The weekend Thread

[Tig***]

Oh, yeah, my allergies have been brutal. The headaches make it hard to think.

I've been watching the NY Rangers this year, and have enjoyed how good they've been playing. I normally don't watch NHL, but this year is different.

[Eric***]

Maybe the 2+ years of working nights is catching up to me. Last week, we took in 2 lost dogs, which kept our dogs going nuts, which killed my "recovery" night of sleep. (The first night that I don't have to work, I sleep like a log for about 10 hours)
At least we got in touch with the owner the next day and the dogs made it home.

Working nights is tough. I was on third shift for about 4 months, alternating every 2 weeks at the end of last year, and I worked second shift for a year back in 2004-05. I felt like a zombie a lot of the time. Hang in there.

[R_of_G]

I put in a 15 hour shift last night on 2.5 hrs. sleep. I was dog tired by the time I got home.

I feel for you Kat. Last week I worked 12-14 hour days every day and averaged about 2-3.5 hours of sleep each night. It was a LONG week, followed immediately by driving 3.5 hours each way to see my parents and get back home in time for the party I mentioned upthread. Let's just say my Sunday involved a whole lot of doing nothing.

[Katastrophe]

Oh, yeah, my allergies have been brutal. The headaches make it hard to think.

I've been watching the NY Rangers this year, and have enjoyed how good they've been playing. I normally don't watch NHL, but this year is different.

Take care of yourself, man. Allergies suck. Royally.

@ R_of_G: Man, you put in some serious hours. The job I had before this one I put in that kind of time. I imagine it's no fun, especially with all that travel.

[Katastrophe]

Working nights is tough. I was on third shift for about 4 months, alternating every 2 weeks at the end of last year, and I worked second shift for a year back in 2004-05. I felt like a zombie a lot of the time. Hang in there.

Rotating shifts like that is hard on a person. After a while, you just get so scrambled that it's hard to get sleep at any time, day or night, even with blackout curtains.

[sunvalleylaw]

Hey, let's quit talking about the work week. It's bringing me down. This thread is supposed to be about the weekend man! (just kidding. Allergies suck. They make me feel tired too.)

[deeaa*]

Ugh, long weekend. Loads of work. Suddenly snow is gone, just a few small patches in deepest shadows now, and the ice in the lake is gone too in large parts, only partial ice sheets here and there. Our shore is free for like 8 yards and then some ice to the middle of the bay. But in a few days it's boating time! Bought me a new boat trailer too so I can haul the boat to lakes far far away on other waterways. I could drive from our shore by waterways all the way to the Atlantic, but there's many other closed systems I want to boat on nearby & some 200 miles further up north.

Anyway...weekend...phew.

Friday after work I drove a hundred miles to drop off kids to granny, and met some friends and shot two cover videos in front of green screen, Muse's Uprising and Rush's Bastille day. Then I went to see my friend's family and then in the center watched the same friend's gig and worked as a lightning guy. It was simple, just six adjustable light sets and smoke machine, nice simple lighting desk too. So the main evening went well, only had like a sixpack before and during the show. Then we went to the nightclubs and I can hazily remember leaving around four in the morning but not how we got back to his place. Saturday I didn't dare drive until well in the afternoon and picked up this 1x12" speaker and met an old friend of mine too, talked shop about Cubase etc. and drove home and watched TV and vacuumed and did laundry and cleaned the whole house. It felt like 60 hours or so had passed since start of Friday by then.

Sunday we cleaned the entire yard of fallen leaves and twigs, made for a huge trailerful to take to the dump and went shopping in the new shopping center they just opened up last week. Sundays are by far the best days to do shopping but since not all stores are open, just the big ones, there's often a huge crowd too. Really dumb that so many shops are closed on Sundays. If I was a shop-owner I'd keep shut during Mon Tue Wed and instead open exactly on Sundays - there's nothing else for people to do than shop on Sundays after all! Then later I washed the cars, fences, street, cleaned the garage, worked the whole day.

Mon and Tue were off too, a looong nice weekend, so Monday morning I did quick melody test recordings of a nine-song album I promised to sing in a session later for this band I know nothing about but they wanted me to do a session for them and the music is very well done so I said hell yeah, despite I really don't have the time. But they did say later in the spring is fine :-) so I just kinda sang them thru and composed the vocal tracks for them, so I can start practicing the melodies in my head & get all nine sang pretty quickly when the time comes.

Then off to the cottage, and there I fell two medium sized trees and cut them into firewood and carried to the drying shed, also cleaned the yard there from all the muck amassed during winter and all kinds of small things like that. Granny brought the kids back to us and we BBQ'd aplenty. Yard work and chainsaw and axe wielding & carrying piles of wood for two straight days and lemme tell you my arms are killing me, despite we did find time to booze up a little and soak in the hottub somewhere there. And later some friends came by with their daughter and we visited a waterfall nearby and had some coffee and a little outing in the woods.

Man, I should pick up the guitar some day soon...but now I have like a dozen small cuts, burns and bruises in my fingers & they feel like a bunch of limp dicks basically. Couldn't play the guitar to save my life just now.

[R_of_G]

@ R_of_G: Man, you put in some serious hours. The job I had before this one I put in that kind of time. I imagine it's no fun, especially with all that travel.

The nature of this job (magazine publishing) pretty much makes it so that I'll have a week like that at the end of every two month production cycle. I wouldn't have normally scheduled a visit to my parents the day after all of that, but my aunt was in town from Chicago and she'd never met my daughter so I wanted to make that happen for my family.

[deeaa*]

Another busy weekend.

Friday picked up the boys and drove straight to the cottage with the three of us; started warming stoves and the hot-tub, chopped up the wood for that. While the kids played I painted the sauna building's two sides to refresh the color. Carved a small wooden boat for them.

After bathing and dinner managed to write some 20 pages to finish off the first beta of my SciFi book dealing with transhumans & downed a sixpack while the kids slept. Hit the sack by midnight myself too. In the morning kids slept incredibly long, almost till seven so I got a good rest too. Cleaned up the cottage and yard, drove home by the afternoon. Went on a biking / shopping trip with the boys after dinner. Played a few hours of Orcs Must Die and destroyed another sixpack while at it (a very addictive tower defense type game) till midnight. Sunday morning woke early with the boys so the wife could sleep long, vacuumed the house, did the laundry and cleaned up the kid's room and then did some yard work to clear off the rest of the dead leaves. Stared to cut down the Hawthorn hedge that had grown to like 7 feet tall and realized I'd left both chainsaws at the cottage. Ended up sawing them down by hand, took most of the day and now my arms are t i r e d. Well surprisingly little so, but anyway no hopes for playing the guitar again any time soon. Sigh, been what 1,5 months now :-)

Now the kids are watching The Empire Strikes Back in HD while I'm pondering about warming up the sauna. Oh yeah also visited a neighbor who's practically rebuilding an old house right accross the street...made in the 20's but he's making it real nice, completely rebuilt and did the interiors already, looks like a modern flat basically inside already. Soon he only needs to put up a new roof and outer wall siding and it's done in a matter of weeks now. Which reminds me it's time to go buy some boards for a new terrace at the cottage I'd like to build if not the next, then the weekend after that. Will be something like 7" by 20" long and built around the bath barrel. If I get someone to help me with beer pay I figure it'll be a nice full day's job.

Hm, it's not even 4 pm yet so I might as well go paint the terrace fence white while the sauna warms up...





Snow is now all gone as you see, but at the cottage there's a bit of a flood going on...the jetty is some 8" underwater even. Should be like 12" above :-) but nothing to worry about. Soon the lakes will be ice-free too.

[Tig***]

Yikes! Jackets, gloves, and ice in May? Um, no thanks.
It has been in the upper 80's all week here. If anyone says "no thanks" to my weather, I'll join them in it!

[deeaa*]

Heheh...I remember some midsummers that there were still small patches of snow in the shadows here and there.

You get used to long winters, and the upside is he summer then feels extra special when it finally arrives, just perfectly at the very days work ends too, and light throughout the nights too for three months and you're free from work most of it. I could not work indoors in the summertime...already these last few weeks before the summer I feel like a a trapped animal when I'm working, super anxious to get out...can't wait...but it's only less than 3 weeks now!

But then, often, especially when it happens to be a very hot summer and in August it's still too hot to be outside except on a lake and the AC has to be on day and night, well, actually you start thinking winter will be very welcome. My wife's favorite season is even Autumn, because you get to wear proper clothes again and the breeze becomes fresh and cool and everything is red and yellow and so on.

[sunvalleylaw]

Deaa, where you live looks so much like where I grew up in Puget Sound, WA, but a bit colder.

For me, Soccer tournament weekend in Twin Falls. All weekend in Twin. I was glad to be there to see my boys, but am also really glad I don't live there.

Here are some pics (taken by another dad. Some good shots) of my younger son's second game yesterday in case you have interest. My son is in the first pic in the white "away" jersey. https://picasaweb.google.com/runjunk...mGame1May52012

[deeaa*]

Oh yeah, pretty much anywhere along the US/Canada border is very similar to here, especially where there are lots of lakes around. I get the idea the weather is much alike too, winters are more Canada style but summers while only 3 months are comparable to those in Upstate NY etc.

[Robert****]

Our running club had our yearly race. I'm one of the organizers but I also ran it and placed first in 28:00 over 8km.

[Spudman***]

Our running club had our yearly race. I'm one of the organizers but I also ran it and placed first in 28:00 over 8km.

Nice job, stud.

[deeaa*]

Ice is gone from the lakes!!!

[R_of_G]

^^Beautiful picture Dee.

[Hampus]

Ice is gone from the lakes!!!

Nice pic!

Down here all the trees are in full bloom.

Skickat från min GT-I9103 via Tapatalk 2

[deeaa*]

Now that the ice is all gone & it went in just days instead of weeks, the water's risen like two feet over normal. The jetty is in clear & present danger as the water lifts it up from the bottom some...but otherwise no worries.

Spent the weekend at the cottage with the boys, driving back and forth to collect tools and materials - building this terrace in front of the sauna for easy access to the bath barrel etc.
I used the opportunity to learn how to make different building base supports, used three screw-in-the-soil big galvanized metal supports that were like 5 feet long and like 8" accross...screwed them into the softer sandier soil next to the bath barrel by using the prybar for leverage...still was hard to get them all in. Then I dug some holes about 4" deep i.e. below the freeze zone & the clay and put in a big slab of concrete building brick, onto which I bolted a thinner, adjustable galvanized support & poured concrete over...and the last ones I dug similar holes and sunk in these big almost pyramid shaped reinforced concrete supports that had a hole on top, for which I put a U-support made of - of course - galvanized metal.

That was largely all I managed to do in one weekend because I also had to launch the boat and mind the boys all the while & the usual cottage warming and sauna etc. but as you see now it's largely down to just simple carpentry and figuring out all the necessary supports and bolts. Using chemically through-treated outdoor wood & sturdy bolts to put it together so it'll last forever by all intents and purposes.