With all the sadness in the news this week, I’m focusing on the little moments of beauty and kindness and fun. We’re only a few hours into this long holiday weekend, but we’ve already been busy.
Steve and I went running at the local park at 8:00 am. We needed one good workout before running the 5K race in town on Monday. We run at different paces (I’m faster), so we did our own things. I crashed the Couch-to-5K group for the warm up and pep talk, and then left them to run 3 miles at a 10 minute mile pace. That pace is good enough, so I won’t embarrass myself on Monday and that’s all I care about.
When we came home, we made green smoothies and ate leftover quiche. Jonah walked in the house after crashing at a friend’s house last night. Leaving college with just a few credits to go, he’s planning on finding a full time job and finishing the final credits in the evening — not ideal, but he hated college too much to finish properly. In the meantime, he’s catching up on laundry and applying for jobs. We’ll go drive down to his apartment to pack up the kitchen this weekend. It’s good to have him at home.
We were planning on visiting the naval museums for Fleet Week in New York City, but had to scrap those plans because of rain. Instead, we’ll get a nice Italian dinner in the West Village. I made early reservations; hopefully, the rain will be done by then.
Made a fried ham, leftover salad for lunch.
In the meantime, I’m working on my book shop. Listing, photographing, organizing. And calling contractors, because I’m going to reconfigure the basement, so there’s more room for books.
There’s a lot more going on this weekend — dinner with the extended family, a 5K race, a trip to Jonah’s old apartment, garage clean out, and a barbecue at a friend’s house.
What are your plans this weekend?
Here’s the basement, before the renovation…
Apt. 11d 
I’m doing the same thing I’ve done every Memorial Day weekend for the past 17 years: sitting home while my husband is at graduation. Monday is our 30th anniversary, and he will be home but processing photos and videos from graduation. Fortunately, we are planning our anniversary trip (Vienna and Prague) the week after next, so basically we will be trying not to get COVID until then. COVID seems to be on the decline here in the NE, so I have hope, but a double-boosted friend in the next town just got it, so I know it’s still lurking about.
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Great news about that trip. Excited for you!
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What is it with kids today hating college?
My rising senior made us an apple-pecan pie with a homemade crust tonight.
The younger kids are done with their school year as of Friday. The rising senior and I were supposed to go and help clean up after the current seniors’ graduation today. We came at the time we had been told but discovered that they had finished early and cleaned up without us.
So that was a win.
The rising high school senior is starting a college class and a job this week, which is fantastic. The rising college junior still needs a summer job, but she’s plugging along with her honors reading. I finished signing the 9-year-old up for all her summer camps and things. She’s going to get to do therapeutic horse riding this year for the first time.
I’m watching the 1986 Top Gun with my teens cause culture.
The 9-year-old and I will be leaving for a week in WA soon. We get to spend our first night there on the beach.
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Envious. My experience with PNW beaches has been wonderful.
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Not a long weekend for us.
But I love the look of your fried ham salad – what else did you put with it (apart from ham and fancy lettuce)?
It’s coming into winter for us – so have to make the most of the sparkling autumn days while we have them (Saturday was one, Sunday …. is not)
I went for a long 2 hour walk with a local walking group through a local heritage district (be kind, ‘heritage’ for us is more than 100 years old), through a park past the (heritage) sugar factory – which is still running) and back. Lots of hills, though at a pace kind to the unfit amongst us (me…)
Can’t help myself, the librarian just *has* to find the answers to the questions and post them later 😉
Mr 14 has 6 weeks to go before he’s on stage in the musical Oliver! It’s at the local concert hall for a run of 4 days (8 performances). He’s cast as Mr Sowerberry (the creepy funeral director who buys Oliver from the poorhouse) – and has a nice trio to sing and some good dialogue. Usually, the theatre company double or triple casts the roles – and they did originally. But it’s been re-scheduled twice (from December 21, and March 22) because of Covid restrictions, and the other 2 sharing the role have dropped out; so he’s featuring in all 8 performances (utterly exhausted by the Monday, I should think!)
Have you considered compact shelving for the basement?
The kind of thing libraries/archives use – this one is high-end, but am sure there are more reasonably priced options out there.
Since it’s a basement, with a concrete floor (or at, least it looks like it), it should be able to take the weight with no problems.
https://www.spacesaver.com/products/high-density-mobile-shelving/
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I cut up a leftover baked potato. Added some chick pea salad (chick peas, celery, cucumber, scallion, feta, Italian salad dressing). Chopped leftover broccoli rabe that had been sautéed with garlic and hot pepper. Lettuce. Everything was cold, except for the ham. The ham was frozen, leftover from Easter.
Checking out the shelving now…
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Ah, that shelving looks super cool, but too fancy for my needs. I get my shelves in bulk from Amazon or IKEA.
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About your video basement clip – there is a truly wonderful cartoon showing two sort of Junior Leaguer age ladies one says to the other “Men! They only want one thing” and the other says “Yes, a work shop!”. You have clearly managed to fend off your husband’s urge-for-workshop!
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Yes, luckily my husband would rather read history books than do woodworking projects.
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It can be aspirational, for when your book re-purposing business grows dramatically. Programmable, high density shelving!
I want to be able to sit in the stacks, so no high density shelving, but maybe I’ll have the stacks someday, though not currently on that path.
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BJ said “I used to dream of library shelving in my studio apartment,”
OK, now I have to tell you my ghost story.
This is many years ago, when I was in the final year of my BA – majoring in History and Archaeology. I was studying a super-cool paper: “Human osteology for the archaeologist” (when you dig up bones, how do you tell if they’re human) – which was taught at the med school.
For that paper you had to write a research essay – and I chose the subject of age estimation through eruption of 3rd molars (wisdom teeth).
Most of the research was in medical academic journals from the 1930s – so I descended to the 3rd basement of the med school library, to track down these references (no online data in those far-ff days) – lateish on a winter Friday afternoon.
Unsurprisingly, I was the only person on the whole level – I had to switch on the lights when I arrived. The journals were stored in compact shelving, hand cranked – and they were densely packed – and weighed a ton to shift. I was down on my knees, between the shelves, tracking down a volume on the bottom shelf when *the compact shelving started to close on me without human hand on the controls*! I levitated out of there! And decided to call it a day on the research (luckily I had most of what I needed).
Of course, there is a physical explanation – residual momentum stored, and micro-movements triggering a release to return the stacks to their ‘resting place’ – but a ghost story is much more fun!
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I used to dream of library shelving in my studio apartment, which is a weird thing. I was just looking at Laura’s shelving and thinking that it had a library feel. I’ve always wanted the library stacks, with rows of shelves facing each other.
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We are having a rainy droopy, it feels dark 2 hours before sunset weekend.
Yesterday I went to our destination farmers market, which I have been enjoying over the pandemic as my own personal flower market with college kid & spouse. I got the flowers, but the place was packed, and I think I need to understand the cruise schedule before I go again. Spouse had poker night last night, with barbecue (purchased) and today my parents came over for a comfort meal. Tomorrow, I’m going to convince my son to try to take his monthly senior photos. College kid is at home and is nesting. This morning that included a long conversation about the random career paths and grant funding.
(Glad you got me to write this, because my first thought was that I’d done nothing).
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I would make quiche with leftover ham. Also, fried rice or cubano sandwiches.
Good luck to Jonah on the job search. I can understand hating college these days. Computer skills are in high demand. If he has any interest in that area, there are online courses that give certificates. Cybersecurity is in high demand right now.
As for your basement: do you have a dehumidifier? It helps a great deal to reduce the chance of mildew in a damp summer. They aren’t expensive. They can be plumbed to run dump the collected moisture in a drain, so you don’t need to empty the bucket. I would think with your home business, you could deduct the cost of a dehumidifier.
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Yes, I have two humidifiers down there to protect the books, but the portable/bucket kind. It might be worth investing in a better system. But my first step is remove all the old sheet rock and put in better lighting.
And I did make quiche with the ham. I’m about to do a photo-dump. I’ll post a picture.
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