Tag Archives: chores

Lazy Saturday

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It’s been 3 or 4 weeks since Kelly and I have had a free weekend, but we planned to have a quiet, relaxing one today. I stayed in bed until 8:30 or 9 AM, I think. Kelly was already up when I finally pulled my way out of bed. The weather was warm–the first really warm morning of the year. We decided to take advantage of it. We grabbed the basketball and headed over the local park to shoot some hoops. I was terrible at first, but slowly managed to get my game back. Kelly was very good, but as she pointed out, she had a hoop in her driveway growing up.

After, Kelly went to the gym and I did some reading and worked on the computer. Around 12:30, we headed to lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. We’d invited A.J. and Denisse. A.J. was off playing tennis and our lunchtime was too early for Denisse. I had a good chicken salad sandwich, but it was way too much food for me.

We walked back to Kelly’s, collected her laundry and then headed up to my house. At 4 PM, we took Zeke to his regularly scheduled vet appointment. He got his shots, and impressed Kelly (and the vet) by his strength when he tried to keep himself in his carrier once at the vet. Everything is good, but he needs to lose some weight. He weights about 16.5 lbs and should be around 13 lbs. Much of the weight gain is due to his special diet. Beginning this afternoon, therefore, I started him on “meals” rather than leaving his dry food out for him. He gets 2/3rds of a cup in the morning, and 2/3rds in the evening.

We were supposed to stick around from 5-8 PM to wait for the cable guy to “cap the line”. We spent some of that time reading parts of The Last Lecture to one another. Sometime around 4:30, I noticed a cable truck across the street, but no one ever stopped by. By 6 PM, I was a little impatient. I checked the cable, and wouldn’t you know it!–they had capped the line–and I now only get the local channels, as I requested. I was annoyed enough, however, to call Comcast and ask them why I had to stick around if no one had to come in the house. They didn’t have an answer for that, of course.

We celebrated by driving up the lake and taking a walk around it. Usually, we walk around twice, but there were dark clouds looming close by so we kept it at a single loop. From there we headed to the grocery store to do the shopping.

At home this evening, I made french bread pizza, which turned out okay. We watched last night’s The Office and we both agree that the show is going downhill. It’s depressing.

I wanted to take the telescope out tonight. Saturn is visible and it would be great to get a look at it, but it was still cloudy when I last checked.

Make-up day

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Kelly and I got back to Washington early this morning, around 1 AM. It was raining when I left or L.A. and it was raining when I returned. I stayed at Kelly’s last night and got home this morning. I worked from home today because (a) I got in so late last night and (b) I have to work tonight beginning at midnight. In between various work task, I managed to catch up with a few things that I couldn’t do when I was gone last week. First, I canceled my cable, finally. Well sort of. Turns out it costs the same to keep Internet service and local channels as it does for just internet, so I did that. It cuts my bill by more than half. The cable guy is coming Saturday evening between 5-8 PM to cap the line.

I also called the vet to order more wet and dry food for Zeke. I headed over to pick it up early this afternoon. I also made an appointment for Zeke on Saturday at 4 PM. I called an electrician about some work I need done and have been playing phone tag this afternoon, but hope to get him out Saturday as well. And I even managed to squeeze in a haircut.

And speaking of haircut, with all of the rain we’ve gotten my yard is overrun by long grass. But I have to wait for it to dry out before I can cut it.

I have to return the cable boxes at some point, and then we’re transferring my Tivo unit and service to Kelly’s house. Probably do that next week.

A lot of junk mail over the course of the week, but some good “live” mail too The latest issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN as well as the June issue of F&SF. I got my HHonors Silver card for 2008/09 in the mail today. The bill from my accountant was there too, along with my AOPA Pilot magazine.

I’m off to bed now (yes, it’s not even 6 PM) because I have to be up at midnight to do a server upgrade.

(I realize that I have not yet caught up on Saturday or Sunday yet, to say nothing of comment on the nebula award winners, but I will as soon as I have a chance to breathe.)

Lazy Sunday

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[Posted on Monday, October 22]

We all kind of slept in on Sunday morning. We headed up to IHOP for breakfast at around 10:30 AM and afterward, I dropped AJ and Denisse off at the metro station so that they could head home.

Most of the rest of the day was a very lazy one for me. I finished watching Season 4 of The Shield and naturally, immediately wanted to watch season 5. Fortunately, season 5 and 6 are available on the iTunes store, and in fact, it was far cheaper to buy them from there than order the DVDs online. So I downloaded all 21 episodes that make up seasons 5 and 6 and I watched the first 4 or 5 of them.

I cleaned up the house a bit, but didn’t end up doing any laundry, as I’d planned to do. I called Doug and left him a message. (He called back but it was after I’d gone to bed.) I also called he11o_sunshine and we spoke for 10 minutes or so. But I was pretty tired, having been up so late last night. I ended up climbing into bed at around 7:30 PM.

Sunday, lazy Sunday

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I was supposed to go back to the convention for day 2 today, but I didn’t. I got to bed late last night and I had a lot of errands and chores to do, so I decided to stay home. I stayed in bed late, watching episodes of The Shield, but eventually managed to get out of bed and shower. I got in touch with A.J. and Denisse and we agreed to meet for lunch. I headed down to their place at around noon and I was at there front door just after 1 PM.

We went to the Guard for lunch, where I managed to have a Monte Cristo sandwich. You don’t see those in too many places, and I love those sandwiches and it was quite good, but truth be told, their fries were even better!

Afterward, we wandered around Georgetown, stopped in at Haagen Dazs for Belgium Chocolate shakes, and then walked down to the waterfront, where we debated politics and economy endlessly. We walked back to A.J. and Denisse’s and shortly thereafter, I headed home.

I had lots of laundry to do and I managed to get through most of it, watching more episodes of The Shield in between loads. My ribs were acting up so I decided to take a pain medicine, even though they’ve been making me feel nauseous. This time it seemed to work a little bit better.

The annual rental property inspection of the house is tomorrow and I have to meet the inspector here at 5 PM. I have a presentation I’m giving at 3 PM but still hope to get out of work a little early to ensure that I get home in time to meet the inspector.

Columbus Day

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No work today as it is a federal holiday and that meant I could sleep in late and be lazy all day long. And that’s more or less what happened. Kelly headed home after lunch at TGI Friday’s. I planned to get the house cleaned up a bit, do some laundry, and head to the gym for my upper body workout. Instead, I lay down on the bed to pet Zeke and ended up falling asleep for nearly 3 hours. When I finally work up, it was around 5 PM and the day was mostly used up.

I am looking forward to the Yankees/Indians game tonight. And I may manage to get some laundry done between now and then. Maybe even a few odd chores. I do wonder how I’ll sleep tonight, however, having slept in late and taken a lengthy nap in the afternoon. I guess I’ll find out.

Spoke briefly with Dad today. And had a longer video chat with strausmouse earlier this afternoon. (He had the day off too.)

Now let me see if I can’t get a few things done before this long weekend is all over.

Saturday is laundry day

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I was up at 8 AM, ran up to IHOP for breakfast (for the first time in a while) and then spent the rest of the day on chores. I did every scrap of laundry available in the house and it is finally all done. Every last bit of it.

I decided my bedroom needed some rearranging. It has been the same layout for 4 years now. This started with the fact that I decided to flip the mattress. I then decided I wanted new bedding. I ran out to Target for that. When I returned, I decided to rearrange the furniture in there and that too is done now. I also vacuumed the house. Thoroughly. And got rid of a ton and a half of trash. And cleaned the kitchen. Really, it was a busy day today.

I fell asleep last night listening to the Yankees game on the radio. I heard the amazing 4 run comeback they made with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th but eventually fell asleep sometime during the 13th inning, so I didn’t know they ended up losing the game until this morning. They are in a back-and-forth battle in today’s game against Toronto too. The road to October is paved in excitement!

My shoulders and neck are a little sore from the arms and shoulder workout yesterday, but not nearly as bad as I thought they might be. And the soreness in my legs has almost completely vanished.

Warm today. In fact, I finally turned on the AC a little while ago because, even with the windows open, it was well over 80 in the house. Supposed to be beautiful weather tomorrow. Glad I got a lot of my chores done today.

Back to the gym

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I finally did it. I was up at 4:20 AM, had some breakfast and then caught the first Yellow line into work in order to hit the gym this morning. My plan now is to make MWF strength training days and TThSa cardio days. Today was great. I did nearly three full groups of chest and back before coming closer than I ever have in my life to passing out. It happened when I was doing dead lifts. I’d backed off my weight on just about every exercise I did today, in order to get back into the swing of things. But for some reason, I figured that 80 lbs dead lifts would be fine. In fact, they felt fine doing them, but toward the end, my legs began to feel a little wobbly. I figured it was that I was nearly done with my workout and getting tired. When I finished the set, I was light headed and a little dizzy and nauseous. I sat down on the floor and tried not to move. Bernard, who was working with someone else asked me if I was okay. I smiled and nodded but I felt that if I moved I might not be able to maintain my balance. After about 5 minutes, I was able to get up and walk into the locker room. I sat by my locker a few minutes debating whether to attempt a shower or not (I could just imagine passing out in the shower.) Finally I did shower, and after that I felt much better. I know now that I need to ease my way back into some of these exercises and I will be more careful going forward.

As it turns out, my probably was minor compared to someone else at the gym. At about the time I was feeling light-headed, there was a loud crash of weights. Someone who was doing free standing squats was not on the floor face down. Someone nearby said it was a groin injury. By the time I got out of the shower and came out of the locker room, the paramedics were there. So an exciting day at the gym today.

And an exciting Yankees game last night. I couldn’t stay up for the whole thing but I stayed up long enough to see Jeter’s 3-run homer, which ultimately allowed the Yankees to win the game. mabfan called me during the early part of the game and we traded some baseball stories for a while.

I did manage to get a fair amount of the garage cleaned out yesterday. Lots of trash for the garbage men to pick up today. There’s still more to be cleaned out over the next couple of weeks but I made a good dent in it and I feel pretty good about it.

A handful of meetings today and then I’m meeting Kelly after work.