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What did you do this weekend?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
I had a three-day weekend, which was great. I set up a new gemini capsule for myself, talked a bunch on IRC, walked the dogs, meal prepped for the week, and enjoyed the beautiful weather.
I semi-accidentally booked myself a 5 day weekend, watched/heard cars I didn't want to see/hear drive in a circle, bought a lot of alcohol.
Short version
Planned a 4 day weekend to go to a 3-day motorsports drift event that my friends and I go to each year. It sucked *because it's 2020* and the only thing rednecks like that involves the left is NASCAR.Ended up with 5 day weekend because I forgot, until my wife reminded me, that the company I work for made Election Day a company holiday, so I also have tomorrow off to watch the country burn.
Today my wife and I went to the liquor store to stock back up, half because we need to replenish the supplies we bought at the start of COVID and half to continue our joke of "if I'm going to die, I'm not going to do it sober." And so $400 worth of COVID/Election Prep liquor, beer, and wine later we also have an ice cream at the shop next door to the liquor store and go home.
Long version
So this weekend was the Texas stop for Formula Drift, the guys and I go every year (as we have every year it's been around) and even though it wasn't going to be the same this year we held the tradition. Instead of packed grandstands right on the racetrack, this year they put the spectators spread across about half of the stands at Texas Motor Speedway. Most people, us included, had entire rows to ourselves with no one near so it was more socially distanced than I've been all year when I've been out of my house and that includes the fact that I grocery shop at 10pm now to avoid people. Except for the entry where our temp was taken and tickets scanned, I probably wasn't within 50ft of anyone except the guys pretty much all weekend.The event usually runs Friday and Saturday, but this year it ran to Sunday as well as each weekend was a double header in the Pro league as they were hitting 4 cities instead of the usual 8. Pro-am wasn't great, but there is one driver that'll likely be in pro next year if he can afford it. Pro had it's ups and downs with a lot of drivers in new cars that they aren't accustomed to just yet, but overall good runs. The issue was NASCAR. At Texas Motor Speedway various weekends there is a "NASCAR Experience" thing you can buy into to ride along in a low-power stock car or actually drive it, depending on how much money you want to spend. This has happened on FD weekends prior, but since we're usually in the infield next to the racetrack and not in the main stands outside of the oval you can't really hear them. Not this year. It was nothing but the reverberations of open header archaic American engine design making bass-y fart noises while turning left over and over. Can't hear the announcer, can't hear the event we came for, can't see the track well, so overall the experience sucked as we're in the main stands not seeing or hearing what we came to see/hear. We sucked it up on Saturday expecting it to die down in the early afternoon like it usually does, but it didn't. Sunday the NASCAR wannabes weren't out in the morning when we arrived and were relieved, but they showed up during the intermission and would have ruined the afternoon session, so we just went back to my house and watched it on the livestream.
To give you an idea of the difference of previous years to this year: We usually get to go through the race paddock, talk directly to drivers and crew, see the cars up close like you're at a racecar dealership, and I've even been allowed sit in, start, and take ride-alongs in these cars. This year there's zero interaction, no one except teams allowed in paddock, and we're watching the center most area of Texas Motor Speedway from the furthest point possible.
As we all know, 2020 fucking sucks.
Not the best weekend for me. I had to do a lot of homework and stuff. Sadly, when I started out with one of the assignments I screwed it up and than proceeded procrastinating for most of the day. I got most of the stuff under control now, but I really like getting all of this stuff done during the weekend, before new assignments start piling up. Also, maybe because of this dumb stuff I started having trouble falling asleep again.
It has been raining for I don't know how many days now. I decided to go outside anyways today, as it stopped raining for now. But there's mud in the forest, the streets are too wet to skateboard and I am not really keen on just walking circles around the streets of suburbia. Kind of sucks, that even if I decided to go outside for once, the weather is so crummy.