Fogwall over the bay, Aug 28
Today is Labor Day and due to a work perk (a Friday off every month), I am on day 3 of a 4 day weekend. Often weekends are a bust as far as moving anything forward, but we got some good stuff done this weekend.
Around the house
Cleaned out the whole garage! Ezra was biking in the driveway and while I was out there, I started to clear off the workbench that had been buried in “things that need to go elsewhere.” When the bench was clear, I kept going. And by the end of it we had a swept, tidy (well, tidier) garage with a small pile of things to throw away or donate. The notable find: a slightly expired MRE (meals-ready-to-eat) package. The kids sampled a cookie that probably taste stale when it was “freshly” baked, and found it passable.
On Saturday night, we had a family over with similar aged boys and while they watched a movie and played laser tag, we enjoyed a bottle or two of wine and some adult conversation in relative peace and quiet.
New fun toy: I had read that robot vacuums had gotten much smarter since our last one 5 years ago and set a new one up. Now with the mapping and no-go zones set up, the war against dustballs and cat hair has turned. The other bonus of having a robot vacuum on a schedule is motivation to keep the kids’ toys off the floor. Win, win.
Music and movies
The band of choice this weekend has been lots of Tangerine Dream, specifically the movie soundtracks of Sorcerer (1977) and Three O’Clock High (1987). The moody synths make for great late-night reading music.
In a perhaps-questionable parenting choice, we watched Godzilla (2014) as a family last night. Finn has been obsessing some over Godzilla, and decided to put Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974) on for him. Ezra joined in and not being able to read the subtitles, we switched over to Godzilla. Kids loved it and no nightmares (yet).
After the kids have gone down to bed, we’ve been on bit of a movie binge. The highlights for me was watching Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (which I loved) for the first time, and rewatched Shaun of the Dead for probably the 10th time.
Reading
I’m in between books at the moment so I’ve been taking time to cleaning up my to-do lists which meant dipping in and out of the Getting Things Done book. I’ve moved all lists, mail, calendars and notes over to the Apple ecosystem and I’m finding Reminders very good so far.
The kids are heading to the playground so with that, I’m signing off. I haven’t written a post here in a long time, but wanted to try a quick stream-of-consciousness, unedited braindump for once.