Weekend Wrapup

Well, I've been on vacation all week. Most of it was consumed by cleaning out my dad's house. Part of it was complying with my insurance company for a hand rail on the outer steps that in my opinion didn't need one. The deck on the back needed one also. I was planning on that one anyway. The tractors are all running. One is now at my house and one is there for the renters to use (plus and extra in the shed :) ). Long story short, my body feels like 210 pounds of hamburger. The house is done and the renters can start coughing up the money.

Here's a pic from the back of my dad's house. The plan is, at least for the moment, is that this house will be the summer home and we'll winter at the beach house when we retire. It's a pretty dynamic plan though and could be totally different in a month from now, lol. Until then, we'll rent it out. Ideally, the young couple that are coming in will stay for quite a while.

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I also did a bunch of cleanup in my own workshop. Seems like every flat surface has collected something over the winter, hehe.
 
Friday - Had the day off. Ate breakfast with a good friend. It got really windy so I blew off running for the day (pun intended). Had lunch with Mrs D. Got the PRS in the mail. Went to our Good Friday service at our church.

Saturday - Up early and went for a 10.6 mile run. A tough run but but I got through it. Then ran a bunch of errands then practiced some tunes for the blues 'audition' next week. Made a breakfast casserole for church (sat in the fridge overnight - cooked Sunday morning).

Sunday - Up early and played with the band at church. Came home and baked a ham - then off to lunch with some friends at their house. Eat too much then come home. I'm tired....
 
Friday - end of crappy week at work.

Saturday - took daughter to work. Removed safety partition in work van, popped up the two fold down seats; reinstlled partition. Picked daughter up from work. Discovered iPad had mysteriously lost all apps :facepalm:. Redownloaded apps.

Sunday - first lawn mow of the season. Took family to my brother's in Chicago for family dinner. Returned home in time for the Blackhawks to tie their series at 3 apiece and turn Luongo into a blubbering puddle of poo jelly :grin:
 
...hmmm...

Friday- Flyers Game 5
Saturday- Drove my sister to Kohls, Target, and JC Pennys, made tacos...
Sunday- Ham, Creamed Cabbage, Resses Eggs, Flyers Game 6, Phils, storm...

...and now Im listening to Jesus Christ Superstar...its about as religious as I get...
 
friday - nice night at home

saturday - only had 2 lessons. everybody else cancelled. i still got paid for all of them. i could live with that some more. came home and hosted a pesadic dinner party for my wife's work friends. it was fun. lots of wine was drunk. she was still drunk when she woke up this morning.

sunday - made a killer mushroom & goat cheese omelette. watched a Muriel Anderson dvd i had gotten from Netflix. went to GC and picked up another Auralex Gramma platform for my subwoofer and finally reconnected my stereo for the first time in years. i need some RCA extensions for my record player, but everything else is hooked up including the tv. watched the Mets actually win a series. went to the Village Vanguard to see Bill Frisell. it was him, a violist and a drummer. they were absolutely incredible. had a slice from Two Boots. good day. :)
 
Friday - dropped colleagues off at airport, then spent the day driving to Monterey, 17-Mile drive and Carmel. Had a delicious lunch at Cannery Row Brewing Company - Young's Double Chocolate Stout and a Bleu Pig Burger.
Saturday - Drove around Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountainview, San Mateo and just generally tried to get lost. Saw lots of the high tech company offices in the area.
Sunday - Went to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Did the tourist thing all afternoon. The historic boats were all open for free tours.
 
Yes. You are that clueless. You should be proud you are.

Yup. I'm pretty clueless as well, and I'm ok with that. :thu:

Friday night, hung out with friends and help from the ranch. It was nice to have friends.

Saturday, worked worked worked. So. . .typical saturday :grin:

Sunday, got up early to feed so that the horses could eat some breakfast before the Easter ride. Had a good ride out to the lake and back, with a short message in the middle (one of the local pastors has been doing this for years). Got back, father-in-law started on breakfast, so we all had pancakes, sausage, biscuits & gravy. Some of us had Bailey's in our coffee, and some had bubbly in the OJ. It was a good morning. After that all cleared out, it was a pretty mellow day. Very nice to have most of a day off :grin:
 
Friday - dropped colleagues off at airport, then spent the day driving to Monterey, 17-Mile drive and Carmel. Had a delicious lunch at Cannery Row Brewing Company - Young's Double Chocolate Stout and a Bleu Pig Burger.
Saturday - Drove around Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountainview, San Mateo and just generally tried to get lost. Saw lots of the high tech company offices in the area.
Sunday - Went to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Did the tourist thing all afternoon. The historic boats were all open for free tours.

Very cool, man :thu: We were in Monterey & SF a couple of weeks ago and had a great time :cool:
 
Friday - Lunch at the Pub with Luigi and his GF... had a local hard cider and fish 'n chips. Went to a really cool furniture wholesale warehouse and ended up buying a new studio desk. They also had a bunch of old school Hamilton music stands in the "Vintage Room" for $14 each. I'll be going back to get those, as well as a couple of the insulation stuffed cubicle walls for recording gobos! My friend/bandmate's Matt and Loren came over. We got my studio hooked up and started editing some drum tracks.

Saturday - Started Coverfest entry. Edited another drum track, but it really didn't need much done... I nudged the one kick beat that was early into place and that was it. Jake did a great job on that one. :) Unfortunately, the next two were massive clusterfucks and will need to be re-recorded... :mad: Matt came back out and we worked on a new song until his wife flipped out on him and he had to go. I re-watched Troll 2 (laughing my ass off, of course) and went to bed.

Sunday - Got up and met my mum at Frisch's in Beechmont to ride out to my grandparent's house for Easter. Stopped and took some cool pics of the river flooding out that I'll post tomorrow. My grandfather decided he wants a Mac so we talked about the differences between one and his PC. Mum, grandmum, sis, and her BF all came back from church and we had lunch. My grandmother smacked me for celebrating Zombie Jesus Day, just like last year. :lol: Came home and played my Strat downstairs while I watched Warlock, ate some dinner (more sammiches, but this time with soup) and finally recorded vocals for my Coverfest entry.
 
I caught a friggin' cold from one of my passengers and spent the whole weekend coughing aching stuffed up feverish...:mad:
 
Friday - no work for me, so I took the kids to the pool for most of the day
Saturday - very lazy day, just lounged around the house for most of the day, went to the Sharks game with my brother at night
Sunday - the family went over to our friend's house for a day at their pool while the kids dyed easter eggs and had an egg hunt
 
Friday- miserable day in the office. 2 hour lunch because I'm hitting the "I don't give a shit" part.

Saturday- miserable day at home.

Sunday- miserable day at home.
 
We spent the whole Easter (including today) lounging about in the garden and eating. :love: The weather has been glorious in London..around 78 degrees and perfect blue skies..apart from a massive thunderstorm on Saturday afternoon..and even that was warm rain. :love:
 
Neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt, yard work, dinner out with friends from out of town (and their 4 kids), church (first time for me in ages), Easter dinner at the in-laws, testing the most recent homebrew (success!), watching Game of Thrones.
 
Friday - Practiced a little, watched Smallville and played the Easter version of Angry Birds.

Saturday - Exercised and then took my son to Mark's blues class. Picked up a few parts to finish backdating my TS9 to a TS808. Also got some parts for my CS9 Chorus mod. Did a little yardwork.

Sunday - Exercised and then got all the stuff together for our family get together at my cousin's home in Temecula. It's once a year but it is nice to see family when you can. Jammed a little with my other cousin's husband (San Bernadino) and and taught cousin's (Temecula) 7-year old son a little guitar. Fought the 15 through the 91 Freeway traffic (about 2.5 plus hours) to get home.
 
Kinda a rough weekend. Last week, out of the blue my wife found out that, no doubt as a result of "budget" pressure from our right-controlled legislature (I won't say any more, I promise), her teaching position and the Adult Ed. ESL (English as a Second Language) program it's a part of was gone and that she'd been "reassigned" to some high school. Both as to the program and her assignment, absolutely zero input was sought from any of the stakeholder students or teachers. Totally top-down axe with no warning.

The sad part of it is, Adult Ed. ESL actually paid for itself and brought in a profit for the school board (there is no school bus transport, or books, or building maintenance cost for the program, which is taught in borrowed UF meeting rooms to students who buy their own books, by teachers who do all of their grading and administrative paperwork from home). So eliminating the program was economically unnecessary, and even counterproductive from a purely monetary standpoint.

My wife has taught in that position for 21 years. As you might expect, she's devastated, and despite all the crowing we hear about "requiring" people in the USA to learn our "official language" of English, doing so for people without a lot of money just got next to impossible in our county.

We're working on what Kim's options are now. She's 6 or 7 years from earliest retirement, and cannot afford to quit. From what I've seen so far, her purported unilateral "reassignment" was probably illegal (in violation of the teacher's labor agreement), but that doesn't bring her old job back.

Saturday-- For me was mainly centered on son's lacrosse activities. Played one game with his team in the early afternoon, they got in a big hole 4-0 and played back to a 3-4 loss. I really wanted them to win as some of the parents on the opposing side were obnoxiously of the "jock" mentality-- dads who were not coaches yelling at players (not their sons) what to do on the field, etc. Ugh. Since this was the first time our Jack had set foot on a lacrosse field, he didn't get much playing time.

It was announced that players could come back later to form a pickup team so that one late-scheduling team would have someone to play against. So we went home for an hour or so between games and cooled off, and he went back and played almost all of the last game, as there were very few subs for the pickup team.

In return for doing the other team (which had 3 or 4 times as many subs) the favor of giving them a game, the other team responded by pouring on points, which in itself is fine, kids can't be asked to not score, but also by a good deal of showboating and grandstanding. Wtf is WRONG with people nowadays? No good deed goes unpunished, I suppose. Fortunately our Jack is thick-skinned when it comes to boorish and unsportsmanlike behavior, and was just glad to get a lot of playing time in. He also got his first red badge of courage, stepped in front of a shot on goal that hit him near his right knee, and he had to be subbed out for a spell. He's a pretty tough kid.

Sunday: skipped playing the "sunrise" service at my church and went to the 9 a.m. service at a closer church on our side of town, as we had plans for the day that going to our church's service would've made difficult. They have an all-contemporary service which Kim (and I) really enjoy. Afterward, we drove over to St. Augustine and had Easter lunch at 1:30 or so in a rather expensive Spanish/Cuban themed restaurant on St. George Street (the blocked-off pedestrian-only street in the old town with many historic buildings on it). Food was good but a smidge disappointing for what we paid (about double what we spend to eat in our favorite family-owned Mexican restaurant at home).

After that we went to our favorite beach at Anastasia. Water temp was a chilly 68F, so we just sat in the sun and enjoyed the cool sea breeze while Jack did some boogie boarding. Got home 7:30 or so, I went and got some pizza, and crashed early. It was a good mini-vacation to let Kim chill out, although by Sunday night she was back to being in tears again. So it goes.
 
All I did was hobble around on crutches, spread joy and love via the internet, and practiced Marks lesson on Up the Down 6th for a couple hours...
 
Friday, meant to get out for a work break and ski, but stuck in the office all day. Mellow night at home. Goofy postings on this forum before bed.

Saturday, drive to Boise for soccer league play for my two boys. 2.25 hour drive. Spring, snow melting, willows starting to look bright as they get ready to bud. Good games. Younger son tied one, won one, and cinched the title for U11. Other son's team fought hard but lost two. He is U13, and the play has gotten a lot rougher at that age group, plus most of those Boise kids keep playing most of the year, whilst ours go skiing and such. Still a good effort though. Drive home was also beautiful with many deer, elk and antelope. (feeding time). Drove carefully so as not to hit one. Wife and I got Easter ready, and talked about our aging/ailing parents til midnight. Then to bed.

Easter Sunday, baskets, candy, egg hunt. Then off to ski SV's final day of ops for the year. The whole family can ski together now with not too big a speed split, at least if we are on the groomers or not too gnarly runs. Sun, warmth, spring corn snow, and lots of crazies to look at. Favorite costume, snowboarder dressed like a green plastic army man with his green snowboard serving as the plastic base. LOL!! Toy Story 4 I guess.
 
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