Weekend Plans Post: Almost A Return To Normalcy

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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49 Responses

  1. Maribou says:

    Normal, normal, normal will be great. Good to be home though.Report

  2. DensityDuck says:

    Kitty! <3

    Our blueberries are coming in, and there's a lot of pickin'. There is also a flock of turkeys with two young ones who patrol for bugs and fallen berries. Sometimes they get greedy and start hopping up to take berries off the bush, which prompts my wife to go out on the deck and scold them.

    The other pest are the squirrels, who leap from trees directly into the top of the bush and take exactly one bite each out of a dozen or so blueberries. Those get the arrows (foam-headed Nerf-knockoff things from a bungee-cord slingshot affair, specifically chosen to give a forceful but non-injuring bop.)Report

  3. fillyjonk says:

    Same as it ever was here. (I wonder if I will reach a point where I think maybe the before-times were a dream or an imagining; I remember as a kid being on interminable car trips – it was a 14 hour drive to my maternal grandmother’s and my parents would try to make it in a day – I used to think about “what if sitting in a car forever is the real reality, and the times when we were at home or at Grandma’s were just dreaming?”)

    I had a bad knee sprain last week, no idea how I did it but Monday it was bad enough I moved up my six-months checkup by a bit so I could let my doctor look at it and tell me if she thought I needed an MRI or x-rays or something. Turns out it was just a sprain and is almost better now, so maybe tomorrow will be okay for me to mow the lawn

    Not doing much else. Dreading the logistics of us trying to re-open in person this fall – if we even do. The worst thing about this thing for me is the Schroedinger’s Box quality of it – I have to prepare for “in person with distancing” but also “all online” because I may literally not know until the Friday before the Monday classes start.

    Even though I recognize I am in a privileged position compared to many people (farm workers, grocery employees, ER nurses), this still feels very much like Life On Hard Mode.

    Also, not having any real fun, because the stuff I did for fun (other than sitting watching re-runs of Parks and Recreation and knitting) is either cancelled or is currently not sufficiently “safe” (at least in my mind) to do.

    I hope I don’t have to grimly “hang on” too much longer, but I fear it will be quite a while longer.

    Monday is the one-year anniversary of my dad’s death; if my knee is still okay I will be going up to a Recreation Area about an hour from my house; it was a place he liked to go when he’d come to visit. I feel like I should do something to mark the day even if Protestant Christianity (my tradition) is very weak on that kind of thing.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to fillyjonk says:

      When I was a kid, we’d sometimes drive from Canton, Michigan to Muskeegon, Michigan to spend a few weeks at Lake Michigan in the summer.

      It was 3 hours. THIS WAS INTERMINABLE. My parents did a good job of buying us special toys that we weren’t allowed to play with unless we were in the middle of the 3 hour car ride. We got special books (that ended for my sister who proved vulnerable to the whole “reading in the car == barfing” thing). We got a Speak and Spell.

      I went back a few years back and spent a week in Michigan and my cousin mentioned that his father-in-law was doing a War Reenactment (Revolutionary) in Grand Rapids and if I wanted to go. HECK YEAH I DO!

      Grand Rapids is about a half hour away from Muskeegon. We made the drive from Chelsea like it was nothing. It was nuts. This ocean of time turned into a few dozen songs on the radio and an argument over hockey and then it was over.

      I hope you can get up to the Rec Area. Eat something and remember. That’d be good for you.Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

        One of the things that struck me most profoundly in Road To Wigan Pier was when Orwell described the mental life of the bums he hung around with during that time–or, rather, the lack of such life. And he wasn’t judging them, he was matter-of-fact about the way that they lacked any sort of education or enrichment and how their idea of the good life was drink and junk food, and if you gave them more money all they’d do with it was spend it on drink and junk food because they literally didn’t know any better. They didn’t even know what opera was, let alone have one they’d want to go see if you gave them money for a ticket.

        And you commenting about “long rides were forever when you were a kid, long rides are nothing when you’re an adult” makes me think of that, because most adults have so much more in their heads than kids. You know about all the different kinds of music to listen to, you know enough about hockey to have a strong opinion about it (and enough of rhetoric and argument to discuss and defend that opinion), you can look out the window and see something and relate it to your own life experience or to things you’ve learned about. You can pull things out of your head and turn them into worlds to fill an empty void.

        And that’s why schooling matters, why it’s important, because that’s how you get that stuff. Creativity is the force that grows trees, but without soil and seed that force goes nowhere.Report

  4. Aaron David says:

    The wife was going to take a four-day-get-out-of-Dodge last weekend stretching into this week, but being that she is at the point of her career that there really isn’t a way to have an unbroken string of time off (dept. heads are so needy) that the last two days got canceled and my batching was foreshortened. So, she is attempting to do it again in a few weeks but nothing is on tap for this weekend as far as I can tell.Report

  5. Pinky says:

    You meant “much garlic”, right? The “too” at the beginning of the phrase was a typo?

    The weather finally broke after two horrible weeks of heat. I was able to briefly emerge from my air conditioning and venture out a little, but like a bizarro groundhog I could sense six more weeks of summer. Maybe Saturday will be comfortable enough for a walk in the park, and Sunday I’ve got reservations for Mass.

    General question: what do people do for vacation? I can’t go visit relatives, I don’t want to go out among the great unmasked, but I’d like to go somewhere for a change of pace. Ideas?Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Pinky says:

      There are Minnesotan types, not naming names, who think that garlic can make a dish “spicy”. A little bit is enough and more than that is excessive, apparently.

      I think it has to do when the food is introduced to the child.Report

    • InMD in reply to Pinky says:

      How rustic are you? If you’re looking to stay local-ish there’s good camping and not-totally-primitive cabins out in Green Ridge State forest. Decent hiking on the Potomac and an outdoor shooting range if that’s your thing. You’ll see people out there but not a resort or anything. Probably not worth a whole week but it’s a good weekend trip I do often.Report

      • Pinky in reply to InMD says:

        I’ve got a lot of trails that are close enough for a day trip. Weather permitting, I need to take advantage of them more often. I’m probably just going through cabin fever because of the heat. I think once it drops a few more degrees and I can get out there, I won’t feel the need for a trip.

        I also like hanging out at the beach towns off-season. No crowds, great scenery.Report

        • InMD in reply to Pinky says:

          I’m the same way on the beach towns. Offseason is good but the thought of going out there right now makes me need a xanax or a stiff drink. A buddy of mine was in Bethany last weekend though and said it wasn’t too bad. I still have no inclination to go find out for myself.Report

    • jason in reply to Pinky says:

      Do you like camping? Maybe an Air Bnb in a rural area and some road tripping in scenic country? That seems like a good vacation for these times. My wife and I are doing a mini-vacay at her family’s cabin next weekend and early next week–a few days without the weekend crowd will be nice.
      Edit: I posted this before I saw InMD’s post.Report

  6. Doctor Jay says:

    I have managed to turn two weekly gatherings into cyberspace gatherings. One uses roll20.com, the other uses TableTop Simulator. Both add voice chat from a different source.

    This has helped a lot, though there are still things I miss, especially my martial arts, which violates every rule of staying safe, at least the way we do it.

    Lately I’ve been playing Satisfactory (which just made it to Steam), and I’m doing a multiplayer with a friend.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Doctor Jay says:

      How pricey is roll20? I did some light research and it struck me as a “give away the razor, sell the blades” website.Report

      • Doctor Jay in reply to Jaybird says:

        I have not spent a dime on it. And I’ve run an entire 5e campaign on it, with a DIY mentality. I maybe paid someone a bit for maps, but it was the map creator I paid, not Roll20. And I dig around/make tokens myself.

        Yeah, they sell stuff through their store and sell a premium version, too. My daughter got the premium version, and she is running us in some L5R, using lighting effects and so on. But it doesn’t cost us a thing to have those things as players.

        The premium version, though, is also not that pricy. Twenty bucks, I think?Report

      • North in reply to Jaybird says:

        I use roll20, The basics are all free: A diceroller, communal chat function, simple markers, interactive communal online map with draw and edit functions, communal journals and information storage, even character sheets online which are clunky but acceptable. The voice function is not good, you’re better off muting it and just using discord.
        The stuff you pay for is fancy map stuff, fancy markers and other spruced up stuff. But if you are looking to be able to play an RPG online and have online tools to provide the visual queues that you’d normally have in person then you can get them without paying a dime.

        Over all, pretty damned good service for its price (free).Report

  7. Slade the Leveller says:

    I remember the plot description for the Omega Man from the newspaper TV guide (remember those) as “Charleton Heston stars as the last man on earth, with an unlimited supply of bullets and Scotch.” It was a fun move that let him chew up a little scenery.

    As for this weekend, hoping to finish an Adirondack chair I’ve been working on for my sister. I’m completely not enamored of the plan, so it’s going to be a one of a kind. It’s #21 on this list: https://adirondackchairfactory.com/adirondack-chair-plans/Report

  8. North says:

    No big plans. But on the big plus side the Dish is back! It’s weekly now instead of daily but it still feels very similar. I am chuffed!
    https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribeReport

  9. Jaybird says:

    By George, I think I’ve got it.

    Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

      That looks like a pizza with something for everyone!

      We did a pizza and made our own crust this weekend, and my goodness, that solved ALL the problems we’d been having. We had been buying dough-balls from the store and using those, and they never quite worked right — they wouldn’t hold the shape, they wouldn’t spread, they never baked properly.

      The thing that made it perfect was that we used our bread-maker to work the dough. It took about 90 minutes to do it, but if we’d tried to thaw a frozen dough-ball it would’ve taken about that long anyway; and it was so easy to just throw the ingredients in the thing, push the button, and then go watch the sun set over the blueberry field for an hour and a half.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck says:

        One thing that I found:

        I got my first pizza dough ball from Whole Foods. $2.99. This sounds cheap until you remember that it’s four ingredients. I suppose it’s made by artisans and that’s what you’re paying for… anyway, my pizzas turned out delightfully. I was proud of them and proud to show them off.

        While at Safeway, I noticed that they also had pizza dough available. $1.99. Now we’re talking! I got it home and got it on the bread board to rise for an hour and I came back and, instead of rising, it flattened like a blobfish. It was more pancake than ball. This pizza was disappointing. Had I started here, I’d never have been inspired to show off my pizzas and wouldn’t have been inspired to make the post that resulted in my deciding to get a pizza stone and kicking my B+ pizzas into the realm of the As.

        All that to say: If you’ve been getting bad dough balls, then that can completely wreck everything.

        A breadmaker! I haven’t used mine since 2006!

        I probably still won’t use mine, but that’s a great idea.Report

        • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

          We never did try it before this weekend because we usually had a dough ball ready, and it was on a whim that we did this time. The only issue is that you need to decide at like five PM that you’ll want to eat pizza in two hours, which usually we don’t do…Report

          • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck says:

            The Whole Foods dough balls tell you that you’re either making pizza tonight or you’re making it tomorrow. MMMMMMMMMAYBE the day after. But, after that? Forget it.

            So you won’t be deciding this at 5PM. You decided it already.Report

  10. Damon says:

    finally heading back to the gym. Have to drill with a dummy and class size is limited but it’s a start.Report

  11. Michael Cain says:

    Back in Colorado after my Mom’s funeral. Remarks in order of importance…

    My sister did an amazing job of organizing and running things under current conditions.

    How did I live for those years outside Omaha in the summer heat and humidity?

    I made a point to tell my children that if they are the stuckees organizing any sort of funeral for me, my wishes on the matter are BBQ, craft beer, and 70s pop music. The only speeches allowed are humorous stories about me, preferably humorous at my expense.Report

  12. PROFESSOR ESPERANTO says:

    If I can get 25 hours of overtime done by 7/30/2020, I will be paid double time.

    I worked 13 hours this weekend. Four hours last Thursday. The coming Tuesday and Thursday will have four hours of overtime. I will submit my stuff and hope they do come through rather than argue if I wasn’t playing right.

    So far my employer’s been kind, but I remain wary like a feral shelter cat who hasn’t been around good humans enough in life.

    I’m listening to Jeff Lynn sing “Telephone Line” on repeat for the past two hours. Also today is Esperanto Day, the day when Unua Libro was first published back in the 19th century. I’m only tweeting in Esperanto.Report