works of wanderlust

Tag: weekend

  • weekend wrap, thirteen

    Oh, lucky. 

    Here we are on another Monday morning perched in front of a keyboard as summer wanes. The Kid was lamenting that her first post-grade-school summer flew by in a blur of summer job and a smattering of friend gatherings which seemed as tho it cheated her a little. Get used to it, I told her. That’s life. What’s two months anyhow? A couple of bill cycles and another season blows by.

    It wasn’t all a loss, though.

    I picked her up from said summer job on Friday afternoon and plunked her at one of those friend gatherings. Her high school pals have been successively hitting the eighteen-year old birthday milestone these past few months and I think she’s next.  We never really found out what goes on at these parties, but it all seems pretty tame. We idled on the couch post-dinner and a friend drove her home. Ah, Fridays as our responsibilities of parenting a kid dwindled into the final countdown towards her impending legal adulthood.

    Saturday, feeling a bit lazy and knowing that the local marathon weekend was going to disrupt Sunday running plans, I dragged my sorry butt to Park Run. You know Park Run, right? The Saturday morning 5k “not a race” but really a race free event in the river valley. It happens all over the world and in like a dozen locations in Canada. I have now done it eight times.

    The Kid and I took the dog for a loooong walk on Saturday afternoon, stopping briefly at the pop-up off-leash park one neighbourhood over. The dog could not have cared less about the off-leash, but a random chunk of field surrounded by a tall orange construction fence and which probably reeks of other dog’s markings was probably epic confusing.

    Later, it being our wedding anniversary and all, Karin and I went for a fancy dinner at a new Japanese-inspired fusion cuisine place, and then went home and watched another in our getting-ready-for-Japan Miyazaki movie marathon: Princess Mononoke. I’ve seen it a dozen times and it still rocks hard.

    Sunday I should have gone to cheer on the marathoners, but I slept in. That’s not a trivial statement: I never sleep in. Like, once a year, maybe. And yesterday was the day. I dunno why I was so tired.

    I spent a couple hours working on the computer. Literally. Lester had loaned me a graphics card which I had anticipated may work to get my VR setup working on my old desktop. He recently replaced that card and it was just sitting in the box. I spent too much time and the best I got to was it loading half way through Windows boot up and freezing the computer. Maybe after I finish this contract I’m working on I’ll risk blowing up the whole computer, but I had a minor panic and restored the old hardware. Computer 1: Brad 0.

    We set out early-afternoon for the Fringe Festival. We have a smattering of tix for the week, and two sets were for Sunday. We took in “Plays by Bots” (which we’ve seen annually for 3 years now) which is improv based on poorly written AI scripts, and then “Colins Back” which was a big, fun improv show with a local troupe hosting famed improvist Colin Mochrie for an hour of silly fun.

    Not a bad way to cap off the evening, which was otherwise mostly capped off by a quiet dinner back home and watching Japanese travel videos on Youtube until bedtime. 

  • weekend wrap, nine

    Somehow I missed a couple weeks in a row of weekend wraps, which is particularly flustering because one of those weekends was a long weekend, and the Canada Day long weekend to boot. I blame the distraction on that my weekend actually ended on Wednesday, so my headspace was a little out of sync with reality.

    Excuses, excuses.

    So, all that is to say that while I didn’t give updates on the various outings and barbecues and chores that were accomplished, I’m sure you’ll get the sense that a couple busy weeks transpired and what we were left with was our first full weekend in July …and it was kinda mellow.

    This weekend we…

    Reunioned. The Kid has been housesitting and so it was a big deal that we picked her up after work on Friday and went out for vermicelli bowls for dinner. A week out of the house and it already kinda feels like she moved out, even though by this time next week she’ll be back to being underfoot and in my kitchen making a mess again.

    I was tired, and the air had just enough of a hint of firesmoke that I shut myself up in the house and spent my Friday evening reading. Very exciting, huh?

    Saturday was by far more eventful. We were out of the house by eigh-thirty in the morning and scooted down to the Italian market to pick up our lunch in the form of a big ole spicy italian sandwich.

    Then we drove east. I will now, likely to the objection of the dozens of people who live there but who will never read this, decribe the vague are east of the city as the middle of the middle of nowhere. Yes, there are a scattering of smallish towns and barely cities and other rural things to see dotted across the prairies, but essentially there is very little between here and Saskatoon six hours drive down the arrow-straight highway.  We went two hours east, and then north for a bit, and found ourselves in the middle of the middle of the middle of nowhere where on the one hundred and fifteen year old remains of the family farm we had a little family reunion. The dog was not amused.

    We were back on the road home and back into cell service range again by about seven that evening and home by nine, after which there was not much to do besides chill for a bit and then go to bed.

    I woke to rain. Pouring rain. And a determination of a sort to get in a run come hell or high water, the latter seeming a real possibility. I showed up for run club and ended up plodding out a not quite seven klick run drenched and solo.

    I stayed to for coffee and to warm up after.

    Karin and I did the grocery shopping and then I parked myself in the basement as the rain continued to watch some Netflicks before working myself up to start prepping dinner.

    In the meantime, Karin went to pick up the Kid because they had show tix for downtown on Sunday evening and the Kid had not brought any going out clothes to her housesitting gig. The pair of them ate then disappeared for the evening and I had the house to myself to practice my Japanese and my music, in roughly that order. The dog continued to be unamused.

  • weekend wrap five

    It may not be summer, but tell that to the weather. It was a weekend for wide open windows trying to keep the house cool enough to sleep at night. I may need to drag out the air conditioner unit soon.

    All that said, I barely pulled myself far from the house this whole weekend, studious pupil that I am.

    It was the calm before the storm. The next couple of weekends are going to be filled with activity and socializing and concerts and grad activities and getting ready for summer. This was busy enough, I suppose, but whatever.

    This weekend was spent doing…

    School. Mostly school. And not much else. I wrote a few words and few days back all about the final weekend of coursework for my professional development program through the university. I spent the best parts of both days sitting huddled under a fleece blanket in the chilly basement staring into a pair of eight-hour long video class sessions. There were only five people silly enough to be taking business courses in May, though, so I found myself needing to stay very engaged. No hiding behind the crowd. And at the end of it I was actually pretty tired. It did, however, mark the final module of classwork and all I have left in the program is a single homework assignment.

    We did find the energy to go out for ice cream on Satuday evening.

    And on Sunday evening, after searching the whole house for the second lawnmower battery, I found it hidden under a pile of jackets and then I was able to cut the grass which seemed to have grown six inches while I was hiding in the basement all weekend. I practically could have baled it. And the dog was creeping around the yard like she was an intrepid jungle explorer, what with the grass up to her literal eyeballs.

    While I was out in the yard I also did some adjustments to my garden irrigation system, plucked about a thousand dandilions, and spent a fruitless half hour trying to figure out if there was a wasp nest nearby that would explain the unseeming swarms.

    In the gaps I read. I did a lot of reading, actually. I splurged on a digital copy of the Hyperion Cantos, a four volume compendium of a thirty-year old science fiction series that I have read a half dozen times but is on my list of comfort reads. I curled up on the couch and read and read and read and pushed through like half of the first book. More on that later, I suppose, when I post a book review.

    And on we go.

  • weekend wrap four

    Used to be that May Long Weekend was a rite of spring to which we all looked forward. Maybe people still do. Entrenched as I am, it was just another weekend, albeit one where the family hung around the house for an extra day. In fact, the Kid has a five day weekend and as far as I know is still at home asleep as I write this.

    But long weekend or not we continue with the inventory of accomplishments to mark the passage of time.

    This past weekend we…

    Spent Friday evening playing host to the penultimate performance of the Kid’s high school musical debut as Rosie in Mamma Mia! A dozen friends and family made the trek to the high school theatre for the show, and what is better for the ego than the soothing tunes of ABBA while watching one’s nearly adult daughter play a randy middle aged washed up rock star?

    I must have eaten something funny Friday night tho, because Saturday morning was a wash of me recovering from a terrible night.

    We did manage to play host to my sister, niece and nephew who came up for the Saturday matinee and then joined us for burgers and milkshakes at the Varsity.

    I went to be early.

    Sunday was a great morning for a run and I wrote a whole post about my longest run of the calendar year.

    And then with the great weather temporarily bringing out the sun, I set up the solar-powered bluetooth speaker, blasted some tunes and planted my garden. Everything is seeded and watered and irrigated in a kind of haphazard organizational scheme of square-foot gardening meets my knees are not up for this anymore.

    We dug into the latest Star Wars series Andor over a glass of wine later that evening.

    And the next morning the kid came with me for coffee, yeah coffee, and we sat in Starbucks for an hour me writing and she doing her physics homework.

    I started a secret series behind the scenes of this blog. I’m going to try doing more month-long self-improvement experiments. You can read more about the first of those in a month when I post the results.

    I spent a chilly afternoon adding a bunch of security fixes to this blog because I noticed that along with the increase in readship traffic there has been a parallel increase in bot hackers trying to barge through my password. Suck it hackers. Go use your powers to hurt some greedy billionaire corpo, not some asshole in a starbucks trying to hold his sanity together.

    Of course, what with it being a long weekend, Monday was the regular orchestra rehearsal night, not cancelled despite the holiday because we have a concert in less than two weeks.

    And then I went to bed a little early. It was a long weekend, after all.

  • weekend wrap three

    How the heck is it already the middle of May? Didn’t we just do Christmas last week? I mean. C’mon!

    Next weekend is the long weekend, but this past few days have been a bit of a hectic hot mess. That’s okay, I guess. Everyone needs a hectic weekend here and there.

    This past weekend I…

    Alas, it is the week of the Big Show. The kid is performing as Rosie in her high school musical production of Mamma Mia starting tomorrow, so it’s been us doing late night pick ups at the theatre, transfers to other important things, and on and on and on.

    I met up with my former boss for lunch on Friday. It was pretty much the weekend for her. It started out as a chat message asking her if it was still cool I used her as a reference, and next thing I knew I was picking her up at her mechanic’s appointment and we were chowing down on a local Indian buffet.

    The upcoming show has us doing a few theatre parent chores, specifically we got put in charge of the concession, so it was off to Costco for our semi-annual visit and to score a bunch of concession-sized snacks to sell. Saturday morning is not the day for that, but our options were limited.

    This spun around and did a one-eighty and by mid-afternoon we were out in Sherwood Park at a dance competition. Oh, that’s right. In the middle of the high school main stage final week of rehearsals we still had dance choreography competitions to work around. Though the final sadness of it being her last ever didn’t ever really set in, what with the hectic hot mess and all.

    We stopped for dinner on the way home and it was… ok. Less ok for the price, but I’ll save that rant for another post.

    Mother’s day morning we made crepes before I rushed off to do my regular Sunday morning run club. Ten klicks sounds less impressive mid-spring when everyone else is training for marathons and such.

    We capped the mother’s day events off with a lap of the local dog park and a chill stroll in the masses and throngs with the same idea.

    Oh, and I paid for my business license. Woot. Excitement abounds.

    And that was that.