I awoke this morning to a series of IMs from my oldest friend, Jeff, who took advantage of the fact that I forgot to log out of AIM to complain about the fact that after much pestering, he finally started reading my journal on a regular basis, only to find that I haven’t been updating it on a regular basis. Well, it’s a fair cop, and I should write more often, so let’s start with the most recent weekend…
Tag: life Page 12 of 15
eloren is a temptress. No really.
Yesterday, as we went to lunch, she casually says to me, “By the way, I think a used bookstore opened up in John’s Creek.” So after lunch, we swung by to see when it was open, and since it was, you know, open right then, we stopped in to have a look.
Used bookstores and me are a volatile combination. Financially, at least.
When we last left our intrepid adventurers, they’d just seen their friends off to Cleveland….and it’s been busy since then.
What a GREAT weekend…
After our intensly sociable schedule last week, we felt the need for even more human company. So we decided to head up to the mountains of Tennessee to see some of our chosen family, namely sis Kender, her hubby Shadow, and their little ones K. and C.
kitanzi and I tend to do most of our socializing on weekends. Most of our friends live far enough away that visiting is an actual expidition for most of them, and no one ever comes to visit us, so on days when we’re tired after a long workday, we’re mostly inclined to just stay home and enjoy each others company. This week has, as a result, been a bit unusual, in nice ways.
Matt and Mary are filk community friends who just relocated to Atlanta from Philadelphia. I had suggested to them that we get together for dinner at some point, wanting to make them feel welcome in their new town. We finally settled on Tuesday night, and since everyone’s money was tight, I offered to make dinner.
I settled on Carolina style Barbecue Pork for a main dish, with cole slaw and dinner rolls to round out the plate. This is one of my favourite crockpot recipes and always goes over well, and it had the advantage of being something I could prepare to cook in the morning before work and have it ready when I got home.
Tuesday morning turned out to be a comedy of errors for both Kit and myself. I had just pulled out on the road when I thought I heard a scraping noise coming from my car. I turned the radio off and confirmed that I wasn’t imagining it and pulled into the elemetary school which is next door to our apartments. Getting out of the car quickly revealed the problem — I had a flat tire. Closer examination showed a large metal object embedded in the tire, and thus the obvious culprit.
I called into work to let them know I would be delayed, changed the tire, and set out for a Goodyear place. About halfway there, my mobile rang and it was Kit, calling from home to let me know she realized after she got to work that this was the day she’d agreed to switch shifts with a co-worker. Lucky, it was the co-worker on the later shift, so this was merely inconvenient, and she went off to do the shopping she’d planned to do on the way home, since it meant our guests would likely arrive before she got home.
I got the tire replaced in short order, and the rest of the day was relatively uneventful. Matt and Mary showed up at about seven, Kit got home a little after eight, and we enjoyed a pleasent evening of food and conversation.
Wednesday night was a rare mid-week night out. Our favourite local band (and in fact, a band we think of “our” band, since I took Kit to see them way back when we were first dating and she was visiting every month from New Hampshire), Screen Door, was playing at a barbecue joint in Roswell, about 10 minutes from our house. As a bonus, we’d convinced friends to come along. I’m always happy to expose new folks to my favourite music. 🙂 We ended up with a party of six and half, including my co-worker eloren, her husband J., their four-month-old son R., and their friends heathrow and her husband T.
The band was in good form, though I was tempted at several times during their two sets to go find whoever was (or, I think more likely, wasn’t) running the sound board and beat them senseless. I’ve run live sound for both small and large venues, and the mix was awful. The actual volume was fine, but the vocals were unbalanced and too far down in the overall mix to be really heard well. I talked with them during the break and found that they weren’t controlling the house sound system at all, so the venue was definately to blame.
Oh well, the food was excellent, and the company was fun. It was nice to meet heathrow and T., who I’d heard so much about over the last couple of years, and R. was adorable — he was clearly interested in and responding to the music, or at least the vibrations. 🙂
Tonight is Thursday gaming, and then tomorrow we’ll be heading up the Tennessee mountains to see chosen family. Life is good.
There’s something very Norman Rockwellian about yard sales. I’ve always enjoyed going to them and browsing through the accumulated flotsam and jetsam of a strangers life. Of course, I always feel a little guilty where there’s absolutely nothing the person has that I actually want. It’s like I feel I’ve wasted their time and hopes looking over everything and judged them wanting in some regard. “Nope, sorry, there’s nothing here I want. Why don’t you have nicer things? What? Oh, you got nicer things, and that’s why you’re getting rid of all this lot. Well, call me the next time you have a yard sale, then.”
One of the problems with a small apartment occupied by two bibliophiles is the matter of where to actually PUT all the books. There really just aren’t that many good places to put bookcases, if one is to have any other furniture in the place.
When I was visiting djbp and bardling last month, I got to admiring the wall mounted track shelving they had up for bookstorage in one of the upstairs rooms. It occurred to me that this could be the answer to our problem. Since it was wall mounted, I could simply have shelves cut to whatever length I wanted on that part of the wall, and since they didn’t have to reach all the way to the floor, they could be placed above other furniture.
Last night, I dropped by home depot and picked up some supplies. Rails, brackets, and a 1×8 cut into five 27.5″ pieces, which was the precise distance from the wall to the edge of the window in our computer room. This is the room where the guest bed is deployed when we have visitors, so we wanted to arrange the room in such a manner as to not require extensive shifting about to put the bed in place.
Things didn’t go as smoothly as I’d have liked. I discovered rather quickly that the studs in the wall were made of metal, and as a result I made another trip to Home Depot to get some drywall-anchor screws so that the shelves could be mounted between the studs instead. Then I found that the particular drywall used here was so soft that if you weren’t careful, when the anchor finally was fully caught it would start to burrow through the wall. There are, as a result, a few more holes in the wall than I had originally intended. But they are all in places where the shelves are, so they’re not really noticeable. I’ll get some plaster later and fix them up.
Anyway, I finally got it all up, and populated with books, and it looks rather nice in the end, so the frustration was ultimately worth it.
kitanzi and I had a fun weekend hosting my mother, who finally made it down to visit! I’ll let Kit talk about how the whole “meeting the folks” thing went herself 🙂
Mom arrived Friday night, with just enough time to turn right around again and head down to a little veggie bar called ‘The Sprout’ to see Atlanta’s own Three Weird Sisters. Nothing on the menu looked terribly appealing, but the music was fun and I enjoyed introducing the girls to Mom. She ended up buying both the 3WS cd and telynor‘s solo cd, so it’s a pretty fair guess she enjoyed the music.
Saturday, we went out for breakfast, and then came back home while Mom went out shopping. Unfortunately, about 10 minutes after she left, I happened to glance into #filkhaven and discovered about the Columbia disaster. We flipped on CNN and watched sadly for about an hour, then decided to go and take a walk, instead of wallowing. The fresh air helped, and when we got back, Kit went to take a nap. Mom came home a little after that. When Kit got back up, I got my guitar out and we played some filk for Mom, which also helped keep our mood up.
There was a housefilk scheduled that evening, but most of the people I’d asked indicated they weren’t going, so we decided instead to go out to eat at Shogun, then came home and, amusingly enough, ended up watching Iron Chef, which Mom had never seen. It wasn’t one of the better episodes, but she seemed to be amused anyway.
Sunday morning, we went out to breakfast, and then Mom started her drive back up to North Carolina. Hopefully, it won’t be four years before we get together again. Kit and I spent the afternoon at a concom meeting for next year’s Gafilk, then came home and fixed dinner…barbecue that my mother had bought me from my favourite barbecue restaurant back in my hometown. 🙂 Then we sat down to watch some TV. “Changing Rooms” was up first, and that was fun as usual, and then we finally got to see an episode of “Coupling”. Oh. My. God. I thought I was going to strain something, I was laughing so hard. I think we’ll be making a point of seeing when it’s on. 🙂
(The plot of this one revolved around a girl trying to convince a fellow to have an affair with her; hilarity ensued. This led to an amusing conversation about how most sitcom plots would collapse when approached from a polyamorous point of view. “I fancy you, and I think you fancy me. Let’s go back to my place.” “But I have a girlfriend.” “So?” “Well, i need to call her and let her know I won’t be home tonight, or she’ll get worried.” The whole thing would be about five minutes long.)
Today and tomorrow we’re getting our final preparations for vacation complete. Wednesday we take off for England. Can’t wait to see everyone who’s gonna be there!
Got the cable bill paid today, after some mild frustration — I called them hoping to get the automated system to get directions ot the payment centre nearby. Instead, for some reason, I ended up talking to a person, who informed me the ONLY payment center in Fulton County was at Greenbriar Mall, which is down on the south side. Now, considering that a) I’d already checked with the automated system the other day, and b) Fulton County is approximately the size of Delaware, I didn’t really believe this could be true. The web page gave me better information and I found the place easily.
I hope this is just a result of Comcast’s amoeba-like absorption of AT&T Broadband, and that they get their customer service ducks in a row shortly.