Three Day WeekendFollow

Going home later today, family time of unspecific activity Saturday and Sunday, then busy Monday with an annual Memorial service, followed by dropping the spawnlette at the grandbabysitter old people, drinking, food and what would pass for golf if it were played by baboons, then back to the food and drink. Minimalistic thread creation go.

10 Day Weekend...

It was the "Use it or Lose it" time of the year. June 1st is when our Vacation for the year is reset. When I came back from my 5 month out of town work trip, I had 22 vacation days to use up. That was on April 1st. So I took off every Monday and Friday for the month of April and May, plus a couple Tuesdays. And then I took the whole week of Memorial Day off. So this is Day 1 of 10 straight days of no work.

Right now I have a tree service in removing three very large trees that are right next to my house (one had a branch fall, coming very close to my house). Once they are done I'll have a good day of clean up (I do that myself, I don't pay them extra to). They are pretty good about it though, and still pile all the brush and chop up the logs in a pile. They just don't haul them away unless I pay for clean up.

Then I'll be cleaning up my back yard, rake the leaves, cut the grass, pull up the weeds and stuff. It's a very sandy soil, so my dad has some 20 year old saw dust piles at work that are basically compost now. I'm bringing in 40 yards of that to spread out on top of the sand. Then I'll bring in some soil to put down on top of that and plant some grass. I'm hoping I can get a good start, if not finish, on my back yard. Then I'll be able to finally start finishing my front yard. I think I posted pictures of my front yard before, big piles of sand from when I dug out the side of my basement. Two years later it's still big piles of sand. I'll have to level those out, then I'll probably lay down that same sawdust compost, and then soil on that to plant grass.

I plan on using the sawdust compost just because it's free, and I want to have a thick layer above the sand to stop the sand from working it's way up through my soil. But putting down 8-12 inches of top soil would be costly.

Will you go in costume?

Our town has this little charity plant and bake sale tomorrow. I'm pretty excited. These are mostly plants, perennials, that people dig up from their yards and donate. Also local nurseries will donate some annuals, but they're not such a good deal as the others. Also home-baked good.

That's the only thing I've got planned. Husband and sis-and-law have been trying to pull together a family bbq for Monday - it may or may not coalesce. Whether is supposed to be crappy.

I'm currently hiding in my hotel room at Balticon48 before I get back to work on running Special Needs, while Jonwin is at work. After 3 years of having ASL interpreters we finally have requests for them. Just won't have anyone today to do it. They will be here tomorrow though for the rest of the weekend. We also got a request for a Audio autograph from our Guest of Honor, Brandon Sanderson for a regular attendee, who is blind.

IF I get board, there is a free copy of Brandon Sanderson new paperback in the freebies bag to read.

I closed down my Etsy store for awhile, as the best of my jewelry is all here for the art show. I have gain a fan from showing my jewelry for the last 2 years, and will have a Meet and Greet session tomorrow where people can ask me questions about my work. Not sure when store will reopen, as I want to redo all of my photos and get some help with copy writing descriptions of what I end up putting on Etsy.

If you're one of the lucky ones with a clear sky tonight don't forget to get out and gaze upon the New Meteor shower. You might be blessed by space-dust, or mutated by loose radiation.

I'll have the insured experts drop the 50 foot tall trees that are 10 feet from my house, 10 feet from my neighbor's, and have my neighbor's overhead electrical service running right next to them. Picture of what's left. My house is on the right, my neighbor's is the darker one on the left. Their house has been severely damaged by the trees already. Those two roof peaks used to extend out further, and created a covered porch area. One of the trees left on it a few years back and destroyed their house. They have sort of let their house fall apart. The roof is covered in about 3 inches of moss, and the overhangs are almost completely destroyed by the falling trees.

Now I'll just have to go out and chop up all the trunks and get them out of here. I don't burn wood for heat, but friends and family do. I give it to them, free of charge. They just have to come get it. Two big poplar trees and a gnarly old cherry. The poplar wood is about worthless (burns too fast for most people to care for it), but the cherry would be worth something if I cared enough.

Poplar's tend to rot out from the inside, and blow over. And they grow like weeds, one tiny one in a few years could be a giant. Gotta keep them away from my house. The cherry trees are too unpredictable. They fork off from any little nick or cut it seems, that one cut down today already had a fork split and land on my roof, and a large fork split and luckily fall down parallel to my house. There were a couple birches on the far left of the picture. They were all part of a cluster of them. They started to rot out and collapse. The birch bark is strange, keeps them standing even though the insides of powder. Part of that birch cluster is what took out my neighbor's roof a few years back.

Only down side is I've removed a dozen trees between my neighbor's house and mine, for the safety of my house. But now when I look outside my back porch, I see their old dilapidated house and pile of garbage. Right behind those felled trunks is a 2-3 foot deep pile of rubbish left over from their house falling apart. A privacy fence wouldn't work too well because my house sits higher than theirs. Unless I build the fence so high that it's hideous, nothing would block the view of their house.

I think we're going to build a fence in the front yard. We have kind of an odd lot that our house sits on where we have a really long border with the sidewalk, and APPARENTLY Nexa things the children running into the state highway we life on would be some kind of issue.

I've never made a big deal out of Memorial day. It's nice enough to have Monday off, but all the work I'm not doing on Monday just doubles what I have to do Tuesday, so it's a bit of a double edged sword for me. I may go see the new X-men movie at some point, but only if I can be bothered to go in the afternoon for the cheap tickets. It doesn't look so great that I want to spend more than five bucks on it.

My only niece is graduating high school and a bunch of family will be in town so I'm taking this Sat/Sun off. I normaly have Mon-Tues off so, 4 day weekend for me.

Other than being sick, this is my first actual weekend of in about a year.

That works only in some hotels were you can actually access the service elevators. Balticon used to be in a hotel with 2 towers and there was always a line waiting to get on the elevators in both towers. I used the stairs.

This Hotel is spread across a large rural plot of land with 4 different levels. The rooms are all down a long hall from the lobby, while most of the good function spaces are in the other direction. I learn to make sure I didn't ask the hotel for a handicap accessible room, after the first year I stay here and they put me out in the far reaches of no where. Now our Hotel liaison makes sure I get a room as close to the elevators as we can get with limitations on type of room I want. This year I luck out, in getting the second closest room to the elevators. I'm hiding in room again, as I just been too **** to do anything since 4 pm. It's the best room in the hotel I decided that isn't near the party floor.

Which reminds me, that I need to go see what parties are happening tonight.

Or maybe not, the way I feel. This Con Committee member is wondering if she survive the next day at rate body is telling me to go home and sleep with my cats.

Tomorrow I'll be going to see the new Xmen, then going out to eat with my parents for my mom's birthday.