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The Weekend that Was
Mar. 27th, 2006 03:02 pmThe rain is falling again outside. It's been a wet winter. The Bay Area appears to be running 120-150% of rainfall norm, while poor SoCal has been getting positively drenched, running about 250% of norm. It looks like we're going to have rain on and off all week.
And yet Sunday was an entirely and totally beautiful day. I opened up the several windows in our house which actually have screens that'll keep the cats in and luxuriated in the ever-so-slightly chill Spring air.
This last weekend was a strange one. Kim extended her stay in Nebraska until Sunday, and so I was on my own. I'd already cancelled gaming on Saturday, thinking that Kim would be back that day, and so I ended up with no plans and the house to myself.
Saturday I wandered Berkeley a bit, skimming through many used book stores, something I used to do on a weekly basis, but now hardly ever do. I got caught in one 10 minute or so downpour, but while dodging from awning to overhang I ran into Dana and Anne who I hadn't seen in a while. We talked for a bit and by the time they had to move on the rain had stopped.
In a weekend of weird meetings I also ran into my brother, Rob, on Sunday. I was just stepping outside the house to dump some trash, and there he was on the sidewalk, cell-phone to ear. He was apparently calling someone--probably my mom or other brother--hoping to find out where my house was. We just talked for a few minutes. He had a friend he was meeting here in Berkeley. But it was good to see him. It'd been a few years, and he'd gotten big in that time. He's 19 now, and I was momentarily flabberghasted that he looks like the students that I see every day here at Cal.
Throughout the week that Kim was gone, and this weekend, I zoned out with much TV to set aside current real-life problems. Thanks to Netflix I watched the first 12 episodes of season 4 of 24. It's fun, but not deep, and there seems to be an increasing amount of repetition of plots from previous seasons (a mole in CTU; a CTU member's loved one is caught in the middle of a terrorist attack; etc).
I also watched the first two episodes of the new Doctor Who, which my TiVo had dutifully recorded, and I was quite pleased with them. It's still campy, which I hadn't expected, but the new focus on characterization and directing is terrific. Oddly it feels to me like it has an 80s or 90s pop feel, but perhaps that's just Britain.
In any case, it makes me want to watch the last couple of seasons of the original series, because I lost track of it when I moved up here to Berkeley, and so my viewings of Doctors 6 + 7 are extremely sporadic. Unfortunately the DVD releases of Doctor Who look equally sporadic.
I cleaned much while Kim was gone. I thought she'd appreciate coming home to a clean(er) home so I spent perhaps 10 hours cleaning up over the course of the week. Much of that was on the weekend, and much of it was yesterday.
We now have lots of cleaner floors and cleaner flat surfaces and a few additional pictures hung. Kim seemed pleased.
I'm sore today from the work I did yesterday.
Kim is of course now home. She had a bit of bad transit karma and her trip home ended up delayed a bit more than an hour total, but I met her at the BART station a bit after midnight and we made it home by 12.30.
I've been working today, but I'm taking tomorrow off, both because it's her birthday and because I'd like to spend some time with her.
And my dad & step-mom are coming up tomorrow evening to celebrate our birthdays.
And yet Sunday was an entirely and totally beautiful day. I opened up the several windows in our house which actually have screens that'll keep the cats in and luxuriated in the ever-so-slightly chill Spring air.
This last weekend was a strange one. Kim extended her stay in Nebraska until Sunday, and so I was on my own. I'd already cancelled gaming on Saturday, thinking that Kim would be back that day, and so I ended up with no plans and the house to myself.
Saturday I wandered Berkeley a bit, skimming through many used book stores, something I used to do on a weekly basis, but now hardly ever do. I got caught in one 10 minute or so downpour, but while dodging from awning to overhang I ran into Dana and Anne who I hadn't seen in a while. We talked for a bit and by the time they had to move on the rain had stopped.
In a weekend of weird meetings I also ran into my brother, Rob, on Sunday. I was just stepping outside the house to dump some trash, and there he was on the sidewalk, cell-phone to ear. He was apparently calling someone--probably my mom or other brother--hoping to find out where my house was. We just talked for a few minutes. He had a friend he was meeting here in Berkeley. But it was good to see him. It'd been a few years, and he'd gotten big in that time. He's 19 now, and I was momentarily flabberghasted that he looks like the students that I see every day here at Cal.
Throughout the week that Kim was gone, and this weekend, I zoned out with much TV to set aside current real-life problems. Thanks to Netflix I watched the first 12 episodes of season 4 of 24. It's fun, but not deep, and there seems to be an increasing amount of repetition of plots from previous seasons (a mole in CTU; a CTU member's loved one is caught in the middle of a terrorist attack; etc).
I also watched the first two episodes of the new Doctor Who, which my TiVo had dutifully recorded, and I was quite pleased with them. It's still campy, which I hadn't expected, but the new focus on characterization and directing is terrific. Oddly it feels to me like it has an 80s or 90s pop feel, but perhaps that's just Britain.
In any case, it makes me want to watch the last couple of seasons of the original series, because I lost track of it when I moved up here to Berkeley, and so my viewings of Doctors 6 + 7 are extremely sporadic. Unfortunately the DVD releases of Doctor Who look equally sporadic.
I cleaned much while Kim was gone. I thought she'd appreciate coming home to a clean(er) home so I spent perhaps 10 hours cleaning up over the course of the week. Much of that was on the weekend, and much of it was yesterday.
We now have lots of cleaner floors and cleaner flat surfaces and a few additional pictures hung. Kim seemed pleased.
I'm sore today from the work I did yesterday.
Kim is of course now home. She had a bit of bad transit karma and her trip home ended up delayed a bit more than an hour total, but I met her at the BART station a bit after midnight and we made it home by 12.30.
I've been working today, but I'm taking tomorrow off, both because it's her birthday and because I'd like to spend some time with her.
And my dad & step-mom are coming up tomorrow evening to celebrate our birthdays.