Apparently, somewhere in the last forty-eight hours or so, there was a weekend, but I’ll be damned if I can see where the time went when looking back.

Sure, objectively, I did things. Shopping, laundry, installing trim to hold the laminate floor down, hiking a bunch of miles along the river, taking my wife out to dinner, and visiting the hardware store what feels like dozens of times for various bits and bobs in support of the living room refresh.

But, I honestly I don’t feel like there was any particular break in the never-ending cycle of work and responsibility.

Part of that might be that I came off of a con weekend, slept badly throughout the week, and my Sunday night gaming session got bumped thanks to the group being made up other middle-aged folks with too much else to do.

Oh, and I learned that it’s really hard to buy an aquarium lighting rig these days that doesn’t require you to download an app to your phone to operate it.

Yes, I had to buy new lights for my fish tank…that’s a story.

Let me set the scene:  With the living room remodel, my big fish tank got temporarily relocated to the kitchen while we pulled up the carpet and laid down the laminate floors.

That’s a process in itself, involving pulling more than two dozen gallons of water out of the tank (using siphons and five gallon buckets) so a human can lift it (remember, that unlike the human head, a gallon of water weighs a little over eight pounds), then moving the tank and all it’s accoutrements and stand to the new location, then putting more than two dozen new gallons of water back in, making sure the water’s treated to remove the impurities and getting the salinity right again), and reconnecting and plugging it all back in.

We have five cats. One’s a deaf cat that gets picked on by the others sometimes when he tries to do normal cat things like eat and use the litter box. Because of this, he sometimes pees in places he’s not exactly supposed to, like disused corners of the kitchen, of which there were a few more while there was a fish tank in there; one of which included a slightly expose power strip.

Those things, the cat, his abberant behavior, and the power strip, when combined, involve worrying electrical odors, a bit of smoke, and light rigs no longer working.

This is my life sometimes…