What did you do this weekend?

I went to an Oldelaf concert. Bought my tickets back in april, they were ridiculously cheap. The room was at capacity with covid measures (which is under 50 percent of normal capacity, maybe 80-90 people total in a fairly large room). Masks on, of course.

It was really fun, and liberating to do this. Also, had the concert happened two days later, it would have been cancelled due to the curfew coming into play today.

Oldelaf talked a bit about the difficulties the band has been facing this year and ... Well, breaks my heart to think about. I'm so glad they could make it, my previous concert with him was cancelled, back in March.

The lighting was beautiful as well. Great stuff.

I built an iris keyboard with zealios 67g v2 switches. The actual soldering of switches was pretty easy, but learning a split columnar layout has been challenging - I've used my index finger for c, middle finger for x, and ring finger for z for 25 years, and my brain is struggling to use middle/ring/pinky instead. Also, it's been tough to find a comfortable spot for [ and ], but I think I've settled on a hybrid usage of shift for them - press for the brackets, hold for shift. At this point it's probably just going to be a painful few weeks until I adjust.

I got gas for the first time since March. It got me thinking about how much I'm getting by WFHing:

• Yearly gas costs, at this rate, are <100$. Plus time savings from not commuting.
• Food costs are down a lot. I was spending 40-50$ per week on lunch at work, now that my costs for the whole week.
• Better air. I've needed to go back to the office for some technical issues these past couple weeks, and the air there is stagnant and stuffy (and they've got the air conditioning on). I've always got an open window at home and the difference is enormous.
• I've had time to grow some plants from seed. My vegetable pots aren't doing so well right now (I over-watered them and have fungus gnats) but I did get 2 radishes + 1 turnip (lesson learned: probably not worth doing tubers in a small pot haha. soil falling out everywhere and they weren't that great to eat) and about 20 leaves each of swiss chard and kale. I've also got an onion that's doing very poorly.
• Better sleep. Same bed time but waking up an hour later is doing wonders.

It does all come at the cost of socialization with coworkers (My team had a lot of fun during lunches, for example) but I make up for it with my hobby, ceramics. The community studio I go to has figured out how to be both open and socially distanced. I'm spending several hours a week there and it's been great.

I've known my circumstance was lucky, but I'm basically privileged as fuck right now. That's what I realized this weekend.

I bought a motorcycle! It's a Triumph Bonneville T100. I've put about 60 miles on it already, but obviously I'm a very new rider, so it's all been neighborhoods and side streets.

My father in law helped me install a countertop in my garage for my darkroom. It came out pretty well and my wife is happy to have her folding table back.

https://ibb.co/9ZHgPF6