jimsjournal
Father's Day weekend -- 06/17/01
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I was just about to mention what I did on Saturday... and had a brief moment when I couldn't even remember anything about that day.

Friday I worked from home. (Hmmm, how come we say "work from home" instead of "work at home"?) Busy, busy, busy... all morning and into the early afternoon. Then took some time off and met Nancy at her school to accompany her to an after school get-together at a country club (a local private golf course that was recently purchased and added to the growing Pequod tribal resort empire)... have a beer, munch on stuffed mushrooms and veggies and dip and breaded chicken strips, etc., and chat with her collegues... only spent an hour or so there and then back home, back to the dining room table covered with my laptop and half a dozen binders containing various manuals, collections of white papers, drafts of the course, etc., a couple of pads with my semi-illegible scribbling, etc.

Nancy was home only long enough for a quick shower and change of clothes and she was off to meet some of her tennis playing friends, not for a tennis match, but for dinner and a play. They ate at the Union Brew Pub in Providence -- I'd located a restaurant review and a menu on the Internet for her -- and she reported that she liked the food and the beer she'd chosen (a pale summer ale). The theatrical event was part of a series featuring women playwrights... she said it was a bit strange but interesting.

Me? I worked until it was almost time to go pick Sean up from work at eight p.m. In fact, despite working from home all day, I almost missed getting in a workout (this, I'm afraid, is all too common)... Sean didn't get out of work until almost 8:25... so by the time I got us back home and changed into running shorts, etc., it was really getting too dark to run (those of you who live in the more western fringes of your time zones may find that strange, but remember that Rhode Island is in the eastern part of the Eastern Time Zone... so that sunset comes probably at least twenty minutes sooner than it did for us in Binghamton, in upstate New York, and at least 35 minutes sooner than in, say, Pittsburgh). So I headed down to the basement and used my treadmill.

The reason Saturday was not exactly memorable was because I mostly spent it doing various chores... starting with feeding the cat around six a.m. (he doesn't care if its a weekend).... Lazy start for the day, reading the newspaper, drinking coffee... Hit various stores, get string for the weed-eater, go grocery shopping, etc. Mow the front lawn. Thread the string onto the electric trimmer and trim the edges of the lawn.

It was hot and humid on Saturday... got up into the mid-80's... which may not seem like much to folks from Texas, but will pass for pretty hot for June along the shore here (we're always cooler than inland during warm weather)... and I was pretty wilted... When I got back from giving Sean and some friends a ride, I was thinking about going for a run, but I was feeling really drained from yardwork, etc., and when Nancy invited me to join her on the deck for a coffee, I grabbed an nice cold Bass ale from the 'fridge and just relaxed.

In fact, I announced that I saw no point to cooking dinner for just the two of us and suggested take-out fish and chips... I stopped at Holly's Video Source on my way and rented Miss Congeniality. We ate dinner out on our deck in the twilight, and then came in to watch the movie. Okay, so it's probably not going to make a list of top movies of all time, but it was amusing. Sandra Bullock and Michael Caine and Candice Bergen and yes, even William Shatner, were all quite good in their roles and all provided a number of laughs. Decent light entertainment.

Jennifer was about to dash off to work at eleven when she discovered she'd come home from work Saturday morning with her headlights on (very thick around seven a.m.) and had forgotten to turn them off so her battery was dead and she had to quickly borrow my car.

Sunday morning, after working my way through the Sunday paper, I hooked her car up to a trickle charger... and managed to spend ten minutes or so just relaxing in my hammock in the backyard, ahhhh.... Adam phoned from Brooklyn to wish me a happy father's day and asked me how I liked the torrential downpour. I told him it was just cloudy here although it felt like rain was coming. I warmed up on the treadmill and then started off on my run... I got about half a mile away when it began to rain so I made a quick u-turn and dashed for home, figuring that it was not a good thing to have this electrical charger plugged in out in the rain.... I got her car started and parked it in the driveway, put the charger and extension cord on the front porch and considered heading out to finish my run... the rain had slacked off, but it looked as if it could get heavy at any moment, so I went back down to the treadmill.

Nancy wanted to go to a brand new Home Depot store in North Kingstown, so off we went -- through heavy rain -- only to discover that it was not yet open for business. I suggested that as long as we had gone that far (about ten or twelve miles) we might as well go another ten to the Home Depot in Warwick but Nancy decided she wanted to look at plants and garden stuff at the North Kingstown WalMart instead... so... wandered around in WallyWorld for an hour or so... then return home through an absolute downpour. And more of the usual, return the video, grab a few things at the supermarket (Jennifer said we needed sugar -- she was making a cake for Lia's birthday -- but a call to home from my cell phone while in the supermarket revealed a few other things to pick up. Fix dinner.... eat dinner... etc.

But I had a very pleasant Father's Day... a phone call from Adam and being at home with Nancy and the kids... and I got a DVD and a cool necktie.... it has small pictures of the space shuttle on it (Nancy bought it at a Smithsonian gift shop while down in Washington a few weeks ago with her eighth grade students)....

I deeply miss my father but I'm glad that we did have so many years together...

Hope you had a good weekend.



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