Every Day’s a Weekend

Tomorrow is a holiday which would have made this a three day weekend except that one week ago I turned in all my work stuff so every day is a weekend. Although since my wife still works, we are limited to doing most things to actual weekends like yesterday and today.

Originally, this weekend was supposed to be in jeopardy due to strong thunderstorms that were supposed to come through. One of my weather apps sent me a message Saturday morning warning of the impending weather apocalypse. I guess even the apps like to pump up bad weather.

We did have storms come through but they showed up early this morning while I was still sleeping. Of course, all my weather apps buzzed to tell me what was coming. I do shut the phone off at night but the buzzing was enough to wake me. I suppose that’s a good thing although the problem with a storm at night is you can’t go out on the front porch and look for it. (Come on, doesn’t everyone do that)

Having had a tree dropped on our house during a bad storm, I do take them a bit more seriously. There is just something both awesome and terrifying about the moments when a seriously bad storm rolls in. And I have all the weather knowledge in the world to know how they form and all that stuff. Still wonder why it is that we have them in the first place. Like nature just needs to remind us from time to time who’s really in charge of things.

With no rain, we took Rocco the wonder dog to the park both yesterday and today. He actually got a walk on Friday afternoon because he was being kind of a pain. The walks are still pretty short because he’s old and stiff and he wears out pretty quickly. Kind of the mind being willing but the body not so much.

We stopped at our big box pet store after the walk today because I was close to running out of food. And I love the store because they allow dogs so it is more walking for Rocco. The first time we took him in, he wasn’t quite sure what was going on but there were good things to smell. The clincher was when the cashier gave him a cookie. Ever since then, he makes a beeline there the minute we walk into the store. Today, we had a cashier trainee and he’s staring at her like “Where are the cookies?”. Fortunately, the trainee was accompanied by a more experienced person who knew exactly what he wanted. After a couple of cookies, Rocco just plopped down on the floor and refused to get up. The floor was cool, he was tired and there were cookies nearby. What more does a dog need? We had to get another cookie to get him to get up so we could give it to him when he got into the car.

Since the rain held off, we went to the zoo. (This we is my wife and I as dogs are not allowed so Rocco had to stay home.) They had a new exhibit with sloths. Ever since my sister got married at a zoo and had a sloth at her reception, sloths have been a big thing for us. So I took at picture and sent it around for everyone to see. Wasn’t much of a picture because the sloth was sleeping and you couldn’t see his face but you see a sloth, you have to send a picture. I think its a family rule.

Oh, funny thing happened at the zoo. There was a big car race today – not really a fan since we were at the zoo. But my Dad called me as we were walking around because he couldn’t find the race on TV. The good news is that I remembered reading that coverage had changed from ABC to NBC so I could direct him to the right channel. Long distance TV guide – that’s me.

We do have some cuteness of our own around the house. I think I’ve mentioned this previously but we feed the raccoon that live under our lower deck and in the woods around our house. They actually don’t bother anything around the house and they can’t get to the bird feeders so maybe we have an arrangement. As long as I toss some food down every now and then, they leave things alone.

We have turned them into daytime animals since there is one that just hangs out under our bird feeder all day. The bird feeder is on a little deck outside our bedroom on the second floor so it isn’t like you can reach out and touch them. The birds knock peanut pieces down and the raccoons scramble for them. So when I fill up the feeder, I’ll sometimes toss a few peanuts down for them. And we might also have cereal that gets tossed down as well. They seem to be partial to Honey Nut Cheerios and Lucky Charms (well the generic equivalent because I’m not giving them name brand stuff).

Anyway, we know have a litter of four little ones that were out the other day. Saw them getting what looked like a tree climbing lesson from Mama. She climbed this little tree and all four came up after her and she turned around to climb down and they stumbled down as well. Good thing she went first since a couple of them got going a bit to fast and kind of ran into her. I did video the whole thing and put it on Facebook.

Funny thing is that I got a whole bunch of friend requests from people at work. Social media gets a well deserved bad rap for their privacy issues but it is still a good way to at least have some contact with people. Even if it means that they probably have my whole life stored away on their cloud server.

Speaking of having your life invaded by technology, as we were driving to the zoo, google maps suddenly pops up to tell me that it is 18 minutes to the dance studio. I’ve never used Google Maps to get me to the studio but it clearly has been tracking me. The algo was a bit messed up though because I never go there in the morning and never on a Sunday so it is nice to know that I’m still at least a little unpredictable to our tech overlords. See if you had a self driving car, then sooner or later, the tech will just take over. Doesn’t matter if you didn’t want to go to the studio, that’s where Google Maps wants you to go and that’s where you will go.

And on that note, I’ll leave you now.