As you may have heard, though maybe not, as the news seems to have forgotten this story, the furloughs got cut from eleven to six days. As such, today is my last furlough day. Starting next week, I’m back to working and getting paid for the customary forty hours per week. As much as I’ll love to have that extra few hundred bucks a paycheck back, part of me is going to miss these long weekends. On that previous assignment when I was working four ten hour days, I truly cherished my Fridays off – these Mondays, besides being one less day of my currently grueling commute, gave me a little bit of extra sleep, and a bit of time to decompress. As much as a pain in the behind this whole endeavor was (and may still be, because who knows what may happen next), it wasn’t all bad.

So, as is customary, here’s a sampling of the things I did while my employer told me I wasn’t allowed to go to work.

To quickly offer some context, I had a pretty awful week. The less said the better, so I won’t say more. However, on my drive home, I got a phone call that was provisionally some really good news. subsequent events have made this news a little less provisional. I’m not going to say any more publicly until I’m a little more sure, but if all goes well, I think it’s going to be a good development. After getting home, I helped pack the boy off to Scout camp (during which he had a good time – he says he caught an Oyster Toadfish while fishing from the pier, which, admit it, is pretty cool), then the rest of us took a ride across town to join some friends playing board and card games for a few hours. It was a pretty good night, where fun was had, and I got got share my provisionally good news with some people I care about.

Saturday was pretty typical. Took a run to the library and the farmers market, did some laundry, and then the girls and I took a ride over to the city, including dinner at one of my favorite places to eat, well, ever, The Galaxy Diner, where we had delicious sandwiches and fried dill pickles served to us by aloof, tattooed hipster girls.

Sunday was quiet as well – hung around at home, mostly. Did some more laundry, and played Mars Needs Mechanics, a new board game that came in the mail a week or two back (thanks to my backing the Kickstarter) from local concern Nevermore Games. We had lots of fun with it – it’s a great little market simulation with lots of cool steampunk trappings. I recommend giving it a shot.

Today, the unpaid day, the spouse and I spent a bit of time out this morning tracking down birthday gifts for a certain little girl; running to three or four different stores to obtain the mythical, so-called “Mane Six” in proper configuration. I hope the kid appreciates it (though I’m sure she will). I also filled out some paperwork related to Friday’s provisional good news, chatted on the phone with a friend for a while, went for a bike ride with the little girl mentioned above, which involved just as much petting all the neighborhood cats as it did riding our bikes, and played a couple of rounds of Kill Doctor Lucky, another board game I picked up recently (originally created by the awesome company Cheapass Games, which is kind of an interesting variation of Clue in reverse. My lovely wife won our first game on the first turn of the first round. I was impressed.

Not sure what I’ll do the rest of the day, what left of it there is. I expect I’ll probably be busy the next couple of weeks, if all proceeds as planned, so I’m going to try to enjoy the quiet a bit.