5 posts tagged “weekend”

Yeah, I know, it's Wednesday and I'm just now getting around to writing about the weekend. I've been busy. In fact, I really don't have time to write much right now, so this'll just be a quick recap of the highlights.

Saturday is swim lesson day. While we were there, we ran into some acquaintances from swim and t-ball last spring, and got to chatting with them about the kids (their girl is a year older than M, and they have a 10 year old boy). Come to find out that R is in kindergarten at the same school M will go to in the fall. She'll have a buddy at her new school! We're all very excited by this, as hopefully it'll make the transition easier. We'll see.

Saturday also brought a renewed interest in her Big Girl Bike. Yes, the bike we bought for her birthday last year, and which she's ridden a total of .. once. Well, Saturday Rae was able to convince M to give the bike a try this spring, since she's grown so much in a year. She did, and the two spent an hour (or more?) ridding around the neighborhood, back and forth. She loved it, and it's all she's wanted to do since.

Saturday was also the first grill of the season, and I grilled a serloin while Pop sauteed some huge sea scallops and asparagus. Top it off with some olive oil and rosemarry bread and a great red wine, and it was a lovely dinner. Great way to start grill season.

Sunday, after lunch, we took M to Grant's Trail so she could continue to ride her bike and we could have some more interesting scenery than just walking back and forth in the neighborhood. We walked while M rode, and we covered 2.5 miles in about 90 minutes. It was a lot of fun, she learned the rules of the trail, stayed in her lane, moved over when it got crowded and pedaled the entire 2.5 miles. We stopped to look at the Clydesdales at Grant's Farm Stables, and even took a pitstop to hunt for four-leaf-clovers. We had one minor mishap as she was watching some birds instead of where she was going, and went off the trail and down in the culvert, which Rae stopped her from falling, but got her ankle banged up in the process. Rae's ok, just bruised, and M learned the lesson that when you're riding your bike, you can't be doing other things.

Monday was more bike riding in the neighborhood while I grilled porkchops and Rae made asparagus and a rice dish. After dinner there was more playing in the neighborhood and we got to visit with a younger couple that have a 2 year old who live just two houses down. It was a great visit, and M even gave the little girl her tricycle (because she's all about the Big Girl Bike now, y'know). Yesterday was playing with the older neighborhood girls while I grilled burgers and sweet potato fries, with fresh salad and excellent rootbeer (a new one we'd never had before - very spicey and rooty!). Can you tell we've been waiting for the weather to get nice again!?

Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Well, for the past long long while we've had a drip in the faucet in the tub.  I'd finally had enough of it keeping me up at night, so last Monday, on my day off, I tried to tackle the leak. I know enough DIY plumbing that I knew I needed to remove the stem of each knob and replace the washer at the back of the stem.  Thing was, when I took the knobs off, and removed a few more bits, I didn't see the sort of stem I expected to see. Simply, there wasn't a nut in the middle of the stem to turn the stem out.  So I put it all back together and went to see Coraline in 3D.

Today, I thought I'd tackle it again since I had half a day of good daylight to see in the bathroom.  After we all went to the bathroom for the last time and I turned off the water, I pulled the knobs off again and got to where I was on Monday.  I got a little braver and scraped some stuff off around the pipe of one knob, and even got in from behind through the wall behind the fridge in the kitchen (there was already a hatch cut into the wall to see the plumbing).  Still stumped, I took some pictures and printed them off and took them to my Ace Hardware around the corner.

Joe, the old guy at Ace took a look at the pictures, listened to what I thought I was seeing, then had a pretty good idea of what was going on.  Funny thing was he'd never seen a faucet/knob quite like I was describing, and what the pictures were showing.  He said, "You know what I'd do if I was you?" To which I replied, "Call a plumber?" He laughed, said no, I didn't need a plumber and he was confident I could tackle this.  He explained to me why he thought I wasn't seeing the sort of thing I expected, and told me exactly what to do to get it off.  I ran back home, did exactly as he said, and there it was, suddenly I had a knob stem in my hand.  It looked and operated exactly as he said it would, and I ran back to Ace (thankfully it's only 2 minutes away) and showed him what I had.  He got me set up with some washers and plumber's grease (to make taking out the 54-year old stems easier the next time I have to), and I was back home in 10 minutes and taking care of the second knob.  In they went, on went the water, and voila! no drip!

Hmm, no, I don't have a picture of the finished product, and I'm too lazy right now to run up and take one.  It just looks like a tub now, but with no drip.

The weekend has been nice.  Long, mostly relaxing.  We had no plans for the entire weekend, which was a welcome situation given the non-stop way the new year started for us with work and work trips and family obligations.  Got a lot of errands done at our own pace, got some straightening of the house done, and a bit of relaxing.  Am fighting a cold, so not near enough rest, but I've been sleeping well at night so that's been nice.  Bought new pillows and a new comforter yesterday, some down-alternatives so we could see if Rae is indeed allergic to down.  We both slept wonderfully last night, and she didn't wake up sneezing miserably for the first time in a loooong time.  We had been thinking it was the cats (and still do, in part) and that she'd just have to suffer, but then lately for some reason she thought it might be the down pillows and comforter.  With the new pillows and linens, and her restful sleep and waking today, I'm thinking she might have been right.  We'll see if the improvement continues, here's hoping.

Been getting the pictures on the PC organized so I can start a proper backup system.  Downloaded SynchBack the other day, waiting to install it til I've got the directories organized, then I'll give the 30-day trial a try.  It should do the trick, and comes recommended by several lifehacker readers, including an easy setup for getting started. I've been living too long with too many years of irreplaceable digital photos just in one place and I need to do something to secure them.  It's also a part of our "everything has a place' philosophy that we're trying to implement so that we can declutter the house and our lives and just make things easier on ourselves.  I'll be getting a new external drive to have an off-site back up, and we're also getting a safety deposit box to put it and other important papers in. I guess we're just at that point in our lives.

I'm also going to buy a DVD burner for the PC (I only have a CD burner that I cannibalized from the old PC when I built my current one) and start to make slideshows and videos on DVD for my grandparents and Rae's mom and dad since they don't see M all that often.  To make this easier, and in conjunction with the organizing of the directories, I've downloaded and started playing with the latest version of Picasa.  We've used it before, but I forgot how friendly and useful it is for picture management. It really really helped get all the pictures and videos organized.  Oooh, I also used iTag for one set of pictures and it worked as advertised and was very slick indeed.  I'll be using it to further organize pictures with tags (beyond the folders) which will help Rae sort through pictures (with Picasa, which reads the tag info) for scrap booking.

As I said, been fighting a cold, and have been mostly successful in so much as I haven't completely succumbed to it, but it's lingering and I've been tired pretty much all weekend.  The congestion keeps camping out in my throat and making it sore intermittently throughout the days.  Bleh.  Hoping to get to bed early tonight, get a jump on the week as work is going to be busy again this week.  Also, our next three weekends are going to be busy, so need to get the rest where I can.

It was a pretty good weekend, productive and lazy and fun.  Rae was in California on business, and M was with her grandparents, so I had the weekend to myself.  Started off Friday night with wings & a salad and ordered my first ever pay per view movie (yeah, I know, we just don't typically do PPV), watched Hellboy II which was a lot of fun.  It was a nice splurge to start my bachelor weekend.  The rest of the weekend was a mishmash of working out at the Y, housework, real work (had an annual meeting of a large subdivision to attend on Saturday ~ FOUR HOURS!), more housework, playing on my drum and getting stuff done on the computer.  Moderately successful on the housework front, and a good start on the computer work (more on that later). 

Ended my weekend with my first percussion group meeting (a drum circle group at Eliot that might turn into a meditative drum group, or just a social drum circle).  That was a ton of fun, and nice to be playing my drum with other people. I wasn't the only newbie there, others had never done drum circles before, and there were fits and starts as the organizer of the group tried to impose some process that didn't quite grab most of us.  When we were able to just play, to organically find our own rhythm, it was fun and energizing and seemed to work, though I could tell we were definitely finding our way as a group. I suspect it'll be a meeting or two more before we figure out what we want to do, what we want to be.  One of the older guys brough a digery-do, and it was awesome and really added a great flavor to our playing.

Drum hat 1

My mom made a drumhead hat for my djembe.  I had an idea to make one, picked out the fabric a couple weeks ago, talked about the concept with my folks and just needed to find some time to make one.  Well, over the weekend my mom had M help her make one and they gave it to me Sunday night when they brough her home.  It's exactly what I envisioned.  It's reversible, slightly padded, and fits nice and snug on the drum.  I'm pleased, and mom said it was pretty easy to make (though it had to be much larger than we initially thought).  I think I'll make one or two more just to have some variety to play with.  Pop and I have already started conceptually desigining a full drum case, but that'll take mocking up a pattern and a bit more design to make it fully padded and protective, and to make the straps strong enough to carry.  I'll share pics when I get to making it.

Went to Chicago for a quick trip to visit some WE-folk.  It was tons of fun.  Great to see the Alabamians who flew up and the Chicagoans, and to meet the ever ellusive Mr. Gurgle.  Had a fabulous time just hanging out and eating and drinking and chatting about all things entertaining, geeky, and intellectual.  Just as with the mini-meat in Ohio, it was so relaxing and laid back, like one more weekend among many hanging out with friends you see all the time.  Despite the drive up and back (which was really quite nice and easy), it's amazing how relaxing and rejuvinating it was.  I'm surprised I'm as recovered as I am this Monday morning at work (so far), considering how late I stayed up and how little sleep I got all weekend long.  But it was for a good cause *grin*. 

Rae and M had a great time without me, and M seems to have emerged (for now) from her crabby phase.  Partly due to us taking a slightly different approach to a few things, and mostly due to her figuring things out.  Anyhoo, they had a nice time, but I was missed and My Girls were quite clingy yesterday *smile*  I got in during nap time, so got some much needed shut-eye.  When we woke up M wanted to go to a park, so off we went.  It was nice and warm and mostly sunny, and the park was packed.  Fortunately there was a swing open and M was able to monopolize it for the entire hour we were there.  Last year she was all about climbing the slide and going down by herself.  She took one trip down the slide then made a b-line for the swings.  We'd heard from her teachers that that's all she wants to do on the playground is swing, and she sure showed it yesterday.  My arm was actually getting tired by the end of the hour of pushing!

After the park we hit the grocery and picked up girl scout cookies from Emily, then home so I could grill.  Yep!  First grill of the season, and it was goooooooood!  Grilled our typical first grill of the season fare of hamburgers, brats and hotdogs, had chips and dip, rootbeer, grapes and applesauce.  Damn, everything was sooo yummy.  M thanked be a few times during dinner for her hotdog and chips *smile* 

So that was the weekend.  Wonderful time, but too short as always.