Weekend Plans Post: The For Real Long Weekend
I tried to remember if we did anything for Memorial Day last year and, nope, we didn’t. We set up the air conditioner.
Oh, and that was the weekend where work had announced that they were slowly but surely going to allow people back into the building. Oh, jeez. That was an eternity ago. We went through a couple of cycles of the building being shut down for any but the most essential of workers and opening up and somebody getting it and the building getting shut back down again.
Well, this weekend is a return to Memorial Day Proper. We’re going over to our friends’ house and we’re going to grill some meat and sit on the porch without masks and talk about cars and high school and how nice it is to be back grilling meat and sitting on the porch and talking about cars and high school.
I know that it’s crazy to still be feeling weird about stuff returning to normal but… man! Stuff returning to normal feels weird! How do you hang with friends, again?
This weekend marks the official transition to summer, I guess. We busted out the hammock today. We’re going to be setting up the air conditioner. We’re going to be doing the summery stuff. Getting ice cream and salad fixin’s when we go to the grocery store.
Oh, my gosh. It feels so weird to be inching back to normal. And inching back to normal For Real, instead of this weird “well, the work still needs to get done” going back to the building to work on stuff. Work is saying that there’s going to be a process for vaccinated people to prove their vaccination status and be maskless when you’re inside. Grocery stores and Costco and Best Buy are loosening up. (Hey, we can go to Target and see if they have any Playstations!)
It just might be a good summer!
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “Arc d Triumphe” by jjmusgrove is licensed under CC BY 2.0)
No exciting Memorial Day plans.
I ordered a home brewing kit, and it is supposed to arrive today, so that might be in the docket for the weekend. It is something I have always wanted to try.
My wife and I will probably start the Dream Eaters campaign for the Arkham Horror Card Game. We got started playing again recently. Now that we are done with our graduate programs, we have more time and brainpower to use.
I also have some yard work to do. I have some things that I need to cut down and get rid of. I was going to do it last week, but they all have thorns, and I could not find my work gloves. Now, I have a new pair.Report
I have two kinds of home brewing friends.
A: The ones who did it once, maybe twice, and now the kit sits in the corner of the garage.
B: The ones who went on to buy one of these and are talking about getting “a real one, next time”.Report
I had a friend who did it pretty regularly back when I was still in Florida. I tend to go all-in on hobbies, so B is a real possibility for me if I enjoy it. Fortunately I have a tolerant/encouraging wife and sufficient disposable income.Report
The city where we live now has more craft breweries per capita than any other place in the US. At least a couple of new ones opened during the pandemic. It’s going to take me years to work my way through them, especially if the seasonal brews are included. Well, not all of the breweries, some of them are specialized into types I don’t care for.
I am not tempted in the slightest to try making my own.Report
Someone was expressing interest in cicadas on one of these threads a few weeks ago. In my area, we’re just starting to see them. Two or three dead bug monsters in the parking lot. This is when you can fool yourself into thinking you’ll get through this without being overwhelmed by disgust. How naive.
But I’d forgotten this part, you can hear them. It’s not the dentist’s drill sound you hear in anime. It’s more like there’s a fleet of 1950’s UFO’s hovering five miles away. A constant, diffused hum.
Intellectually you know what the word “millions” means. It’s something different to experience it.Report
Colorado doesn’t have them (or, at least, NOT YET) but every single report I’ve read of them is awful.Report
Cicadas have fairly specific climate needs. Colorado is too dry for them. The west Denver suburban open forest has plenty of katydids, though. Those aren’t as obnoxiously loud as cicadas and only sing at night.Report
And every word they sing you know is true.Report
Whoosh! Right over the youngsters’ heads.Report
Replacing some carpet padding. It’s mostly dry now, but the padding has got to be replaced and the carpet steam cleaned or else Houston climate will make my hallway a moldy hell.
My AC drain line backed up. Normally that’d just go out the tattletale, I’d notice it, I’d have someone come blow it clean.
Instead, it turns out my spanking new dehumidifer’s drain line wasn’t well sealed. The rising water in the drain pan found the first outlet it could — out the join with the dehumidifer line, into my attic, down a wall, and into my hallway. When i was out of town.
Neither the AC nor the dehumidifer tripped their “stop working, it’s not draining” sensors because it WAS draining. The pan never even filled to the tattletale line.
I’m a little vexed.Report
Oh, jeez. That *SUCKS*.
Good luck over the coming week or so.Report
AC people quietly repaired the problem for free, but I’m out about 300 for paying someone to rip up the carpet, replace the padding, and lay it back down. While I technically can do it myself, I’d prefer to pay someone to do it right — I’d be afraid of ripping or screwing it up and thus not being able to get it to lay down properly
Luckily the carpet is old and I don’t care if it stains. It needed to be replaced years ago, but unfortunately it’s not a priority.
On the bright side, I’ll get a good look at what the floor underneath looks like. It’s supposed to be hardwood. I can get some pics of it when the carpet and padding is up and get some estimates on slowly stripping out the carpeted area over the next few years and refinishing the wood.
Hallway is where I’d start anyways with that.
Shorter version: Could have been MUCH worse. At least it was someplace I noticed when I came home, and not say — in a closet in a room we don’t use, where it could have flooded so much more before it was noticed.Report
Going to Kansas this weekend to visit Dad. We were going to leave today, but my nephew’s high school graduation was this morning and oldest boy’s final test for his GED is this afternoon. I had previously offered him $100 if he could get his GED before I could get my RHCSA (a really, REALLY low bar to clear) but that didn’t seem to be enough motivation. What did it was him landing a job, his hiring being conditional on his getting his GED.
He will have taken all four tests this week and knocked it out, which leaves me again wondering why he didn’t just do this much, much earlier and get it out of the way? Kids, man.Report
I was out of the Diet Pepsi that I like and Maribou was out of the seltzer that she likes.
This is the first grocery trip in more than a year that involved me taking multiple 12 packs up the stairs into the house.
There are a lot of things that I hated over the last year, but I did not truly appreciate grocery delivery until today.Report
It’s the other way around for me. I’ve been having far more meals at home, so I’ve been lugging 12-packs of beverage into my place all the time.Report
Oh, we’ve still been drinking it!
It’s just that someone else did the job of taking them up the stairs.Report