Random bits of update

Jul 06, 2009 14:14

Today is the fourth day of a long weekend. We originally had a three day long weekend but I decided to take today off as well and catch up on some other random stuff that can only be done during the work week. I've definitely been appreciating the time off. Peter is off to Houston visiting family. Noodle has been absolutely crazy every morning each of these days. Thankfully I've been feeling like an old man and ending up in bed around ten each evening and have survived the early morning wake-ups without too many problems.

(Although we could both deal without the *yarf* at our heads at 7.)

Saturday we went to our third Motor City Bears event of the year - a pool party at one of the members house. There was probably over sixty people there by the time everything was said and done. We managed to get a bit of sun and had just enough sunscreen on in order to not have any serious burns. The big trick will be getting sun other than on the top of our shoulders since those have been crisped at least twice now. :-)

We also got to see Nate from Doug's birthday party a few weeks ago. We understand that even with the SPF 45 that he managed to turn himself into a lobster.

(Geek moment: I always have a hard time writing SPF and not thinking link-state routing.)

Since we're going to the MCB canoe trip in two weeks, we finally decided to re-join MCB. I mostly dropped my membership a few years at the apex of the typical drama that seems to occur regularly in such groups. Since then, they've managed to purge themselves of some of the toxic individuals responsible for the problems while at the same time having a good core group of people working to have fun stuff happening on a regular basis.

Sunday for the most part was just random projects. Chris has been busy enough with work that he's been burning hours on the weekends to keep up with them. I spent the day catching up on random projects that have been sitting around for a while: Assembling the bench for our garden that Liam and Dave got Chris for his birthday. Recovering a bit of order from different pieces of the house. (ZOMG, we can see the floor in the bedroom closet for the first time in over a year.) That sort of thing.

I even managed to learn how to properly fold a dress shirt for the first time. There were plenty of videos on the net which showed the same two flip technique made famous by the loud chinese videos being used on long sleeve shirts but that doesn't work so well on flannel.

Going back a bit further, my parents stopped by briefly on the way back from their rambling vacation around the U.S. They stopped in North Carolina to visit my brother, made it through other parts of the South and eventually worked their way back up to us. I'm sure my Dad thought the visit was the right length since they were there for dinner and not much longer. :-) The only bad news is my mother mentioned that she's now fully a type-2 diabetic and is on the usual medications to control her blood sugar. It's yet another hint that I've been wise to control my blood sugar over the last several years.

We've also been having Doug and Shawn over regularly to work through True Blood, Season 1. Peter picked this up for us a few weeks ago. I didn't have any major expectations about what to think about either the show itself or its premise but we've been really enjoying it. Our only problem is that we've not bothered with any sort of pay channels like HBO for years. Given the way they tier the services, it's just not been worth our while for as much as we actually watch TV.

As it is, we gave up on Netflix for a while since we'd had one set of videos sitting on top of the TV for almost a full year unwatched. Netflix still suits the way we actually watch TV but we still don't watch enough to use the service unless we know we're going to have some down time. In the future we may be better about suspending the service when we're not using it. For now, it'll probably sit dormant until winter time.

The Summer is shaping up in our usual pattern: We're going to a few highland games. We're going canoeing. We have a tiki party scheduled and need to do some additional planning. We're hoping to bike some more. It'd be nice if we could plan on taking a short trip to see random people out of state as well - we'll see how things shape up.

In final good news, in what shouldn't need to be news at all, my employer had just recently revised its same-sex partner benefits and Chris is now on my health care. Given that we use BCBS of Massachusetts, it's not surprising that they can underwrite the plan. Previously the company had required that partners be with each other, with supporting documentation, for seven years. I hope that health care reform in Washington makes some progress because this simply shouldn't be an issue. But, it's Washington and I have limited hope at best.

health insurance, diabetes, visiting, motor city bears, home projects

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