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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!
My SO and I bought a living Christmas tree! He can only be inside for like 3 to 5 days! It's a Colorado blue spruce cultivar called Fat Albert. It's a semi dwarf species, and will likely grow around 8 to like 40ft? I've read a lot of conflicting information, but since Colorado blue spruces get up to like 100ft., and Fat Albert is only a semi-dwarf, it's likely to still be pretty tall. We're planning on planting it in the spring at the in laws cabin.
I also worked on a no sew quilt Christmas ornament! It's soooo cute and sooooo easy, I love love how it turned out, though I bought the wrong size ball for it. Here's the tutorial I followed. The lady isnt super straight on about everything and rambles a lot, so for sure it's not for everyone, but it's just the one I used.
Lot sof Christmas prep and getting gift cards for people. Not as prepared this year as we were last year, but my SO and I took a class this semester and that's been really eating up our time lol.
Wow, I never knew that one could buy living Christmas trees, but it seems obvious in hindsight that this would be a thing. Cutting down living trees always seemed to be a little depressing to me but this solution sounds a lot better - not only are you not cutting down a tree, you're adding a new one! Do you know the survival rate for these trees when you plant it in the spring?
Pretty cool that you guys have been taking a class together! Which class is it?
Survival rates seem to vary on how well you keep the tree and how long you keep it indoors. The less time indoors the better, as it can lose it's winter hardiness since it's so warm inside.
Another thing that probably affects those rates is how well it's planted, and if the container plant is root bound and if people know what to do with that. We have high hopes because the species is native to where we're at, and it can survive at the attitude that we'll be planting it at and seems to have a couple extra thousand feet of leeway from the 9k it'll be at.
My SO and I took an introduction to Horticulture class! That's the primary reason we got it, because we generally know a lot more about how to keep it correctly and how to plant it properly, especially if the nursery tries to promotes a specific way of doing it (like not taking the tree out of its burlap when planting). It's been really fun AND I have an automatic study budy!
Oh that's amazing that you guys took an actual course to prepare for the tree planting :) Hoping for the best in the spring
I officially become a professional DM. I've been playing and running games of D&D on and off for about 15 years now, including running unpaid workshops or talks but as part of my ongoing efforts to open a board game store I ran my first paid session for a group of newbies. It went great and everyone has a blast! I was a bit unsure of myself in the lead up. Not that I couldn't run a game, but that I could justify charging money for it. But now that it's over it was a bit of a "holy shit I can actually do this" moment.
Edit: My new sound card also arrived and I swapped it out. Now just need a better cable for my headphones
Edit 2: I need to send out my post-game survey
Weekend tasks were fed by weekday news, so we'll start there.
Stalkers, or just those with a good memory, will know I've been in the works for putting in a workshop/detached garage at my house. Deposit was paid about a month back, just been waiting for the builders to be ready. Get a call on Tuesday at 10:45am asking if I'm open to the build starting on Thursday. Uhh... no. One, the Tercel is sitting on the pad right now and I need to put the wheels back on it, steering shaft back in, and push it back into the driveway. Two, I'll need to tear down about 90% of my fence so they'll have space to build it. Not something I can likely get done in time. (I could, but I don't want to stress about it to get it done over two evenings without help in the dark.) Lastly, I was supposed to get a minimum of three business days notice, not 48 hours. I decline, they say the soonest likely date for my build will be the last week of December. Not happy, but not much I can do.
I text the guys just to see if they'd be able/willing to come by after work that night or Wednesday night to get the job done. They're down, so I call the builder back at 11:45am and am informed that "Orders have to be in by 11am." So they, allegedly, had a 15 minute window to get my approval for a build to be done 48 hours later when they called me an hour prior. Okay, whatever.
Tuesday and Wednesday go by as normal, have plans with the guys to just hang out, go get some BBQ, maybe play some games on Saturday.
Get a text from the builder on Thursday night telling me they have an opening for Monday if I'm available. Saturday BBQ with the guys just turned into BBQ and manual labor.
Saturday comes around, attempt to go to one BBQ place, end up going to another as I didn't notice the first one is only open Thursdays and Fridays... Oh well, pretty good BBQ is had, head back to the house, get the Tercel moved, tarp (to catch any paint/drips from the Tercel) off the pad, fence torn down, temporary fence put up. Play some board games (Tapeworm and Boss Monster), then take them home on the way to a dumpling dinner date with friends that my wife had planned. Good food, good people.
Sunday I pick up my father to head to a sports bar for the first of the two yearly Dallas vs Washington NFL games. He's from DC, I'm from Dallas, so it has the extra fun of also being a father/son rivalry. Dallas destroys Washington so thoroughly in the first half that the incredibly loud and calls-for-physical-harm-to-the-Dallas-players Washington fan behind me goes home early, I am thankful. Washington makes a comeback after a Dallas defense gets lazy in the second half, Dallas ultimately wins, go local sports team!
Today I await the arrival of the builder so I can finally have my workshop (even though it means months of work finishing it out).
I'm finishing up my semester at uni, so on Saturday morning I had an exam, and spent most of Sunday working on a final project. Hoping that next semester has more in-person courses because this one being online was pretty hard on my mental health.
System Design final! I filled out the study guide through the week, and crammed the PowerPoints for an hour before the exam and now have a C, but still need enough points manually graded to give me a high B. I also assembled my group's project, and we spent two hours fixing things.
Played with installing Fedora to btrfs subvolumes. It worked, but I struggling with a lack of packages I require on anything that isn't Arch, Debian, or Void.
I'm flirting with the idea of playing with NixOS in btrfs subvolumes next to Arch.
Hiking! I decided to do the second leg of the hike this time. It was hard and very fulfilling! I met a lot of randos (people to have random, quick and funny conversations with). Not to mention the view of the city-scape/ landscape/ ocean-scape.
At the end of the hike, while walking back to my car, a landscape maintenance person working on one of the rich people homes offered me some lemons & oranges. He told me his schedule and that I'm free to stop by on those days to grab some more!