“I like how helpful you are when you’re not busy with sidework,” my wife remarked with a smile this evening, after I had finished washing and storing all of the pots and pans while she was feeding our son his bedtime bottle. I like it, too — and I also like how having nothing in particular to do on the weekend makes it easier for me to enjoy all of life’s finer things. After spending nearly every weekend this summer working on a side project for a client, it’s nice to have a weekend free. And since the project is winding down, I may soon have a lot more weekends like it.
Among the best of life’s finer things is spending time with my wife and son, which I was able to do today in ample measure. Although it drizzled and was gloomy for most of the day, the cool temperatures (in the low ’70s!) made us eager to venture outdoors regardless. We took our son over to the local library and spent some time reading to him from the vast array of “board books”, which are probably the safest thing for him right now since he wants to grab everything with sufficient force to tear normal pages. It’s fun for me to carry him around rather than shuttle him in a stroller, both because he gets to ride up high and because I get to see up-close his reaction to the world around him. He was pretty fascinated by the library’s enormous, powered revolving door!
After the library, we stopped for ice cream. The local Braum’s keeps sending us coupons (even if they are addressed to the former owners of our house), so we keep scoring big chocolate Oreo mixes for about a buck and a half. They also last a long time; my wife and I typically share one and after eating around a third of it, we stick it in the freezer at home to enjoy later.
In the evening the rainclouds lifted and a brilliant pink and amber sunset took hold, during which I toyed around with a personal project after our son went to bed, exhausted (he missed his afternoon nap and was up for nearly six consecutive hours!). I also got to spend some time enjoying the cool weather, sitting on our back patio and catching up on a story that a friend sent me to review. It was a pretty idyllic weekend, even if my personal creative pursuits didn’t yield the results I had hoped for.
Speaking of stories, the adventure that my friend sent over reminded me that I’ve still got one (well, two actually) aborted stories of my own languishing around that need to be finished. I’ve started reviewing one of them and making a mental outline of where it needs to go between now and its conclusion. I always had a rough idea of how it would play out, but there was a pretty big gap where the last third of the story would go that I always assumed I’d just make up as I went. Once I got there, though, I felt pretty lost and stopped writing. This evening I’ve had some pretty good ideas of how to fill in that gap, so I’m going to make note of them on paper (well you know, virtual paper at least) before pushing ahead to finally complete the thing.
It’s back to work tomorrow, and now that I’ve gotten my energy back after all of last week’s late nights, I hope to make some good progress on the software application that we’re trying to get shipment-ready. Other news this week includes the release of Borderlands 2 on Tuesday (which I’ve already got preordered and paid off), the arrival of my wife’s iPhone 5 on Friday (or perhaps Thursday if she’s very lucky), and finally, finally the culmination of the whole stupid debacle with my iPhone 4S trade-in to Amazon. UPS is scheduled to deliver it to them tomorrow, and I expect to hear by Wednesday whether it’s worth what they quoted me. If it isn’t, they’re sending it back. At that point it’ll be on me to decide whether I keep it, or try to sell it elsewhere for significantly less and upgrade anyway. Ah, decisions.
Through it all, I hope to keep up this “one post per day” streak here at Oddball Update, even if that one post is just total dreck. Wish me luck. (Or don’t, I guess, if you’re not a particular fan of dreck.)
