Category Archives: weekend

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Fun and Curses

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This weekend was interesting, in the sense of “May you live in interesting times” form of the old Chinese proverb.

(If you are really curious, that phrase is reputed to be the mildest of three canonical Chinese curses. In order of increasing severity:

  • May you live in interesting times
  • May you come to the attention of those in authority
  • May you find what you are looking for

For the convoluted history, check out “May you live in interesting times” from Wikipedia.)

Saturday night was the Ninth Annual Community Caring Hands Trivia Contest. Our team was the defending champion and we won going away again Saturday. That makes if 3 out of the last 3 years and 6 of the last 8. Proof positive that we are indeed trivial. Our team consists of a CPA, lawyer, surgeon, a home schooled jack of all trades, a school teacher, and myself. The school teacher was a sub for our retired librarian – she was off at a family reunion in Lincoln and so couldn’t join us this year.

The contest is always fun and is a fund raising event for Community Caring Hands, a local group formed when we were informed that we we too small an area to support a Habitat for Humanity branch. A retired professor from the local community college presides in full academic robes. (He has written a newspaper trivia column for the last 20 years, so he has an amazing amount of trivia to hand.)  There are between 15 and 25 teams each year with each team consisting of 6 members. The master of ceremonies reads each question aloud and the teams have 30 seconds to write their answers on a slip of paper and give them to the runners when time is called. The contest is divided into 9 groups of 8 questions each, with each group concentrating on a specific broad areas. Some of the groups are Science, Entertainment, Literature, Geography, TV, etc. Prizes are also awarded for the most amusing (and incorrect) answers in each group.

To give a flavor of the questions, here are a couple that stuck with me form this years contest:

  • What was the given name of the Joker from Batman Comics?
  • What geographic feature known to the Lakota as the Six Grandfathers was renamed after a lawyer as punishment to the Lakota?
  • What astronaut flew in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs?
  • The travelers in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales were served by someone with the same title as a U.S. Navy rank. What is that rank?

(The answers are in the first comment – no peeking!)

That was the fun part of weekend. The cursed interesting part is that the dryer quit heating on Sunday. So that means that today I have it disassembled all over the laundry room to see if it is one of the thermostats or the heating element that has departed these earthly realms. Fortunately it warmed up a bit outside today and is windy and in the fifties so I could hang all the damp and wet clothes out to dry in the breeze.

Which in turn reminded me of my childhood. I can remember hanging bedding out to dry in the winter when I was a kid and letting it freeze dry. I always thought that was neat, especially going out and bringing in the sheets as the sun went down. They’d be these big stiff crackly things that expired their last bit of moisture as they thawed entering the warm house. Now that I am no longer a kid, the whole thing seems no where near as neat now.

So what was your weekend like?

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The Weekend

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This weekend was interesting.  (Pay attention since there are questions to be answered!) The weekend started early when L came in Thursday evening while I was still at the county fair manning the EMS authority information booth.

To be truthful, I should have said I was helping pick up what was left of the EMS booth. After a day with temperatures in the 100+ range, the evening storms really built up and about 6:30 it started to rain. We weren’t worried. But then the wind started to whip and we were struggling like mad to keep our tent on the ground. Stakes and counter-weights didn’t seem to do much good in the face of the severe wind. The Army tent/booth next to us was utterly destroyed in no time. So were all the others we could spot through the sheets of water and the wind.  We managed to keep our tent on the ground, but the chairs and literature and even tables took to the air, some never to be found. About the time steel picnic tables started flying past us in mid-air, we called it a day. We cut the canvas anchor ropes so the frame wouldn’t fly off and bean someone, and then sprinted to shelter under the grandstand. We found out later that the wind was measured at 80-85 mph. The sheriff and his crew was busy evacuating the people in the grandstand seats for the rodeo, moving them to the shelter under the grandstand. It was the first time in anyone’s memory that the grandstand had to be evacuated (the grandstand holds ~15,000 people when full). An hour later it all was clear, but the carnival rides and the outdoor booths were down for the count until they could be checked and re-erected. Needless to say, we packed up what we could gather and called it a day at the booth. The wind and rain had built up coming down from Denver and then got really feisty when they heat fueled out here on the plains. A lot of tree limbs and trees were down along with numerous power line breaks throughout town. That coupled with flooding made for an interesting evening for the emergency crews. But it did drop the temperature into the 60s. A lot of hard work by everyone and the fair continued on and most of the trees are cleaned up. Just another blowy day on the plains.

Friday when I was at the grocery store, I ran into the brother of a high school classmate. He said his brother was coming down for the western show Saturday and he was having a “small” party for a hundred people before the concert. His brother is a high school classmate of both L and I that we hadn’t seen in a few years, so we said we’d drop by. When I told L of the party and where it was at, she made the remark that this was the only place she knew of where people built garages specifically with holding parties in mind. I disagreed. Understand that these are not run of the mill garages. They typically have running water and tiled floors and big screen tvs and … They might work on a car or truck in them, but they are more used to hold parties (and they are not small – 4-7 car size). So my questions to you are: 1) Have you ever attended a party held in a garage? and if so 2) Was it a fancy garage of a plain old shop type garage?

Saturday morning we did yard work to clean up and I got to mow the lawn. L and her mother headed off to watch the fair parade while I battled a broken cable on the lawn mower. They then went out to the fair and got a hamburger (why do hamburgers grilled in the open at the fair taste so good?). We spent the afternoon doing miscellaneous tasks, napping, and then getting ready for the party.

We had a good time and some excellent margaritas Saturday evening at the party along with good conversations. The classmate who was down from Boulder and I go back to grade school. We were the iron horse champions of 4th and 5th grade and were on the same wrestling team in high school. I can remember writing his book reports in grade school in return for being invited over to his house to watch the original campy Batman series on their {*gasp*} color tv (one of the few I knew of at that time). He hit a bad patch after high school and ended up serving a few years in prison. He was one of those people where prison was the wake up call they needed and it really turned him around. He’s been a real straight arrow for the last 30 years since then. It was good to talk to him again.

When the revelers left for the concert on the tour bus (the classmate runs a tour bus on the side to take people to tailgate at the Broncos games and to squire around celebrities – it is all fitted out with leather couches and signed autograph galleries of all the country western stars he has transported) so that there were no drunk driving issues, we took our leave and headed to mom’s house. We had been invited to come rejoin the party after the concert, but demurred – we’re getting too old for that 4am partying! Spent a bit of time visiting with mom and then headed back home.

Today L had to head back early to the mountains since she had a social function to attend. She was going to pick the Son up from a concert he had bicycled to and then proceed to the function. The party featured a local singer/guitarist (as both performer and honoree) that they both wanted to hear, so I suspect they were happy. Molly moped and I watched a bit of the inagural pre-season football game to pass the evening. Yea Football!!!!!

So what did you do for the weekend? And don’t forget to answer the garage questions!

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The Weekend

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This weekend was a mixed bag, matched to the weather. It was in the 80’s Saturday, but today was close to 100 today and the rest of the week looks to be back to the normal toasty warmth.

Saturday started by picking up mom and going to cut some rhubarb. Given that L and the Son love rhubarb sauce (the Son with ice cream), one can never have too much rhubarb. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in the friends patch where we went to pick. We got what there was and headed out.

On the way home, we stopped by my place to pick up some tools and then headed back to mom’s place. While she snapped green beans picked from the garden and chopped up the rhubarb, I trimmed a few trees that were too close to the house and then set up the onion racks. The early onions are getting ready to be picked and then finish drying on the sun racks before storage. I’m getting an education in onions, since some of the varieties haven’t lived up to expectation this year. Don’t know whether it is the strange weather this year or just the varieties.

It seems that many plants have been confused by the weather this year. Our peppers and cantaloupes have blooms galore, but very few peppers or cantaloupes have set on. The winter squash have been very slow to set on squash and may not make it to maturity before the freezing weather arrives. The turnips and kohlrabi have done well, as did the radishes. The beans are doing fine and the cucumbers are just starting to be ready as are the zucchini. The tomatoes are doing just great after looking like they were going to die early in the year. One crop that has thrived with the moist and cool early summer has been the weeds. The Canadian thistle seems to grow inches a day if you don’t keep after it.

After finishing at mom’s house, I came home and mowed the lawn and did some trimming and then got cleaned up to attend the birthday party of my writer friend. This was his last chance to celebrate being a twenty-something before he hits the big 30 next year. His dad hosted a BBQ in his honor, so we had corn on the cob, BBQ’d sausage, jalapeño baked beans, fruit, salad, and other goodies. Then we topped it off with an ice cream cake just before the host had to go on an emergency call (he is a vet and runs a small animal clinic, so he many times gets called out in the evening).

It was a good party with good friends. My friend T, who had serious back surgery a while ago was there. He’s still in a neck collar and moves like a stiff robot, but at least he can feel his fingers again. He’s off the morphine and down to percocet, hoping to be off the pain meds entirely in a short while. It will be interesting to see how the recovery goes; it was just good to see him up and about and showing some of his old vim and vinegar.

Given that the birthday boy and I both share a rather twisted sense of humor, I made him take an oath to become the “official” crank handler for the office of the mayor before I’d let him open his present. I then gave him a sample of what he was going to have to handle that left him grinning from ear to ear. (Most people don’t realize it, but mayors get an interesting amount of crank mail from causes near and far. After all, it is easy to get the address of mayors and if they bite it means a PR gem. At least the cranks that mail generally aren’t quite as odd as the tin foil hat people.) I also gave him a copy of a short story he has been desiring for a while. It is one of those out-of-print classics that are a must read in the genre; I had loaned it to him a while ago and he was duly impressed by it. I think he enjoyed getting the copy.

Today was a lazy day. It was up to 90 by 10am, so I made the strategic decision to relax and read the Sunday paper. That plus my beloved crossword puzzles and some work on the computer made it a fun day. Talked to L in the evening (she was stuck in the mountains again this weekend) and she said it was once again raining and cold up there. It has been rainy and cold for most of the last couple of weeks up there, even leaving a dusting of snow on the hills one day. Seems weather is like water – you could make a lot of money if you could move it from one place to another at a low cost.

Enough drivel for tonight. More later.