6 years, lists, solo

This weekend was my 6 year wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we went to the Naples Dinner theater and saw a show called I Do, I Do. They start serving dinner at 5:30 and the show doesn’t start until 8. The last time we went, we arrived right about 5:30, not knowing what to expect. What we found was the entire meal part of the evening takes at most, an hour, leaving a huge chunk of time to kill before the show starts. So this time we didn’t arrive until around 6, thinking this would give us less time to kill. Well this show was less full than the one we attended before, so the food part of the night took even less time. So after we finished eating I had to try to pass the time without going mad. I am TERRIBLE and just sitting there blabbing about things. So after we looked over every word and picture in the programs 4 or 5 times, and still having over an hour to go till showtime, Ali could tell I was going nuts. Luckily, I came up with a game to help occupy us. The game was simple, take the word NAPLES and see how many words you can spell with those letters. It sounds very simple but it took a good half hour up. By the time we were done we had come up with 40 words! Ali came up with many more words than I did but it was a solid team effort. The game took us up to a few minutes before showtime. The few minutes we had left I played a single player game called Sleeper. It is a simple game, you look around the theater and see how many old people are asleep in their seats after the big dinner. Sadly, I only found a couple. I cringed as the guy came on the stage for the pre-show announcements, including ANNIVERSARY announcements! For some reason, it didn’t occur to me to see if they did such announcements. I felt like an ass and apologized to Ali for not being thoughtful enough to put our name in. The show was appropriate for an anniversary. It was about a couple going through 50 years of marriage, starting in 1948. I enjoyed it, especially in comparison to Pirates of Penzance which was close to torture for me to sit through. However near the end of the show, the painfully uncomfortable chairs started to take their toll as I struggled to find a comfortable position. The show ended about 10:15 and we headed home to be greeted by Nicki, as she acted like she didn’t see us in 5 years.

This weekend I went back to using my infamous “list” to set my agenda for the weekend. The list wasn’t terribly long, maybe 5 or 6 items long. I even threw in a couple “unlisted” projects . I got it all done.

One add-in was to replace the weatherstripping on the bottom of the garage. Our garage has always been a spider and bug haven. I never gave it much thought, although I noticed our neighbors, whom have an identical model, have a garage that is almost bug free. A couple weeks ago, I saw why ours was so bad. The weather stripping that goes along the bottom of the door was about 6 inches too short! This left a nice big gap for critters to stroll in and out whenever they pleased. This obvious shoddy work pissed me off, but it is way too late to hold the builder responsible so I bought some fresh weatherstripping and ripped out the shitty stuff. While I was at it, I carefully examined the door seals from the inside, with the door closed, identifying any incoming light and addressing it’s cause. By the time I was done, the door which at first had more light shining through than a window, was almost completely dark. Hopefully the insect population in our garage will thin out shortly.

One other add in project was to plant some fresh vegetables in our garden. I had it covered with a tarp and some weedblock for a couple weeks. I found out that the weedblock did little to actually kill weeds, it just keeps them from coming through the fabric. After pulling up the weedblock I had a ton of weeds to yank anyway. We planted a little salad garden consisting of simply romaine lettuce and a tomato plant.

Another unexpected job was installing an under-counter, space saver combination wireless phone, answering machine, clock radio, timer thingy. Alison fell in love with it instantly at Best Buy. Anything that clears counter space scores big points with her. As I was drilling the holes in the bottom of the cabinet, from the bottom drilling upwards, we had an incident where the drill banging into the cabinet caused a hand painted lighthouse that Ali painted at the shore 5 or years ago, to fall and break into a million pieces on the floor. I suggested that maybe we could try to glue it even though I knew it was an impossibility. She sadly buried the lighthouse in the trashcan. I felt bad about it. It was one of those things that you can’t replace.

Sunday was our actual anniversary. It was lame and I felt bad about it. Even though we celebrated the night before, Sunday was the actual day so even though originally I didn’t think it would be a big deal, I felt bad about not having anything special planned for that day. We just did stuff around the house and looked for “by owner” land for sale. Ali sampled our newly, solar covered pool out. The water was holding steady at 86 degrees. Ali said it felt a little chilly. Haha. Even though Ali said she could care less that we didn’t do something out of the ordinary on Sunday, I told her next year we would do something cooler.

I revisited an existing issue with the Vette. A sensor I replaced had not been adjusted properly, causing a problem with the Vette stalling out. The one person that test drove the car since I put it up for sale, drifted into my driveway as the car stalled on him. That’s not a very strong selling point so I needed to fix it. I finally got it adjusted as it should be. I took it out on an extended test drive and it ran as well or better as it ever has. I plan to take it to work a few times over the next few weeks since I will be myself. I may as well get some fun out of it until I sell it. It went into the local Auto Trader for a 12 week run. Hopefully that will get me better results than the local paper.

This morning we got up early to drop Alison off at the airport. She will be up in PA for the next 2 weeks helping out my brother and sister-in-law and their newborn. I will be heading up 2 weekends from now to join her for a few days. Ali was very sad to go. She was very upset about the idea of not seeing Nicki for so long. It’s incredible how much she loves that dog. So for the next 10 days or so I will be on my own trying to maintain some sense of normalcy while traveling back home during lunch everyday to let Nicki out for a bathroom break. As a prep for Nicki’s extended, first ever, 4 day stay at a kennel, I am dropping her off there tomorrow during the day to try to get her accomodated with the surroundings. My plans for the next 10 days include growing facial hair, play as much computer and video games as I please and staying up too late most nights so I can be grumpy and tired the following mornings.