Weekend!
Speaking to a co-worker today, he mentioned that he was absolutely dreading Autumn being around the corner. He only went out on his bike for a couple of hours, he only went on one or two hikes, he hadn’t gone camping yet at all, and there are only but so many weekends left.
I, on the other hand, am antsy in the pantsy to bust out the fuzzy pants and fuzzy hoodies and fuzzy socks and spend an evening under a fuzzy blanket with the fuzzy cats taking fuzzy naps on the couch. Cooking in the crockpot. Making hot chocolate. Snuggling because you are cold and not merely because you haven’t snuggled for a while.
It’s probably better to try to grab more summer moments than to think “jeez! I can’t believe it’s *STILL* August and it’s practically a hunert degrees!”
I know that in my heart but, jeez. When it’s practically a hunert degrees, it’s so very difficult to do anything else at all. Running in that? Fuggitabowdit. At least Colorado doesn’t regularly achieve the 90% humidity that Michigan was capable of. That was “take a shower and use a damp towel to go from sopping wet to damp again” humidity.
Anyway, his complaints also made me think about what *I* haven’t gotten done yet this summer and I’m pleased to say that I’ve done most of it. I’ve transitioned from walking a mile to jogging half a mile and walking half a mile (and, occasionally, jogging/walking more than that in a single session) and rock climbing at the rock gym (which *STILL* breaks my brain… but I let go from a wall that was leaning back for the first time. So I’ve got that going for me.)
As such, this weekend will be devoted to the usual chores, errands, and catching up on stuff we didn’t get done during the rest of the week. Except, this weekend, we’ve got gaming as well. Sit down at a table and throw some dice around, drink some diet root beer, and cheat on the diet a little bit. Heck, the only thing I’d want to do on top of that is maybe get around to seeing a movie at some point. We’ll see how Sunday goes. Sometimes you think “we should see a movie!” and then, next thing you know, it’s 8PM on a Sunday and you’re thinking “I don’t regret not leaving the house today.”
So my Summer bucket list is looking pretty good.
So… what haven’t you accomplished yet this summer that you seriously wanted to by now?
(Image is “Play” by Clare Briggs. Used with permission of the Briggs estate.)
It’s hot and humid in the summer where I live in the mid atlantic. I hate it.I spend most of the time indoors. When/if I hike, it’s at 6am before the heat and humidity really kick in.
I have company coming in so cleaning the house. One day will be solely devoted to jujitsu and kickboxing…and the recovery from that. Maybe I’ll make some tasty tandoori pork.Report
I signed papers for a new house yesterday.
I get keys to a new house Monday.
Kinda tells you about my weekend. (Also have my wife’s best friend from high school coming to visit. She did a half triathlon in BC the other day and is coming back down.)Report
Oh, dude. Packing. That’s the worst thing ever.
Unless you’re moving from an apartment into a house, in which case it’s the best thing ever.
But if it’s from a house to a house? Dude.Report
Congrats on the new digs!Report
X-wing team tourney tomorrow. Laundry/cleaning on Sunday. I may have to mow the lawn; we’ve had a really wet summer (for Colorado), and while it’s been nice not having to run the sprinklers as much, it’s not so nice having to mow so frequently. I’ve had to mow the weeds twice (usually that’s a once a summer chore).Report
By the ‘mow the weeds’ do you mean to use a weed-whacker of some sort on them? My wife and I have been debating the verbiage on that. I grew up calling the tool a weed-eater based on the brand name of the original product. But it sounds weird to say, “Honey, I’m going to go weed-eat the backyard.” But it I say, ‘I’m going to go trim the weeds,” she thinks I mean to reduce them with some kind of pruning shears. Any suggestions from anyone on how best to describe this?Report
For years I’ve told my wife that I was going out to abuse the grass…Report
Nope. I use the lawn mower. We had our house built in a suburb (Pueblo West), and since we’re basically living in a high desert, we don’t grow grass in the front. We have some trees and shrubs planted but no grass. Most years, I can mow the weeds that come up early in the summer, and then the heat and the dryness of July/August prevents any further growth. That almost happened this year, but we’ve had several weeks of cool and wet weather. For August, it’s awful green around here; usually, the prairie is fairly brown by now.Report
I’d kill for no grass in the front yard. But alas, it’s Kentucky and we live in the suburbs. If you don’t have an 1/8 acre of fescue in front of your house, people think you’re a serial killer.Report
I grew up in Clarksville and Jeffersonville right across the Ohio, so I get it. We didn’t really have to water the grass there. It’s pretty normal to not have much grass where I’m at. The mowed weeds and native grasses and plants don’t look bad. And I would just say “weed-whacking” to answer your original question.Report
Jason – we’re practically cousins then! Although that makes you a Hoosier, so grrrrr.Report
Yes, but I was never a cats fan; always the cards for me. I tell people here that we looked at cats fans the way people in CO look at Raiders fans.
And I tease people about how most of the good pictures of the Louisville skyline are taken in Indiana.
And I read in another post that at one time you worked at Locust Grove. I went there on a fourth grade field trip. #smallworldReport
If you hate the Cats, I’ll forgive you being from Indiana.
I do miss Locust Grove. Great site.Report
And Kentucky makes great bourbon, so I’m okay with the Hoosier hate.Report
Just reduce it to weeding. “I’ll be weeding!” Simple is always better.Report
Unfortunately, in the parlance of our region, weeding means I’m on my hands & knees pulling weeds from flower beds. We don’t use that to describe what you do with a machine. That’s why I’ve been searching for an effective verb.Report
…we’ve had a really wet summer (for Colorado)…
I’ve followed Denver Water’s storage reports for years. This past week is the fourth week in a row that the reservoir system’s overall level has been 100% full. Never seen that before.Report
As I said above, I’m amazed at how green everything is, in AUGUST!!! I hope this means a cool fall.Report
That didn’t happen… what? 3 years ago? When it rained every freaking day for 4 months?Report
Yes, but it was a bit different. The rains mostly stopped by the end of June and we got the heat in July and August.Report
We had to deal with problems all over the city that year. Manitou flooded and all that stuff.
AND STILL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT SAID THAT FIRE RISK WAS HIGHReport
Given the amount of overgrown and beetle-killed timber in Colorado, we’ve about reached the point of permanent high fire risk.Report
Well, they shot themselves in the foot by not giving them a setting to distinguish between “record-setting water-saturated ground” and “2008”.Report
Let’s see…
(a) Precipitation patters can be quite different depending on whether you’re north or south of the Palmer Divide. I can recall multiple summers where we went a few weeks with nary a sprinkle, but I could see the big thunderstorms 60 miles south of us almost every day. Also, the details of where the southern Great Plains summer high pressure sets up can affect where the monsoon flows, or not.
(b) Denver Water’s done quite a bit of maintenance over the last decade, where one or more reservoirs each year were kept empty or well below full, in order to allow concrete work.
(c) This was the first big snow pack year since DW brought their downstream reservoirs on line. Those seem to be doing their job well — allowing DW to meet senior water calls farther down the Platte out of the surplus they collected in the spring rather than having to draw from the supply reservoirs upstream.Report
A. Yes. There’s a noticeable temp and precipitation difference between Pueblo and Springs, even. The reservoir here in Pueblo often messes with the weather and we see fronts either drift north or south of us.Report
My son’s girlfriend is a climatologist specializing in the North American Monsoon. She says that modeling the effects is an incredibly difficult problem involving a mix of scales ranging from near-continental down to a couple thousand feet.Report
@michael-cain
I just have to say reading you discuss things like the Palmer Divide offhandedly is one of the things I’ve come to most appreciate about this site. It represents both a subject matter and regional specificity that are just foreign to me but seem like a second language to you. I imagine I might sound the same way if I was giving you public transit directions to navigate the NY Metro area… but somehow that feels so much less… interesting.
ETA: My 5 minute shallow dive in the topic already has been scanning Google maps to find the Black Forest.Report
Kazzy,
Manhattanhenge would make a better parallel.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/science/manhattanhenge.html
Of course, becasue it’s NY-fucking- city, it gets an article in the Times.Report
For the first time in I’ve lost count how many weeks, I’m staying home on the weekend.
The rest of the fambly are going to visit Mr. T’s dad, but I opted out as I’ve been feeling a bit run off my feet, weekend-wise.
I will probably do a bit of tidying up, a bit of yard work. If I get ambitious maybe I’ll get a bunch of mulch and start assassinating the lawn.Report
Spending the weekend at the lake.
Woods thick enough it’s cool almost all the time.
It can rain, and you don’t get wet on the ground. Just a drip here & there.
You hear the wind come rushing in about 12 seconds or so before you feel the breeze from it.
Saw a turkey crossing the road yesterday.
Found a pheasant feather along a deer trail too. Nesting must be better this year.Report
Yes, heat and humidity is the worst. We had a string of v. hot days earlier this summer, right now it’s moderated a bit but it’s still hotter than my Ohio-raised self likes.
I don’t like August because it’s back to school, and yet, it doesn’t feel RIGHT for back to school, because it’s still so hot out. We have like two weeks before Labor day….I remember when I was a kid, school started right around Labor Day (and that was in Ohio, a cooler climate).
I have no plans for the weekend. I have no plans for next weekend, or the one after that. I am building up a cushion of rest-time before classes start (I am teaching four classes, including one I have NEVER TAUGHT BEFORE and that is slightly outside of my wheelhouse). So I figure I better rest up before everything starts going nonlinear, as it often does at the start of a new semester.Report
When the PNW summer finally hit full strength, I turned my workout routine up from “compulsive” to “ruinous” with the intent of losing five pounds. Which happened, surprisingly quickly. Went so well that I said, “Me, you can go on to another five”. Of those five, two actually happened before I bounced as hard as a person born in 1990 reading 1950s SF. I’m currently ruining my ankles and hip flexors just to maintain.Report
Oh, one of the things that is driving this… I’m playing on my company softball team – not hardcore, but we still like to be competitive, all things equal. The dude ahead of me as a middle infielder (it’s coed, so you have to be tactical with distributing men vs. women) actually played college baseball five years ago, while I was a level below that, 25 years ago…Report
@el-muneco
What does a “ruinous” routine look like?Report
Heh. Here’s where I show what a lightweight I really am…
Column A: Literal grocery run. 3 miles, moderately hilly by PNW standards, second half carrying 6-8 pounds in each hand (second half is mostly downhill). I have routes to stretch it to 4 miles, but it mostly gets a lot hillier.
Column B: My old off-day workout. A linear combination of (light – stretching + balance + foam roller) & (medium – light weight upper body + core) & (high – calisthenics leaning toward lunges, pushups and body-weight squats). Balance between sections depends on how my lower body is feeling.
Every day, do two things.
A typical week might go:
Sun: Soccer game + B (more stretching, less lower body)
Mon: A + B
Tue: Softball game + A + extra stretching
Wed: B + B (the less B I do, the more recovery time needed before soccer)
Thu: A + B
Fri: A + B
Sat: Hour of soft-toss + A + B
In the winter, B and A will swap. And softball will become something else. I always try to do something besides pure running, which is why there’s no A+A.
Not exactly brutal in an absolute sense, but it’s about half again as much as I did ten years ago.Report
Brutal exercise routine:
14 miles. 3.5 mph. 10% grade. One day.
That’s doing more than 5,000 feet vertical.
Docs say he has to do this or he’ll die.Report
For them who come here for the rock climbing stories, there’s only one minor update alluded to above.
I climbed a wall that leaned back instead of a wall that leaned forward. What I knew with my head but not with my heart when I started climbing was what happens when you let go of a wall that leans back and you’re hanging from a rope tied somewhere near the top of the wall. That’s right, you swing away from the wall entirely and you’re out there in the middle of nowhere.
I grabbed the rope with both hands and my brain told my arms “you can loosen up, the rope is firmly attached to your harness” but my arms failed secure and would not reset until my feet were on the ground.
So my arms are killing me today.Report
I leave today for a week on the north shore of MA with my family and the boys. It is a small, sleepy New England town with crazy history… most of the homes and building in one part of town date back to the pre-Revolution days and some famous painting called The Spirit of 76 is housed there.
My family has been going since I was 12. I peeled off probably around 17. Eww… what 17-year-old wants to spend ANY time in a sleepy New England town with crazy history? NOT THIS ONE!
My mom invited me and the boys last year. “Eww,” I thought. Then I remembered I wasn’t a 17-year-old but an almost 33-year-old with children and traveling with the family meant someone ELSE would take the boys on morning walks or stay back at night when I went out for a beer and that dinner would mean wine and adult conversation.
So, yea, off we go for the second year in a row! Funny how growing up works.Report
When I was 11, my father had to give a paper in Germany. I was super excited, could not wait, all that jazz. My brother, 13 at the time, got out of going. Right at that age when you don’t want to spend time with family. Boy, does he regret that now.Report
Heh. For 13-yo me, that was a bus trip from Guadalajara to Mexico City. And I didn’t get out of it. For which I’ll always be grateful.Report
So, the other night I stubbed my toe. And then stubbed it again, 30 minutes later. Yesterday, I woke up, could barely walk, it had started to turn very purple and swollen to twice the size of the matching toe. But, I had business about an hour north and no time to really think about it.
So, when my wife got home last night, I mention “I think I might have broken it” she looked at me like I had grown a third head. “Did you think to go to the doctor?”
“I was waiting to see what you think…”
Uncomprehending stare.
At the doctors, I found out I have come down with middle age spread. 20 pounds of it. So, as soon as the toe heals (not broken) much heavier biking for me.Report
A few years ago, I got undercut going up for a header in soccer and managed to twist to save my collarbone, but landed on my tailbone. I went in to see my doctor and he was basically “Yep. It’s broken. We can’t do anything about it. Here’s your chair donut.”
Some things even modern medicine really can’t help with.Report
Years ago I was working with a millwright in Los Angeles who had an unusual soccer injury. The other millwrights would holler “Show ’em your scar!”, so one day at lunch he explained what they were talking about.
“Like, I’m a really fit guy, right? I work out and play a lot of soccer.
So one day after a game me and my two buddies went to take down the nets. They both went to one goal and I went to the other. So, I’m there in my soccer shorts jumping as high as I can to get the top of the net off the hook, and as I slid down the pole the other hook got me right through the ball sack, hanging me there with blood pouring down my legs, and both feet at least a foot from the ground.
So I wrapped my arms around the pole to try and pull myself up, but I couldn’t unclench my hands to grab it. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t do anything, so I just bent backwards and, upside down, saw my two friends coming back with the other net. When they got about to the center of the field they saw what was going on and came running, saying “We’ll get you down!”
So my buddy runs up, grabs me, and tries to lift me off the hook. But he grabbed too high and couldn’t get me clear, so he had to let me back down on it. I think that’s why the scar is a ‘Z’. I wasn’t going to let them try again, so they called the ambulance and the ambulance guys came and got me down. They put me on a stretcher and raced to the hospital. As they were wheeling me into the ER, the driver said “Son, I’ve picked up accident victims, shooting victims, stroke victims, and heart attack victims, and you’re the first one I’ve ever prayed for.”
So they sewed me up and sent me home, and told me to keep the stitches dry and come back in two weeks. So I go back in two weeks and the doctor has me get up on the examining table, and he bends over to check and goes “Pewwww!!!!” I said, “You said to keep ’em dry!” He said “Well wash ’em!” Anyway, he took the stitches out but a ball sack heals real slow, so for months it was still kind of open. My wife called it my “change purse”. Anyway, that’s the story about my scar.”Report
Aaron,
8hours sitting in a car to get home to the doctor. (sprained ankle) — this after climbing down 1000 feet.
Doctor was convinced I’d broke it (my husband knew better, of course, his hands are magic).
Entire foot was swollen blue and triple the size it normally was, by the time the doc saw it.Report
I had surrobaby yesterday after 24 hours of drama. This weekend I rest mostly at the hospital. Next week I start my life again without my little belly buddy. Oh the hormones!Report
Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh!
Congratulations! And I’m sorry? I think?
I don’t know what the appropriate thing to say would be.Report
Thank you!
I don’t know whay to say either. I’ve never been so happy and sad at the same time. It’s such a rollercoaster but I wouldn’t change it for the world.Report
I spent the morning on the screened in porch, coffee in hand, overhead fans whirring above me, reading the last few chapters of Norwegian Wood. Now I’m off to do some laundry, clean out cat boxes, and other mundane chores. The Russian is in the kitchen cooking up a big batch of soup and other stuff for the week for his parents. The heat and humidity of a couple of weeks ago has broken somewhat. It’s in the 80s and relatively dry, and has begun cooling down rather nicely at night.
Tomorrow–yoga, an open house, and maybe giving the dog a much needed bath.Report
Our list of things to accomplish before summer is over:
– One more pickle canning session (Mom has requested more bread & butter)
– State Fair!
– Swimming – I haven’t been in a pool all summer. It’s embarrassing.
– Battle of the Lawn 3 – Need to spray again. Still determined to get rid of the weeds in the front yard.Report