Jack of All Trades - Master of None
This past weekend was a bachelor's weekend for me. Well, sort of. It was more like a boys weekend, as Ben and I stayed home while Donna and Sarah went to Minnesota to tour Carleton College and attend a bridal party gathering for my niece. These weekends are a mixed blessing for me for a few reasons. While I like the peace and quiet of having less people around the house, by day 3 I am ready to have it back to normal. I don't ever get to the point of talking to myself, but I sure do talk to the dog and cats a lot more. This is not a healthy thing.
I also like the lack of a schedule structure. I can come and go as I please and do whatever is next on my agenda without redirection. The downside to this is I tend to want to "do it all" in a weekend. This weekend's projects included replacing our motion detector light overlooking the back yard and painting the front steps. I got through both of them and the 76 other things I needed to do as well, so in all it was a good weekend.
The light project went about as I planned including the usual SNAFU's. The first speed bump came five minutes into the project. After I had the light off, it started to rain. Nothing spells a good start to an electrical project that a wet base to work with. I managed to get it all covered in plastic and took to doing other things until the rain quit. The second snafu came when the locking nuts that I was careful to place on the tray of the stepladder I had were nowhere to be found when it came time to attach them. Oy!
Could they have dropped to the ground, I wondered? I got off the ladder and started looking. I found one right away and thought good. That was easy. Of course it took another five minutes before I found the second one, but was ecstatic when I did because they are a specialized nut and the last thing I wanted was a trip to the hardware store at this point.
Well I eventually got the light on and working. Because they are LED lights, it's a wee bit on the garish side for my liking, but, hey, at least it's energy efficient. So what if my backyard looks like a dentist's office.
Another drawback to a bachelor's weekend is that it brings to the fore my lack of cooking skills. Donna left plenty of easy to prepare meals and they worked out fine, but what I discovered is that I eat differently when she's not around. Many of my meals are eaten while standing up, on my way to something else. I'll eat out of the pan at times, over the sink of course, because I'm a gentleman caveman.
It's a sad disorder, my hatred of cooking. It's a wonder that I ever made it out of my bachelor years alive. When I weighed myself after Donna got back home I had actually lost 5 lbs. I'm convinced this was in part to working hard, but it is also attributable to my culinary-ineptitude. (Fear not, when I weighed myself the next day I had gained it all back. I'm like a yo yo that way with my weight sometimes.)
The final indicator that we were in the middle of a boy/bachelor weekend was our trip to get Ben some shoes. He decided kind of late that he wanted to go with some friends to the Homecoming dance at school. Donna was johnny-on-the-spot about getting him some dress clothes a few days prior, but at the last minute we realized he had no shoes.
Now, understand that Ben doesn't wear dress clothes that often. Plus, he's growing like a weed, so we didn't want to spend a lot on shoes for him, only to have him outgrow them in 6 months. We thought we'd try Goodwill first and see if we could luck out. We went in and made a beeline for the shoes because we're men and we were hunting. When I pulled out the second pair, Ben tried the right one on and said it fit. I saw that with a little shoe polish these would be fine. Total cost $4.99. Total time spent shopping, approximately 3 minutes. I said, "Should we go?" Ben said he wanted to look at the electronic junk, so we did that for 10 minutes. My point is that we could have been in and out of Goodwill with a very good pair of shoes for $5.00 in a record 7 minutes flat. If that isn't a guy's shopping dream, there isn't one.
In short, it was a good weekend. It's good for Donna and Sarah to get out (and in this case, road trip) together. It gave them time to talk and hang with the women side of the Landwehr family. She attested that it was a good weekend for them. It's good for Ben and I too. We're able to hang out and talk as well. I showed him the life skill of how to tie a tie for his dance and how to speed shop for shoes. Despite all this goodness, it's always nice to have the four of us back under one roof. It's the way it supposed to be.
Blogging off...
I also like the lack of a schedule structure. I can come and go as I please and do whatever is next on my agenda without redirection. The downside to this is I tend to want to "do it all" in a weekend. This weekend's projects included replacing our motion detector light overlooking the back yard and painting the front steps. I got through both of them and the 76 other things I needed to do as well, so in all it was a good weekend.The light project went about as I planned including the usual SNAFU's. The first speed bump came five minutes into the project. After I had the light off, it started to rain. Nothing spells a good start to an electrical project that a wet base to work with. I managed to get it all covered in plastic and took to doing other things until the rain quit. The second snafu came when the locking nuts that I was careful to place on the tray of the stepladder I had were nowhere to be found when it came time to attach them. Oy!
Could they have dropped to the ground, I wondered? I got off the ladder and started looking. I found one right away and thought good. That was easy. Of course it took another five minutes before I found the second one, but was ecstatic when I did because they are a specialized nut and the last thing I wanted was a trip to the hardware store at this point.
Well I eventually got the light on and working. Because they are LED lights, it's a wee bit on the garish side for my liking, but, hey, at least it's energy efficient. So what if my backyard looks like a dentist's office.
Another drawback to a bachelor's weekend is that it brings to the fore my lack of cooking skills. Donna left plenty of easy to prepare meals and they worked out fine, but what I discovered is that I eat differently when she's not around. Many of my meals are eaten while standing up, on my way to something else. I'll eat out of the pan at times, over the sink of course, because I'm a gentleman caveman.It's a sad disorder, my hatred of cooking. It's a wonder that I ever made it out of my bachelor years alive. When I weighed myself after Donna got back home I had actually lost 5 lbs. I'm convinced this was in part to working hard, but it is also attributable to my culinary-ineptitude. (Fear not, when I weighed myself the next day I had gained it all back. I'm like a yo yo that way with my weight sometimes.)
The final indicator that we were in the middle of a boy/bachelor weekend was our trip to get Ben some shoes. He decided kind of late that he wanted to go with some friends to the Homecoming dance at school. Donna was johnny-on-the-spot about getting him some dress clothes a few days prior, but at the last minute we realized he had no shoes.
Now, understand that Ben doesn't wear dress clothes that often. Plus, he's growing like a weed, so we didn't want to spend a lot on shoes for him, only to have him outgrow them in 6 months. We thought we'd try Goodwill first and see if we could luck out. We went in and made a beeline for the shoes because we're men and we were hunting. When I pulled out the second pair, Ben tried the right one on and said it fit. I saw that with a little shoe polish these would be fine. Total cost $4.99. Total time spent shopping, approximately 3 minutes. I said, "Should we go?" Ben said he wanted to look at the electronic junk, so we did that for 10 minutes. My point is that we could have been in and out of Goodwill with a very good pair of shoes for $5.00 in a record 7 minutes flat. If that isn't a guy's shopping dream, there isn't one.In short, it was a good weekend. It's good for Donna and Sarah to get out (and in this case, road trip) together. It gave them time to talk and hang with the women side of the Landwehr family. She attested that it was a good weekend for them. It's good for Ben and I too. We're able to hang out and talk as well. I showed him the life skill of how to tie a tie for his dance and how to speed shop for shoes. Despite all this goodness, it's always nice to have the four of us back under one roof. It's the way it supposed to be.
Blogging off...
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