… It is the weekend… right?!
Here it is Saturday night. I feel like it should be Thursday or something. It has been one of those weekends. You know the kind. There has been some good and some “ugh” to it. We’ll start our journey with preparation for Friday, since that’s the day that was fun… sort of.
Friday, we were schedule to attend a Customer Appreciation Cruise on The Gateway Clipper in Pittsburgh. I went to this dinner last year. I was looking forward to going this year as I would have a date instead of tagging along by myself like last year.
The arrangements were all made with Ms. S. by Wednesday as to what time I would pick her up. I realized that the time I had picked was a little late to get going from her place based on directions and times provided by the two major mapping websites. We couldn’t push that time much earlier because Ms S. had to get Miss C. ready to stay at Grandma and Grampa’s for the evening. Arrival in Pittsburgh was going to be close. I hoped there wouldn’t be the kind of traffic I hit last year.
My plans for Friday included leaving work about 2:30 pm at the latest. This would allow me ample time to get home, clean up the truck and get ready. Friday’s are pretty slow at work, usually. That wasn’t the case with yesterday. I knew I had a meeting at 11 am that was to be a lunch meeting. No problem, I should still have plenty of time. Before going to that meeting, the boss scheduled another meeting for 1:30 to 2:30 pm. Eh!.. Close but I can still make it… or so I thought. The lunch meeting ran way long. We didn’t start the second meeting untill about 2:30 ish.
Great! I’m already worried about being late because I need to pick up Ms. S. and now I’m not going to get to leave when I need to. I was pretty sure that if I got to Ms. S.’s house on time that we could beat the clock, but now I’m not even sure ‘I’ am going to be on time. The meeting had turned to basic chit chat by 3:15. I told my boss that if I were to make it to the cruise, I needed to bolt immediately. I got home about 3:50 ish. Cleaned out the truck and then jumped in the shower. I was able to get to pickup up Ms. S. about 5:10. Fortunately, Grandma was early and had already picked up Miss C. The only redeeming thing about all this rushing was that when I turned on the GPS to head for Ms. S.’s house, the trip time was 15 minutes short than the map websites. The arrival time was showing we would just make it.
Sure enough, we hit downtown Pittsburgh on time. Traffic was heavy as we approached the bridge but the main route was clear. I jumped off and took the route through downtown instead of waiting on traffic. We pulled in with time to spare. We got on the boat. I had time to introduce Ms. S. to all my coworkers and find a seat before we left the dock. The night was nice. We spent time with the gang, then went downstairs to see what was going on at the casino tables. No, this wasn’t a floating casino. This was simply ‘for fun’. We played and did fairly well. I dropped Ms. S. off about 10:35 ish and made my way home.
I had to be in the office this morning by 9am to babysit the floor cleaning crew while they cleaned the server room. It wasn’t supposed to be very laborious, just sit there and make sure they don’t screw up anything. I ended up moving the cabinets where we store the spare harddrives and back up tapes. I ended up leaving the office at 2 pm with my back being grumpy with me. Not a big deal really. My plan was to head home and relax for a bit. If my back wasn’t bugging me later, I would put up my Christmas tree. As fate would have it, that didn’t get accomplished either.
I was awakened from a deep slumber (on the couch) by my cell phone. It was my mom. Their neighbor, who used to work at the same plant Dad did, had said if he went deer hunting this year and got one, he would give it to my dad. They don’t like deer meat but they know we do. Sure enough, he had got one. Dad wasn’t able to hunt this year due to knee surgery the week of Thanksgiving. I put on my old clothes and went up to help skin the deer. Dad’s knee really wasn’t up to the task yet, but we got the deer skinned. It will hang a day or so now in the garage to let the meat cool. We’ll butcher it ourselves.
All in all, its been a good weekend so far. A bit tired from the lifting and pulling I did today between the office and the deer. I’ll live. It was snowing pretty decent while we were doing the deer and I expect will have a couple inches of snow on the ground by morning. That’s ok though. I plan on sleeping in. HAHA!