Saturday with SamR

It’s Saturday. It should be a time to relax, a bit [1,2]. But it’s near the start of the semester. But some home stuff has accumulated over the summer or appeared in the past week or two. And Michelle really needs to spend the next few months focusing on her Master’s thesis. Sunday is also scheduled for family time. So house work and work work need to be done today. Let’s see what I’ve done. Note that this list does not contain most of the smaller activities, like eating breakfast, making plans as a family, running errands to work and Paul’s Ace Hardware, sending a few messages, folding laundry, and so on and so forth.

1. Wash deck. It’s been a few years since we re-sealed the deck. We washed it earlier this summer and it was clear that it needed to be washed. The wood is solid, even after more than a decade. However, it had accumulated dirt and more. We had planned to seal it soon thereafter, but weather and our schedules did not permit. But summer is nearing its end. It looks we have five days without rain. And I’m just going to get busier and busier as we get closer to the start of the semester. But since it’s been a month or more since the last wash, it’s a good idea to re-wash before sealing. There are also a few spots which needed extra power washing that we didn’t get to. I spent about ninety minutes, all told, between moving everything off the deck, power washing, spraying with deck cleaner, and rinsing.

2. Move desk. This task was really supposed to be for the boys. But I ended up helping. Michelle has a roll-top desk at work that she wanted home. That meant disassembling the desk, moving the pieces, cleaning out a destination spot, and reassembling. I did most of the disassembly, some of the moving, and some of the reassembly.

3. Clean out garage. I have a workbench in William’s rental house [3] and I’d like to have it back in our garage. That meant clearing a space for it. But like all tasks involving our garage, it ended up taking a bit of extra time since I also decided to sweep out leaves [4], reorganize a bit, weed whack a bit, and so on and so forth.

4. Move other furniture. I did the last steps of moving the workbench and helped out with various stages of moving a chest of drawers from William’s old apartment to our house.

5. Seal the deck. This took much longer than I had planned or expected. The wood was really thirsty. The sprayer didn’t work very well. I therefore used much more Thompson’s than I had planned.

By the time this was all done, it was 4:15 p.m. Musing and email added another thirty minutes. And then it was time for work work. But I realized that I was completely exhausted, so I decided that I was better off taking a nap. I was right about the exhausted part. Since I didn’t set an alarm, I slept until 7:30 p.m. Then I did grocery shopping and ate dinner, and suddenly it was too late to get any work work done. That’s concerning, since i really do need to get that done, and Sunday is family day. Oh well, maybe I’ll find a way to sneak in some time.

[1] I do a moderate amount of work on most weekends. During the school year, weekends often get taken up by grading. I do relax, but only a bit.

[2] I did get to relax last night. I had a nice dinner with my summer research team and we saw The Big Sick together.

[3] Long story, that.

[4] I’d swear I swept out leaves a month ago. I have no idea where they come from.

Version 1.0.1 of 2017-07-29.