I maybe kinda don’t know what to do with myself when folks aren’t around.

As indicated previously, two of us have been out of town for the long weekend, and the others that are are home are living their own lives, so I’ve been left largely to my own devices for the last few days.

And…I was maybe a little lost.

To help address that, I took on a few projects around the house. Among other things, the grass native plants that cover my yard are a bit shorter after going through a couple of seed cycles to spread the wealth, there’s a huge container of delicious chicken salad in my fridge (and almost a gallon of individual servings of chicken stock interred in the freezer), the hampers are empty, and one currently needs sunglasses to look at the gleaming toilet and shower in my downstairs bathroom, and the pure, clear water in my fish tank.

I was still restless, especially after an oddly dead work Friday (what with end-of-summer vacations on everyone’s agenda) that even another thirty or so miles on my bicycle tires didn’t completely address.

So, I spent a pleasant hour or three at a couple of local drinking establishments, did the grocery shopping, and watched a few pleasant things on television in the company of cats who also don’t quite know what to do with themselves.

Regarding those television things, I can definitely recommend Paper Girls on Amazon Prime, a neat little young adult/Gen-X nostalgia/time-travel/feminist/sci-fi concoction that I quite enjoyed over a couple of days, The Sandman on Netflix, which I’m a few episodes into, based on Neil Gaiman’s career-making comic series, and the pleasantly silly and ridiculous movie adaptation of the Uncharted game series, which my son and I quite enjoyed watching on Sunday evening.

I also spent most of the weekend off the internet, which is something I highly recommend everyone do regularly, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Senate passed the IRA bill, which is going to invest heavily in fighting climate change, make some important changes to ensure that corporations pay their fair share of taxes, and will take some long-overdue steps to reduce prescription drug prices in this country. Is it perfect? Hardly. Is it nonetheless excellent news that will make historic changes to policy? Definitely. Looking forward to watching the House pass it later this week and follow that up with the President signing it into law.

So that’s the weekend; the week ahead looks pretty typical – work and exercise and the usual grind, apart from picking some folks up at the airport on Tuesday, while I start thinking about returning to DragonCon over labor day and all the preparation that particular endeavor entails, especially given current circumstances. That said, I’m looking forward to going back and playing music with my friends again.