Yes, I’ve been somewhat quiet lately – heck, I’ve posted little but the occasional song list and some silly pictures for most of the last year. You all know my schedule, so you know what life’s been like for me lately – something has to take the hit, and it seems it’s been the blogging. I would love to write some more interesting, personal, thought-provoking essays, but my head is so full of “drive/work/drive/sleep (maybe)/work/etc” that when I do get a free bit, I don’t have that many profound thoughts that don’t sound like whining. And when I do get a little bit of a break from those thoughts, I tend to venture other places.

That said, I need to do a bit of a thought dump now and then, if only because I use this blog as a record to figure out what I’ve done with my life as much as I use it for sharing (occasionally) profound thoughts and opinions with the universe. This entry will probably be more of the former than the latter. Think of it as establishing an alibi.

So, last weekend, I didn’t do huge amounts of things – the unpaid Monday included a doctor’s appointment, some long-overdue housecleaning, and lunch with a recently retired friend, who, a few weeks into life as a gentleman of leisure, looked amazing and younger than he had in years. The lifting of the work weight (he and I worked similar schedules in the same offices for years; only he did the business that I’m doing now a lot longer) really agreed with him. I’m rather jealous, really. Unfortunately, I’m only 38 years old, and have a heck of a long time until I can follow in those particular footsteps.

The intervening week was pretty typical, except for the introduction of the new car into the commute (averaged 39.2 mpg last week – w00t!), and Thursday being my fifteenth wedding anniversary. Colleen and I managed to get out for an early dinner at a new place we’ve heard about, Plaza Azteca (I won’t link to it, because they’ve got autoplay music on their site, and I hate that crap), which was good, but honestly, I prefer my little dive Mexican place around the corner. Still, it was nice to get out and try to have a date, which we don’t do enough anymore. I also learned that the furlough pay cut isn’t hitting me quite as hard as I expected – I think this has largely to do with the fact that I’m losing enough money to knock me down a tax withholding peg or two. It’s a relief right now, but I don’t quite know what it’s going to do come tax time. Oh well.

Friday night we hung out with friends, playing card games and making each other laugh. Mike and Charlene, the hosts, seem to be the center of the Venn diagram of all my various circles of friends in this town – they know everyone, and they always bring together and interesting group.

Saturday, Colleen and I had another “date” of sorts. We got a last minute invite to join our friend Colin’s “Afternoon with an Art Professor” event at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Colin teaches art at a local college, and puts this event into a charity auction we attend every year, and he had a few openings when some of the original winners cancelled. He and Colleen are on a committee together, so he asked her if we’d be interested, which we were. I’ve lived in this town for over fifteen years, and have never been to the VMFA, which is really a shame, because it’s a beautiful space. Getting a private tour of a portion of a collection (this year’s agenda featured American art from rougly 1850 to 1950) from a real-life art professor for a couple of hours was a real treat. I really need to get back to the museum and check out other parts of the collection.

Sunday, our GURPS group got together again, and our group of intrepid adventurers very nearly got to the end of their particular quest, and we only set a few things on fire. Again, we spend most of our time sitting around making each other laugh, and rolling some dice occasionally. it’s always a nice afternoon hanging out with friends. One more session should wrap this particular campaign. We’re looking into starting up a Supers campaign soon, so I need to start coming up with a C-list superhero concept to play with. Any ideas from the peanut gallery?

Monday, the official unpaid vacation day, I got up early and was remarkably productive. I got the oil changed in the spouse’s car, stopped by the bank and paid off the loan of that car (more than a year early, and now I have one car payment again!), and set the teenager on the task of cleaning out that car’s interior, which was a real mess. I also took care of paying the bills, and taking care of the semi-monthly run to Costco for staple foodstuffs, and the cupboard was rather bare. In the early afternoon, I took the spouse’s car to the local car audio place and had them install the aftermarket radio from the dead Vibe (which I pulled and replaced with the factory radio before the damage assessments started rolling in) into her car, since the faceplate on hers disappeared (and replacement faceplates cost nearly as much as a new radio) and she’d been without tunes for a couple of weeks.

While that install was happening, we wandered over to the nearby pet store to look at fish. A couple of weeks back, the heater in my big tank went bad, and heated things a bit too much, resulting in the loss of many fish (including the elderly cherry barb, a bunch of rasboras, and Princess, the bristlenose pleco) I replaced the heater a little more than a week ago, and things have settled down. However, I wanted to add some more biomass to the tank before the biofilter bacteria took too much of a hit. I ended up with a school of cardinal tetras, who add some nice color to the tank, a cute little otocinclus catfish, and a bunch of ghost shrimp, because I like them.

So, anyway. Lots of disparate things there. A busy, but generally rewarding couple of weekends.