A wash out weekend

Last weekend was Memorial Day weekend, a holiday that the CFO and I typically seem to spend apart due to my lack of vacation time.  Ten days of vacation time just isn’t enough.  As usual, she spent the holiday relaxing sea side in North Carolina while I held down the fort at home.  I didn’t have a “honey do” list from her, but I did have a list of things that I wanted to accomplish over the long weekend.  Unfortunately, mother nature had other plans.

Before I tackled my list, Saturday morning started with me helping a friend move her stuff from her apartment to the garage of her new house.  Her lease is up at the end of the month, but their house won’t be ready for another month, so everything is being piled up in the garage of the new house until they can move in.  Please note that this is a task that the CFO volunteered me for before she left town, I’m sure she was disappointed that she didn’t get to help.  We were pretty much done with the move by lunch time, which is when it started to rain.  And rain. And then it rain some more.  My plans to pressure wash and stain the deck were washed out by the weather. 

The rain let up for an hour or so before sundown on Saturday, so I took advantage of the opportunity by grabbing my shovel and planting 6 shrubs that we had picked up at Lowe's earlier in the week (on clearance, of course!).  At least I was able to get that done, check one thing off my list.  I woke up Sunday morning to more showers outside... So the rain gave me an excuse to watch some good racing on TV… The F1 race in Monaco, the Indy 500 and the Coca-Cola 600.  I didn’t watch every minute of the races, but I caught a majority of each of them.

My weekend view above, hers below...

 

The rain continued into Monday, but I was able to watch the radar map and plan to take advantage of small breaks in the showers.  I tried to wash my car during the first break in the morning, and succeeded, even though the final rinse on the car was done by the rain.  Yes, I finished washing the car while wearing a rain coat.  (If our neighbors hadn’t figured it out before this, I’m sure they think I’m crazy).  I then pulled the car into the garage for a much needed detailing.  I checked the weather map just before lunch and saw we would have a 2 hour break in the rain from 1-3, so I ate and prepped my road bike for the first ride of the season.  It is kind of sad that it was my first ride of the season at the end of May, but I’ve been spending ever nice day working in the yard.

The good news is all the spin classes made me feel much stronger on the bike, the bad is that I was a little wobbly for the first couple miles.  You can get away with a lot of extra movement on a stationary bike, not so when you are on the real deal.  I road north about 9 miles and then circled back towards home for a total of 18 miles.  On the way home I noticed two riders about ½ mile ahead of me on a few rolling hills.  Still feeling pretty good and knowing that I was on my way home, I decided that I was going to catch and pass them.  Surprisingly, I reeled them in pretty easily, only to see that it was a husband and wife on hybrid bikes cruising along looking at the clouds.  It wasn’t the tough “chase” that I was hoping for.

Thanks to my weather map analyzing skills, I beat the rain home by about 20 minutes.  Maybe I should become a weather man?  I spent the rest of the afternoon working on the Accord.  I used a clay bar on the whole car (it somehow magically pulls a lot of “contaminates” out of the paint and makes it feel super smooth) and then put on a coat of paint sealant and a coat of spray wax.  The car looks really nice now, so nice that and I don’t want to drive it.  Luckily, with the CFO out of town, so I can drive her car and let mine stay clean for a couple days.

She isn’t happy with my plan because that means her car has to sit outside.  Although we have a 3 car garage, we are now storing a 1971 Karmana Ghia that belongs to the husband of the friend whose stuff I helped to move on Saturday, we will have it for about a month until their house is ready.  That means that after the Ghia and the miata there is only one available space in the garage, so the clean Accord has claimed that spot over the newer CRV.  If I’m feeling real nice, I will be detailing her car next weekend and then my car will be relegated to the dirty outdoors.  Which leads into why I don’t enjoy detailing the outside of cars:  you spend hours painstakingly cleaning it, only to have it rain the next day or, worst yet, a flock of birds fly over and poo all over it, and then all your hard work is gone.  

It looks like I need a lift in the garage so I can store more cars!

 

With that, the long holiday weekend was over and it was time for me to go back to work… while the CFO continues to sit on a deck overlooking the Atlantic Ocean…