As noted in the Scout blog, I spent Saturday over the river at Brian’s house, but I wanted to get home and cleaned up because Finn was at a sleepover that evening and Jen and I could enjoy a date night together. Initially we were a little worried about the sleepover but when we found out it would be somewhere between ten and eighteen girls we knew she’d have someone to hang with (everything is extremely cliquish and temporary right now). Jen and I had a couple of drinks downtown and caught up on a lot of the past week together, which was just what we both needed.
Sunday I was a little hung over (my new hard and fast rule has to be one whiskey-based drink per night and no more) but after some breakfast, coffee, and a trip to Target I was feeling better. The girls came home and immediately went down for a nap—Finn only had four hours of sleep—and I ran out to Lowe’s for dirt and mulch. While I was there I picked up six tomato plants, and when I got home I offloaded the dirt and mulch and got the bins ready for planting. There’s one cherry plant, a roma, two heirloom beefsteak plants and two reds. I’d like to find a couple of Oaxacas and four more cherry plants to fill things out, but there’s still time.
When that was done I set up a rain barrel on the garage to start collecting water and cleaned up the area behind the greenhouse. The second barrel platform needs to be replaced but I didn’t want to run a circular saw under the bedroom window and wake the girls, so I started rebagging leaves and cleaning up the back side of the house. By dinnertime I was tired but had made good progress straightening things up; I’ve got a major dump run to make with all of the castoff foam insulation from the greenhouse and two bags of plastic, and we’re going to cover the front curb with about thirty bags of leaves next week.
Looking over our overstuffed garage, I’ve been puzzling over where to put the old fridge, but looking things over I think I’ve got a plan. If I move two of the old kitchen cabinets to a space over the workbench I can clear a spot out along the back wall to fit it, but I’ve also got to move some Scout parts around and reorganize things.
This week is going to be nuts. Today I’m running into DC to do a runthrough of the event we’re holding on Wednesday, and then I run back to teach tonight at 4. Tuesday I’m on a train to New York City, and Wednesday I’m at the Ford Foundation in the morning to shoot video of Christiana Figueres, then over to Hudson Yards to shoot photos of the event that evening. We don’t have a full slide deck set up yet but I’ve had a friend working on the video presentation to make things look good. I still have to get a contract signed and officially hire a pro photographer to get the key event moments (at the recommendation of my fellow director, who allayed a lot of my anxiety over that responsibility).
Thursday I’m on a train back home and I’ll probably do a little work when I get in. And then I’m headed up to Mom’s house to start going through Dad’s stuff in the basement, organizing and hauling things out of there. That will be a long but productive weekend, I think, and then it’s back to the grind on Monday.
I bought Jen a Fitbit of her own on Friday, and she’s been wearing it all weekend. I think it took a little time to get used to (it’s not as comfortable as a regular watch, but once you’re used to it, it’s not bad) but I think she’s keen on knowing what her sleep patterns are as well as some of the other features. As watches go they are super handy and as much as I like wearing regular watches I’ve noticed that I’m wearing my Fitbit more, just so I can see what my exercise levels are. If I’m to believe the numbers it’s giving me, my Saturday/Sunday steps are more than double my weekday steps, and my overall numbers are much higher—last Sunday I climbed 65 floors when I was installing the greenhouse plastic. I do think it’s a bit confused, because it thinks I climbed 109 floors this Saturday which I know is not true.