Extracting myself from the weekend
Wow. This weekend was incredible - such beautiful weather, and I was busy day and night since Friday. I have the bright red sun burn on my neck to show for it actually, but it's not a bad thing.
On Friday evening and Saturday Martin and I helped Diego get ready to go back to Ireland. Actually, seeing him go is a bummer, but I look at it like Summer Break like when we were in college: He's coming back in a few months once his visa stuff works out and I'm sure he'll be back before we know it. Since he's been here, we've had more all night gaming sessions than I've had in many, many years. Believe it or not, I'm *happily* holding on to Diego's XBox while he's gone - Winning 11 and Halo freakin' rule. But still, it won't be the same without another insane night owl like Diego.
On Saturday morning before I went over to Diego's, Ana and Alex and I spent a few hours at the Sunset Magazine Celebration Weekend which happens here in our neighborhood every year and that was a lot of fun. Lots of interesting booths, music, wine and kettle corn (mmmm). The demonstrations inspired me to take cooking classes sometime. Then on Saturday evening I actually cleaned out the garage. It was one of those chain reaction things... I'm also holding on to Diego's computer desk until he gets back, but I ended up not having any room in my garage because of the millions of empty moving and Ikea boxes and general disarray. So I spent a few hours with a box cutter, a broom, and various insect sprays to kill all the spiders. (We've got *way* too many spiders here - both Alex and Ana have been bitten and I'm just generally scared of them, so I've been on a an arachnid assasination binge lately).
Yesterday we held a little belated birthday party for Alex and invited over some friends with kids (Martin, Fabrizio, and Ana's friend Diana). So at 8 a.m. sharp I got up and ran over to Home Depot to get a mower since the yard needed it and the mower I have is pretty decrepit. On the way my Mom called and suggested I get an electric mower since the yard is so small and then I wouldn't have to fuss with gas and oil and maintenence, etc. I took her advice and though the 100 foot heavy orange cord is a bit of a pain in the ass to manage, the mower itself is great. It's more like a "Lawn Vacuum" instead. Flip the switch and starts humming and sucking up grass, let go and it stops. Pretty neat. The party was supposed to only last a couple hours, but Ana pulled out an inflatible pool that a friend in an apartment gave us and Alex and his three little friends spent several hours splashing around, running around, knocking heads, etc. It's really nice having a back yard!
Then last night I stopped by Mike and Elle's for a few hours because the ever popular Ewan is here in town for the PalmSource Dev Con. That short visit ended up (of course) lasting several hours as we argued over whether Palm was doomed (yes) and how long it was going to take (shortly) and whether Ewan's latest project, All About Palm was a waste of time or not (of course!). ;-)
Now I'm sitting here on Monday morning and I'm thinking, "Wow." I'm not used to doing that much on weekends. I need another weekend to recover.
-Russ