one of his hobbies and bought him books pertaining to the hobby and, in 2016, it was a clank. In 2017, it was a bigger clank. In 2018, I FOUND THE RIGHT ONE AND HIT IT OUT OF THE PARK. He shared it with everybody in the office. His wife came up to me at the Christmas Party and said that that was an awesome book and she thanked me for giving it to him.
And I know that I won’t be able to do that again.
So I’m going back to Costco and picking up this screwdriver set. (I have yet to meet a business owner who wouldn’t be delighted by a screwdriver set.)
So, all that to say, I found another reason to go to Costco this weekend. Dang it. I was hoping that it’d be the last weekend where I didn’t have to do anything before all of the weekends in a row where we will have to do things.
I mean, I shouldn’t complain. It’s a blessing to have people to buy presents for and it’s a blessing to have people that want to share 3-4 hours with you enjoying a quality meal with quality appetizers and quality glasses of wine and having quality conversations about how, seriously, where does the time go and we need to do this more often.
Which is also what’s happening this weekend. Friends that we love very much and live a couple of hours away are driving to meet us halfway and we’re going to enjoy a fine dinner at a fine establishment in Castle Rock. And we love them very much and, seriously, we should do this more often and how is it December already! (We last saw them in August.)
As such, it’s a full weekend, full of chores and Found Family and places to go and people to see. But, if you have the opportunity to do nothing this weekend, TAKE IT. It’s your last shot before the frenzy starts.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “Castle Rock, Colorado” by Jeffrey Beall . Used under a creative commons license.)
Graduation is tomorrow. We’re expected to go – we have to formally request to be absent. Like any odd rule, there is an odd backstory to this: allegedly many years ago (before I started working here) some graduation so few faculty showed up the admins were embarrassed, and so now we’re all expected to go unless we have an excuse. (I do not think anything would happen if a person woke up sick the morning of graduation and just skipped though. Then again, a colleague of mine has shown up *distinctly* hung over to graduation, which….that’s dedication, because it’s indoors with loudspeakers and some idiots with air horns).
I also need to pack and generally ready for traveling for Christmas; I leave on Monday for a bit over 2 weeks at my mom’s. Part of the plan is to do some further clearing out (I can see now my dad was the real packrat in the family) but also do Christmas stuff. And for me, decompress from the semester.
This was a very hard semester both in terms of work (four classes is no joke) and personal stuff (dealing not just with my dad’s death but with the loss of two separate friends in separate car wrecks). I do have to drag along the stuff for Advanced Biostats and review the various flavors of general linear models and teach myself a little Bayesian stuff. But I also NEED to relax, and so another thing this weekend is going to be planning what knitting projects to take, and if needed, printing off the patterns/winding off the yarn for those.
There’s also stuff at church and I guess I have to make food for a party Sunday night. But I’m just kind of peopled out and would like to be somewhere quiet and where I can mostly be taken care of for a change…Report
Aside from my usual weekend time of Getting Out of My Wifes Hair (she is any only child who grew up in the country, and thus like a fair bit of alone time), I will be doing much to prep the house for the coming X-mas. We will be having guests, so I have to make sure the spare bedroom is good, porch swept, pictures hung, etc.
And plotting to take over the world.Report