A big chunk of my weekend involved actually getting some miles under me, and took me, for the first time in a few months, out of my typical 25 mile radius of my living room. It was, at least, novel, even if it consisted primarily of pandemic theater, manual labor, and a sore ass.

Addressing the title, first the 30; That’s about how many miles I biked this weekend; as is my habit. fifteen miles on the Capital Trail each on Saturday and Sunday mornings. As I say, it’s my happy place, my therapy, and my time for me. Worked the muscles, breathed the fresh air safely distanced from everybody, and encountering some of the local wildlife, including a mother turkey and her six chicks (which I’m informed are called poults, which was new to me) out for a walk along a spur trail between markers 42 and 43, which was kind of neat.

As for the rest, much of that was hauling the eldest’s huge pile of posessions out west to install in her apartment lodgings for the fall semester. It’s a long, dull drive, regardless of the route, not easy on the behind or calves, especially when giving up leg room to boxes of stuff. The campus itself is trying its best to address pandemic conditions, though a lot of it, like the temperature checks and waiver signing at the gate, is mostly theater. We remained masked, and heaved all kinds of stuff up stairs, and got the stuff inside and the emotional support fish set up well within our assigned move-in window and left the kid to arrange her gear at her leisure.

As a reward for our efforts, the lovely spouse and I took a small detour on the way home to enjoy a beer and the delicious food from The Return of the Mac food truck on the patio at Steam Bell, who does a pretty good job of making sure that proper pandemic guidelines are followed (as do all the breweries in town, really – it’s a refreshing change from regular retail establishments), and doesn’t tweak our virus anxiety.

Apart from my ride on Sunday morning, we spent much of the rest of the day working to get the back room in order to once again be the sewing and music space rather than the kid’s crash space, which was more work than we would have liked, as the kid is not, shall we say, particularly fastidious about cleanliness. This adventure also involved a trip out to several of those above-lamented retail establishments to obtain some gear for storage, and running all over creation to find a cheap curtain rod to fit the window (apparently curtain rods in the 36 inch range are the new toilet paper), which I finally found, not particularly cheap, at the hardware store.

I also did all that shopping while wearing my Elizabeth Warren campaign t-shirt, which isn’t necessarily the wisest or safest thing to do in a southern Walmart on the edge of the suburbs. Nevertheless, I persisted, and survived (probably helps I’m a tall 200+ pound man), receiving only a few dirty looks, and couple of surreptitious thumbs-up and whispers of “I love your shirt.” I like to think I validated a few people’s closely held politics in this pocket of conservatism. Also, I’m kind of a jerk like that sometimes; if these conservative asshole types can flagrantly not wear masks (or wear them incorrectly) as a political statement, they can look at my damned t-shirt advocating for candidates with progressive policies and social welfare.

Mostly the usual on tap for the coming week; work, bike, and spend some time getting my studio space back up, as I’m supposed to record my set for virtual Dragoncon one evening this week (I guess I should decide what songs I’m going to play, huh?) and maybe hash through some plans for a project I’m due to work on with a friend.

Oh – we watched the 2015 “Jem and the Holograms” film on Netflix on Friday night; we have opinions. It wasn’t “bad”, per se, just kind of bland, but it made some odd directorial choices that didn’t work (like editing in social media videos of random people to try and set tone), and kind of got lost trying to find it’s audience. It obviously wanted to court the youth market, but the only people at all familiar with this property are greying Xers who watched it on weekday afternoon latchkey tv. They put in nods to the trappings of the show (quoting theme lyrics in dialogue, general character looks, etc), but mostly, what they ended up was kind of a rehash of the Josie and the Pussycats” movie without all the campy self-awareness, and didn’t start hitting the fun, weird crazy stuff until the end, setting up for a sequel that will never happen, as it only grossed $2.3 million at the box office on a paltry $5 million dollar budget.

The Misfits’ songs were better, anyway.