What did you do this weekend?

My daughters have been having "sleepovers" where they both stay up late in the older daughter's room, watching old movies, doing makeup, and hanging out. My son is a bit younger, and is the only son, and wanted to have a sleepover with someone. However, we're not currently "bubbled" with anyone else, so his choices weren't great. We elected to do a sleepover together - he came to my room, and we sent my wife to his room, and he slept in our bed, and we watched YouTube until "late" - his normal bedtime is 7:30, and we stayed up until almost 9 - and then he slept there. We generally don't let the kids sleep in the parent's bed; I can only remember about four occasions where it happened and one of them was the day he was born, so he was pretty happy about the whole thing. We woke up early on Sunday, made pancakes for everyone, and enjoyed the whole process; we may do it again at some point.

Sunday was Mother's day - we played some games (Forbidden Island is the kids' current favourite), had some good food, and generally tried to have a low-key day.

My husband set up a raised planter in our backyard with some assorted stuff he plans on using for cooking (basil, tomatoes, jalapenos). I set up our new compost bin. We’re composters now! We started collecting stuff this week to put in the bin when it arrived, and I was amazed at how much we accrued in that short amount of time. My coffee alone is a significant amount of compostable material that I’ve just been throwing away for years! Feels much better to feed it directly to the friendly worms living in our yard. Now that it’s up and prepped and ready and (theoretically) in process, we’re looking for every chance to add things — the novelty hasn’t worn off. I got really excited when I finished a toilet paper roll, as I could throw the cardboard in! How cool!

My father-in-law also helped put in some new cabinets and hang an over-the-range microwave. He is incredibly knowledgeable and very meticulous, so the projects he takes on he works to absolute perfection. The downside to this is whenever he runs into unexpected hiccups, one of which he did with the microwave. It was perfectly level and completely flush with the new cabinet above, but it did not look level due to the pre-existing moulding above it being distinctly not-level. This is a problem he has run into many times in our house before, with all sorts of things being slightly off. He was also already hours into the work for that day and, thus, was understandably exasperated. Looking at the non-level moulding ruining his new meticulous cabinet and microwave installation, he yelled out in frustration “NOTHING IN THIS HOUSE IS STRAIGHT!” My very gay husband and I, out of respect for his anger, didn’t say anything at the moment but definitely quietly shared knowing smirks and stifled laughter. When the family was over the next day for Mother’s Day, we told everyone the story, at which point everyone in the room (including my father-in-law) burst into uncontrollable laughter.

It’s become a new motto for my husband and me. In our gay household, nothing is straight indeed. :)

Another date with the person I rapidly fell for, and my fears and anxieties that this might be the a redux of my last whirlwind romance are being allayed a bit. I think some of it is coming to terms with the idea that it's incredibly unlikely that it will look and feel close to perfect and just get absolutely destroyed out of nowhere and that I just need time to get over those feelings. Why does this bother me so much still? Is it the uncertainty of it? Is it because I don't truly value it for what it was, even though it ended?

Dogecoin hit .75 over the weekend and crashed again, but it had me once again wondering what I'm going to be doing with my life, as I was an 'early investor' so to speak. It's keeping me up at night and bombarding me with existential questions about what I really want to do. I wish I could make my brain think a little bit less, sometimes.

Biked about 50 miles to a nearby town on Saturday. The weather was absolutely perfect for it. I had planned to go with a couple of friends, but they both bailed, so I ended up doing it solo. Had a great time, and I got to meet up with some folks I hadn’t seen in awhile on the other side of it. My partner drove me back home, and we had a fire afterward.

Took the puppy in the bike trailer to a brewery on Sunday and had drinks with a friend who finished the first semester of her master’s program. Puppy did great and was super sleepy by the time we got home. Watched the new Mortal Kombat, and it was about what I expected: thin plot with lots of fight scenes.

Spectacular weekend. :)

I got sick for the weekend... Cancelled the late birthday party that my partner and I were supposed to host (which was the second time we had to cancel due to sickness :| ). We had bought all the supplies for it, so we ended up roasting a 12lb beef cut and turned that into pulled beef sandwiches, complete with MSG pickles that I also made for the party. Going to end up making a buffalo chicken dip to bring to the party that my SO's parents are throwing for them this weekend. First time my parents will meet theirs, so they're a little nervous but I think it'll be a great time.

Didn't get to see my parents for Mothers Day so I gave them a call (as well as my Nana), it was nice to talk to them at least. Hopefully I'm feeling better for this upcoming weekend!

I had breakfast in a restaurant with a friend on Saturday! It's been over a year since I've seen her and over a year since I've dined in, but we're both vaccinated, so now I can do that kind of stuff! Afterwards, I went to Michael's to get stuff to make a mother's day card. My SO and I went on a long walk. We like to pick up trash, so we're usually out for longer since we have more of a purpose so we end up walking for much longer. It's fun!

I made a card for my mom and my MIL (at the request of my boyfriend lol). I think they turned out nice! I used my silhouette Cameo to do some fancy cutting, I love using my cutter for crafty stuff.

Sunday we started playing It Takes Two. It's a very fun game! It feels rewarding to get through the puzzles and you aren't punished, really, for failing. I think it's a pretty good game so far!

We also made pretzels! With a lye bath, of course. It ain't the same otherwise. I think overall it was a pretty productive weekend and was the most I've done in a while which is nice!

I bought an accordion on Sunday from someone selling it on Craigslist. It’s a chromatic button accordion (C system) which means that the right-side fingering is quite different from a piano keyboard and I will have to relearn fingering and scales. But that’s why I bought it; I’m intrigued by the keyboard layout, which has certain advantages. You might compare to switching from a qwerty keyboard to dvorak.

Unfortunately I was a bit too eager to buy and somehow decided to overlook that it doesn’t sound very good. The problem is that the leathers need replacing. These are flaps that prevent reeds from sounding when they’re not being played. They leak air and it results in a rather harsh and dirty sound which is sort of cool, kind of like carousel music, but definitely not what it’s supposed to be.

There’s an accordion shop in the area that does repairs, so I’ll be meeting with the owner to get an estimate. Accordion repairs are expensive due to the labor so I might end up doing it myself.

For mother's day, me and my father went to a decently close shopping center/mall to buy my and his mother some clothing. After some deliberation while going around the various clothing stores in the area, we decided that, for my mom, some comfy pajamas would be good, so we bought her some of those and she liked them much more than I thought she would, which made me happy because I actually took a part in deciding what to pick, so I actually helped in picking something she liked.

Otherwise, nothing much.

Got Pfizer dose #2 on Sunday. It took about 30 hours for me to feel sick, but after some Dayquil the effects were easily ignored. So now I've got only 12 days until I'm officially "fully vaccinated". I'm sure I'll have almost all of the immunity sooner than that, though - so I'll be hanging out with a small group of people this upcoming weekend.

I also did some work on Saturday. I noticed my new co-workers are very careful about "focus time" - even using a Google calendar integration to consolidate all meetings into one block of the day. It seems much easier just to take a couple weekdays off (with perhaps an hour meeting in there at most) and then work on the weekends uninterrupted. Most of my actual software development has been taking place over the weekend since I started this.

This wouldn't really make sense in a post-pandemic world where there's an incentive for you to have your weekend overlapping with your friends'. But for now it's nice.