So, our post-snowpocalypse weekend was quiet, productive, and fun, and not necessarily in that order. I went into the office on Friday to clean some things up, and got a good quiet day to work on a new homepage concept for work, which went very well. I also packed up my iMac and brought it home to downgrade back to OS 10.5 from Snow Leopard; our work server (some sort of snap server running a Linux variant) and Snow Leopard weren’t seeing eye to eye on permissions so I couldn’t actually save files remotely.
Saturday the girl got me up super-early and we enjoyed a quiet breakfast together. After Mama joined us, it was off to the grocery store to restock for the next promised snowstorm. We actually had a bunch of food left over from the first, but we felt it would be prudent to replenish in case we had to go all Donner Party on the cats. So: organic market, discount store, Trader Joe’s, grocery store, then home for a nap. After unloading, I spent the afternoon in the driveway with a shovel to widen the lanes, and seeing my labors, our neighbor took pity on me, came outside with his snowblower, and helped me clear a lane all the way back to the garage. Then, I showed the Jeep off to an old work friend, who is keenly interested in buying it from us, which is awesome. We’re going to have it checked out by an independent mechanic and then settle on a fair price in a couple of weeks, but for now I’m hanging onto it until the snow stops flying. Then it was back onto the front porch roof to shove 2′ of drifted snow off into the bushes before it dropped through the ceiling into the new office. Sunday evening we took advantage of Netflix’s lame selection of on-demand movies to watch The International, which was interesting if only in its faithful recreation and subsequent destruction of the Guggenheim Museum.
Sunday Finn and I got up early again, and after we had some breakfast she helped me make a valentine, cook breakfast, and deliver it to Mama in bed. Then she got her pretty holiday outfit on and we did what everyone else does on February 14th: We went shoe shopping! The girl loved to wander the aisles of the DSW and make friends with everyone she saw—I don’t know how two misanthropes like us could have spawned this child; she has no shyness at all. Between shifts as goalie and chaperone, Mama found a new pair of sneakers and slippers, and I found a cheap pair of lowtop sneakers to replace my dead Chuck Taylors. Then we stayed out for some lunch and let the girl nibble on our burritos while she was making eyes at the little boy a few tables down. After a week being cooped up inside, it sure felt great to get out of the house, but we had to return to the safety of the quiet, warm crib for a nap.
In the afternoon, taking advantage of a little Finn downtime, I ran out to the garage and tightened up the shroud on the Scout. Long story short, she’s running again, and I pulled her out of the garage! I wrote up more details over here, but this is a huge relief and makes me very happy. I have to do further testing to see if the overheating issue has been solved, but this is a long overdue step forward.
After Finn woke up, we had plans to take her to the pet store at the Mall to play with some puppies, but we found that they close very early on Sunday nights. She was not happy about the situation, but tolerated our singing the A-B-C song long enough to get home for some dinner, and then it was off to bed.