[Roundup] The Weekend Thus Far
This weekend has pretty much been low-key for me. Yesterday involved paying a visit to my mother's house. She was having a garage sale with my grandmother and my aunt and cousin from Florida were supposed to be dropping by on their way from being up north and we were supposed to go to dinner.
Unfortunately my grandmother did not fully understand the plans my aunt and cousin had and announced it would be a late lunch/early dinner thing. With that information I left Ann Arbor at about 12p and arrived at my mother's at just after 1p. I hung out there until the sale ended and my mother's new dryer was installed.
As mom was dealing with the delivery guys, I chatted in the living room with my grandmother. She recently purchased a new house in one of the more upscale neighborhoods back home. This has been a source of contention with my mother, my grandmother, and my uncle who lives in Michigan. My own personal opinion is that the house my grandmother has is perfectly fine for her especially since she has this grand notion of my mother eventually moving in with her when the time comes for my grandmother to need more assistance with her living situation. I think my grandmother was perfectly situated in her house right now because she has a larger plot of land than most houses have (the one she bought has a back yard half the size of her current one at most), it is paid off, has low property taxes among a lot of things.
As she and I talked, I pretended to be oblivious as to the drama as both my uncle and mother had sat down with her and had it out about the house. The going theory, which I agree with, is my grandmother has carried a chip on her shoulder about her lot in life and now that she has my late great aunt's money, she is flaunting it. For example she went up north to visit friends and while she was up there bought a brand new Ford Five-Hundred off the lot without even test driving it. My uncle pointed that out and basically told my grandmother flat-out that she did that because she wanted to show the people she knew up there she had money. He based this on the fact that she wanted a Five-Hundred because it has things like adjustable foot pedals and such which she wanted but the one she bought did not come with those. My uncle who is in racing and very familiar with cars said the description of the features sounds like it was a custom order that was canceled after it was built and was sent to a dealership up north so the higher volume dealerships in the lower part of the state would not waste space with it. She also got it with leather seats when she has an active dog that rides around with her. Definitely not a good combination.
While she and I were chatting she asked me what I thought about the whole thing and I got very careful at that point. I told her my recommendation would have been to get with an architect and renovate the house she has already. She told me that she did not like the house she had because she hated the second level which I cannot blame her for since going up and down stairs gets tiring and hard for her after a while. She also commented how she did not like the neighborhood too much either. Mom had told me that part of the dislike of the house probably comes from the fact that my maternal grandfather built the house and later left my grandmother for a younger woman.
In the end I told my grandmother that as long as she liked what she had, was fully aware of things like the higher property taxes and could handle those, and was happy, that was all that mattered. She was pleased with my answer.
After the dryer was set my mom and I headed over to Mervyn's to exchange the wok she had bought me last weekend. It was priced at $70 originally, had gone on clearance at 50% off and then there was a special sale where you could take an additional 50% off clearance and she bought it for me then and got another 15% off with her discount. So a $70 wok turned into a $15 one. Unfortunately the pan section had a bur in one of the threads so I could not get the handle screwed on. So I brought it with me and we went to Mervyn's and one of her co-workers simply swapped the handle and pan from another set, made sure it assembled correctly, and we were all set. So now I have a 14" non-stick wok to do some cooking in.
After that mom and I headed over to see my grandmother's new house. We were unable to see much of the inside but we walked around it and noticed that someone had come and staked the property line so we called my grandmother and let her know so she could save herself the money the fencing people wanted to do it.
We then hung around that house and chatted for a bit while we waited to hear where my aunt and cousin were and such. I told my mom that if there was no word by 6p I was going to have to head home. She agreed and we started gathering my stuff. The phone rang it was my grandmother saying she had heard from them. They had been in a dead zone so the cell phone would not work and they were on their way but still a three hours drive north. That immediately precluded my staying so I headed home.
I ended up not going to the gym because I was too tired but I did not feel so bad about it since it would be the first day during my "experiment" period that I actually would not have some sort of physical activity on my workout calender. I went swimming for about 40min or so on Friday so I felt that a day off to rest would not hurt me so much.
-{ Sunday }-
Today has been a mix of bursts of work and rest. Don and I went to Lowe's where I bought some shelving for my kitchen so I put them together and have been spending time off-and-on organizing my kitchen and stocking them. The room itself seems smaller now just simply because of the volume of space the shelving takes up, but at the same time it feels bigger because I am getting counter and cupboard space back because I can now stick things like my bread maker, George Foreman grill, etc on there when I am not using them and keep my counter clear for other uses instead of having to shuffle things around. I will finish that work tomorrow since getting the dirty dishes out of the way is more of a priority at this point.
I also ended up going out to GNC to get two more things of Muscle Milk protein powder while it was still Gold Card days and still buy one, get one 50% off. I also paid the $2 and bought the MRI published books on their NO2 and CE2 supplements as well. Found some additional benefits I would get from both that I was not aware of and I found out one of the effects of NO2 is that some people do not experience delayed onset muscle soreness. That is wonderful news since DOMS can cause me huge delays and even derail my workouts.
My plans for the rest of the evening are to just relax a bit and read before heading to the gym to start working out at about 10p. After that comes the fun task of grocery shopping for the week.
Unfortunately my grandmother did not fully understand the plans my aunt and cousin had and announced it would be a late lunch/early dinner thing. With that information I left Ann Arbor at about 12p and arrived at my mother's at just after 1p. I hung out there until the sale ended and my mother's new dryer was installed.
As mom was dealing with the delivery guys, I chatted in the living room with my grandmother. She recently purchased a new house in one of the more upscale neighborhoods back home. This has been a source of contention with my mother, my grandmother, and my uncle who lives in Michigan. My own personal opinion is that the house my grandmother has is perfectly fine for her especially since she has this grand notion of my mother eventually moving in with her when the time comes for my grandmother to need more assistance with her living situation. I think my grandmother was perfectly situated in her house right now because she has a larger plot of land than most houses have (the one she bought has a back yard half the size of her current one at most), it is paid off, has low property taxes among a lot of things.
As she and I talked, I pretended to be oblivious as to the drama as both my uncle and mother had sat down with her and had it out about the house. The going theory, which I agree with, is my grandmother has carried a chip on her shoulder about her lot in life and now that she has my late great aunt's money, she is flaunting it. For example she went up north to visit friends and while she was up there bought a brand new Ford Five-Hundred off the lot without even test driving it. My uncle pointed that out and basically told my grandmother flat-out that she did that because she wanted to show the people she knew up there she had money. He based this on the fact that she wanted a Five-Hundred because it has things like adjustable foot pedals and such which she wanted but the one she bought did not come with those. My uncle who is in racing and very familiar with cars said the description of the features sounds like it was a custom order that was canceled after it was built and was sent to a dealership up north so the higher volume dealerships in the lower part of the state would not waste space with it. She also got it with leather seats when she has an active dog that rides around with her. Definitely not a good combination.
While she and I were chatting she asked me what I thought about the whole thing and I got very careful at that point. I told her my recommendation would have been to get with an architect and renovate the house she has already. She told me that she did not like the house she had because she hated the second level which I cannot blame her for since going up and down stairs gets tiring and hard for her after a while. She also commented how she did not like the neighborhood too much either. Mom had told me that part of the dislike of the house probably comes from the fact that my maternal grandfather built the house and later left my grandmother for a younger woman.
In the end I told my grandmother that as long as she liked what she had, was fully aware of things like the higher property taxes and could handle those, and was happy, that was all that mattered. She was pleased with my answer.
After the dryer was set my mom and I headed over to Mervyn's to exchange the wok she had bought me last weekend. It was priced at $70 originally, had gone on clearance at 50% off and then there was a special sale where you could take an additional 50% off clearance and she bought it for me then and got another 15% off with her discount. So a $70 wok turned into a $15 one. Unfortunately the pan section had a bur in one of the threads so I could not get the handle screwed on. So I brought it with me and we went to Mervyn's and one of her co-workers simply swapped the handle and pan from another set, made sure it assembled correctly, and we were all set. So now I have a 14" non-stick wok to do some cooking in.
After that mom and I headed over to see my grandmother's new house. We were unable to see much of the inside but we walked around it and noticed that someone had come and staked the property line so we called my grandmother and let her know so she could save herself the money the fencing people wanted to do it.
We then hung around that house and chatted for a bit while we waited to hear where my aunt and cousin were and such. I told my mom that if there was no word by 6p I was going to have to head home. She agreed and we started gathering my stuff. The phone rang it was my grandmother saying she had heard from them. They had been in a dead zone so the cell phone would not work and they were on their way but still a three hours drive north. That immediately precluded my staying so I headed home.
I ended up not going to the gym because I was too tired but I did not feel so bad about it since it would be the first day during my "experiment" period that I actually would not have some sort of physical activity on my workout calender. I went swimming for about 40min or so on Friday so I felt that a day off to rest would not hurt me so much.
-{ Sunday }-
Today has been a mix of bursts of work and rest. Don and I went to Lowe's where I bought some shelving for my kitchen so I put them together and have been spending time off-and-on organizing my kitchen and stocking them. The room itself seems smaller now just simply because of the volume of space the shelving takes up, but at the same time it feels bigger because I am getting counter and cupboard space back because I can now stick things like my bread maker, George Foreman grill, etc on there when I am not using them and keep my counter clear for other uses instead of having to shuffle things around. I will finish that work tomorrow since getting the dirty dishes out of the way is more of a priority at this point.
I also ended up going out to GNC to get two more things of Muscle Milk protein powder while it was still Gold Card days and still buy one, get one 50% off. I also paid the $2 and bought the MRI published books on their NO2 and CE2 supplements as well. Found some additional benefits I would get from both that I was not aware of and I found out one of the effects of NO2 is that some people do not experience delayed onset muscle soreness. That is wonderful news since DOMS can cause me huge delays and even derail my workouts.
My plans for the rest of the evening are to just relax a bit and read before heading to the gym to start working out at about 10p. After that comes the fun task of grocery shopping for the week.