stuff done: Friday-Saturday
1. Last-minute apartment cleanup before my parents' visit, i.e., I cleared and organized the piles of stuff that had collected on my coffee table, living room table, and kitchen counters over the past few months, and temporarily stashed some other stuff in my bedroom to free up my armchair for people to sit on. Also I dusted a few shelves, because reasons.
2. Collected trash from wastebaskets and took the combined bag to the trashcan outdoors. I think one more bag and the can will be ready for curbside pickup -- so, maybe early June?
3. Paid my monthly internet bill.
4. Welcomed my parents and Dottie! ♥
5. Bought potting soil at Agway, since my parents were helpfully around with a car to transport it, yay! I also bought a trowel to help plant my narcissus bulbs this fall.
6. Installed my air conditioner with Dad's help, since that is really a two-person job. We were unable to test whether the compressor is working because the lowest temperature the AC can be set to is 60F and the outdoor weather never got above 60F on Friday or Saturday, so I suppose I will just have to wait and see what happens when it turns warm again.
7. Winery tours with my parents. (We brought the dog along in the car, since she was trying to eat the edges of my carpets and we didn't really want to leave her alone.) We visited four wineries (Americana, Hosmer, Thirsty Owl, and Shepherdess Cellars -- the last is new within the last year or so), as a result of which I bought a tray of wineberry fudge (American always has free fudge samples; it's a dangerously effective marketing trick) and Dad bought me a bottle of red wine as a 'sorry for talking you into buying your own trowel instead of letting you borrow one of ours' gift. I mean, I do not mind having a trowel of my very own, but I'm not going to argue with free wine. *wry*
8. Dinner out at Maxie's Supper Club, which is a loosely New Orleans-themed restaurant that we'd been vaguely meaning to try for a while. Verdict: pretty good! It is a very unpretentious establishment, the starter starch thingy is sweet cornbread, and the dishes are tasty (though a bit on the spicy side for my parents' palates). Mom got shrimp & grits and a salad on the side; Dad got the fish fry; and I got a soft-shell crab po'boy with bacon, which was one of the daily specials. Then we headed home and had Mom's homemade peachenkuchen (...technically Pfirsichenkuchen, probably; and no, it's not the same thing as peach pie) for dessert.
9. Took care of Dottie overnight. She was not feeling great on Friday, and apparently refused breakfast in favor of trying to eat my parents' lawn; she was desperate for grass, which predictably got stuck in her throat and made her wheeze like a faulty bellows when she wasn't puking it back up. We did get her to eat dinner by dint of offering wet food only, and I got her to eat some more wet food around 11pm, at which point I also took her outside to pee and maybe poop. She scarfed another batch of grass before I got her to a pavement-only area, where I walked back and forth for a couple minutes until she seemed to switch focus from grass to a more general walk-and-sniff, and eventually deigned to piddle.
Around 2am, I woke up to a funny noise and found that Dottie had crawled under my bed to hide from the rain. Around 3am, I woke again and was able to coax her back out into her own bed, where I covered her thoroughly to help her hide from the sky's dangerous attention. *wry*
In the morning, I fed her (mostly wet food, with a little bit of dry kibble mixed in and a bunch of water to turn it into a sort of thick stew), which required me to physically carry her into the kitchen since she didn't want to get up. Once in the kitchen, she was quite amenable to eating, thank goodness, and when I took her outside to pee, she did NOT display any interest in the grass. Unfortunately, breakfast seemed to dislodge some of her late-night grass snack and she spent the morning doing that upsetting hack-wheeze bellows thing, which I am sure was exacerbated by general nerves. (Dottie is a much calmer traveler than Gigi, my childhood dog (whom we used to have to tranquilize to even get into the car), but she has never been enthusiastic about it and she's gotten less so with age.)
10. Breakfast with my parents, at my local tiny diner. I love them because they have a single pancake as a specific menu item, so you don't have to bring home ridiculous amounts of leftovers just to get pancake and eggs.
11. Bought some box wine, since we were running ahead of schedule and I figured I'd take advantage of their car one last time.
12. Bid farewell to my parents and Dottie. ♥
13. My normal eight-hour Saturday shift at the rental office.
14. Peeled the moldy layers off my sprouting onion and sprayed the thing with diluted anti-fungal solution. Hopefully this will help more than it hurts. (It did not seem to cause any harm to my pepper seedlings when I sprayed their little peat cylinders back in March, since they'd acquired fungal spores while they sat in storage for a year.)
15. Dumped the resulting gunk and some other compost into the communal bin.
16. Baked brownies for church coffee hour tomorrow morning.
And I think that's about it! It was a very full two days. :)
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2. Collected trash from wastebaskets and took the combined bag to the trashcan outdoors. I think one more bag and the can will be ready for curbside pickup -- so, maybe early June?
3. Paid my monthly internet bill.
4. Welcomed my parents and Dottie! ♥
5. Bought potting soil at Agway, since my parents were helpfully around with a car to transport it, yay! I also bought a trowel to help plant my narcissus bulbs this fall.
6. Installed my air conditioner with Dad's help, since that is really a two-person job. We were unable to test whether the compressor is working because the lowest temperature the AC can be set to is 60F and the outdoor weather never got above 60F on Friday or Saturday, so I suppose I will just have to wait and see what happens when it turns warm again.
7. Winery tours with my parents. (We brought the dog along in the car, since she was trying to eat the edges of my carpets and we didn't really want to leave her alone.) We visited four wineries (Americana, Hosmer, Thirsty Owl, and Shepherdess Cellars -- the last is new within the last year or so), as a result of which I bought a tray of wineberry fudge (American always has free fudge samples; it's a dangerously effective marketing trick) and Dad bought me a bottle of red wine as a 'sorry for talking you into buying your own trowel instead of letting you borrow one of ours' gift. I mean, I do not mind having a trowel of my very own, but I'm not going to argue with free wine. *wry*
8. Dinner out at Maxie's Supper Club, which is a loosely New Orleans-themed restaurant that we'd been vaguely meaning to try for a while. Verdict: pretty good! It is a very unpretentious establishment, the starter starch thingy is sweet cornbread, and the dishes are tasty (though a bit on the spicy side for my parents' palates). Mom got shrimp & grits and a salad on the side; Dad got the fish fry; and I got a soft-shell crab po'boy with bacon, which was one of the daily specials. Then we headed home and had Mom's homemade peachenkuchen (...technically Pfirsichenkuchen, probably; and no, it's not the same thing as peach pie) for dessert.
9. Took care of Dottie overnight. She was not feeling great on Friday, and apparently refused breakfast in favor of trying to eat my parents' lawn; she was desperate for grass, which predictably got stuck in her throat and made her wheeze like a faulty bellows when she wasn't puking it back up. We did get her to eat dinner by dint of offering wet food only, and I got her to eat some more wet food around 11pm, at which point I also took her outside to pee and maybe poop. She scarfed another batch of grass before I got her to a pavement-only area, where I walked back and forth for a couple minutes until she seemed to switch focus from grass to a more general walk-and-sniff, and eventually deigned to piddle.
Around 2am, I woke up to a funny noise and found that Dottie had crawled under my bed to hide from the rain. Around 3am, I woke again and was able to coax her back out into her own bed, where I covered her thoroughly to help her hide from the sky's dangerous attention. *wry*
In the morning, I fed her (mostly wet food, with a little bit of dry kibble mixed in and a bunch of water to turn it into a sort of thick stew), which required me to physically carry her into the kitchen since she didn't want to get up. Once in the kitchen, she was quite amenable to eating, thank goodness, and when I took her outside to pee, she did NOT display any interest in the grass. Unfortunately, breakfast seemed to dislodge some of her late-night grass snack and she spent the morning doing that upsetting hack-wheeze bellows thing, which I am sure was exacerbated by general nerves. (Dottie is a much calmer traveler than Gigi, my childhood dog (whom we used to have to tranquilize to even get into the car), but she has never been enthusiastic about it and she's gotten less so with age.)
10. Breakfast with my parents, at my local tiny diner. I love them because they have a single pancake as a specific menu item, so you don't have to bring home ridiculous amounts of leftovers just to get pancake and eggs.
11. Bought some box wine, since we were running ahead of schedule and I figured I'd take advantage of their car one last time.
12. Bid farewell to my parents and Dottie. ♥
13. My normal eight-hour Saturday shift at the rental office.
14. Peeled the moldy layers off my sprouting onion and sprayed the thing with diluted anti-fungal solution. Hopefully this will help more than it hurts. (It did not seem to cause any harm to my pepper seedlings when I sprayed their little peat cylinders back in March, since they'd acquired fungal spores while they sat in storage for a year.)
15. Dumped the resulting gunk and some other compost into the communal bin.
16. Baked brownies for church coffee hour tomorrow morning.
And I think that's about it! It was a very full two days. :)
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)