Zima the formula for a great weekend
So I had a LOT of stuff I wanted to get done this weekend. I gave Cindy my potential list and she busted ass on Friday getting a number of the indoor components of the list knocked out which I greatly appreciated. Friday had been bright and sunny for the most part and the forecast was for Saturday to be much of the same. I was hoping to be able to get a pretty comprehensive mowing session in to take advantage of the receded water.
The weather forecast was accurate for the most part and the end result was a monster chore day on Saturday. Not only did Cindy and I mow and weed whack the normal portions of the yard, I also took the tractor out back and cut everything back there as well. There were a handful of other small projects we threw in the mix. The end result was my not coming back inside until after 4PM.
When we ran to Home Depot earlier in the day we also stopped at Walmart for Cindy to grab some Zima, yes, Zima. After around a decade hiatus Coors has decided to bring back Zima on a limited basis which was awesome news to me. You see when I started drinking at 24 years of age Zima was my alcohol of choice. I had not acquired a taste for beer as of yet and the smooth citrus taste of Zima made them go down very easily, possibly too easily as I had MANY Zima induced stupors in my mid-20s.
We had several bottles in the fridge getting cold during the afternoon. After a long, hot, sweaty day of work I couldn’t imagine a better time to give Zima 2.0 a taste test. I thought the moment was important enough to capture on video. The ridged side bottle was exactly as I remembered 20 years ago. When I cracked open the bottle my first taste was not a sip, it was a guzzle, I was so thirsty.
I immediately was in a taste time machine, transporting me back to the 90’s. The clear beverage tasted exactly as I remembered and that means it was goooood. Cindy somehow missed out on the Zima craze back then but she was more than willing to give it a try this time around. She was quite pleasantly surprised, she really liked the taste as well.
About halfway into her bottle she added some chamborg to it. By the time she finished that she was full blown drunk. I finished my first bottle before the video was over and followed up with three more bottles in short order. It was the perfect reward for a day of hard labor. I can only hope our hardcore patronage of Zima over the summer is enough to make Coors carry the magical drink on a permanent basis.
My Zima induced mild drunkenness helped me enjoy our Netflix rental, The Great Wall a little bit more. Cindy said the movie had gotten awful reviews and it didn’t take me long to see why. The story and plot was just silly and I was really surprised an accomplished actor like Matt Damon would have agreed to be a part of it after reading the script. It had good action and visually cool cinematics at least to keep it in the C range. Cindy stopped watching about halfway through and worked on her gun instead.
Speaking of her gun, at this point we have pretty much all of the individual parts 3D printed and they look cool. However this was only the first and possibly easier portion of the gun creation. Assembling the dozens of pieces in a clean way is not going to be easy at all but I am letting that part of the process completely in Cindy’s hands. The gun is held together by a combination of glue, metal rods, and magnets.
Over the weekend I also downloaded and installed Fusion 360 which is software that allows you to make your own 3D objects from scratch. I played around in it a little. It seems very complex but powerful. It will require a lot of time of mine just playing around in there to get the hang of things.
Sunday morning Cindy and I set the alarm to get in a run, hoping an earlier start time would help minimize the oppressive heat and humidity. Despite taking our first stride around 6:45 it was still a miserable slog. There were many times I felt like stopping during the 5K but I had designated the run as a psuedo tribute to Tuki in my mind. Everytime I felt like stopping I just thought about Tuk and the anger I feel towards myself about it. The physical discomfort I was feeling was only a small portion of the punishment I felt I deserved.
Although we just ran a 5K I had another type of endurance activity in mind for the electric unicycles, the 20 mile round trip ride to Dunkin Donuts. When I suggested it to Cindy I sort of expected a knee jerk negative reaction but instead she seemed sort of into it. She had never ridden much more than 10 miles before and never in a sustained high speed commuting type of scenario on main roads. We strapped on our safety gear and headed out into the steamy morning air.
At first I thought Cindy would demand we stayed on sidewalk for most of the ride however she actually suggested we use the Immokalee Road bike lane for most of it instead. The idea of criss crossing the six lane road multiple times to stay on the sidewalk did not appeal to her. She did quite well maintaining a steady 18+ mph pace on the Msuper once we go into the long straightaway portion of the ride. Having the seat for the Monster also was a big plus as it allowed her to ride probably 8-9 miles of the 20 in the seated position which she is really getting adept at.
There were parts of the ride when she was on the Monster that she was riding quite fast, fast enough that my Msuper gave me a “hey, slow down” warning beep a couple times. It was a fun ride and Cindy pulled back into the driveway now much more confident in her ability to ride the wheels longer distances.
We had a nice rest of the day at home outside a brief run to Rural King to grab a couple things. It seemed like an almost perfectly balanced weekend where we worked very hard on Saturday but worked hard on Sunday doing what we wanted to do instead of what we tasked ourselves to do. Cindy wound up the weekend with a good dinner and an even better homemade chocolate cake. A couple more Zima’s helped put a happy exclamation point on the two days.