Beginning of Summer Holiday Weekend

[Skinypupy]

Well, that was the shittiest 3 hours of my life. Literally.

Right as we're gettin on the plane, Wonder Twin A says "my tummy feels icky". 5 diaper blowouts, three change of clothes in a tiny airplane bathroom, two shoes literally full of shit, two biohazard bags, and one very miserable 3 year old, and we're finally in Nashville. Thank god we had extremely understanding people around us...I felt awful for all of them. Must have apologized a hundred times.

Yeah, that sucked.

[Chaosraven]

Carbon Unit Designated "Wife" and I hit up the casino for a little slots, went to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner, and then played a game of Digital Talisman on my laptop, cuddled up in bed.

We will be heading to some friends places Saturday and Monday. Not sure about Sunday.

Under an hour travellwise.

[Z-Corn]

I'm too tired to activate all my steam key just reading MHS' post.

Also, I'm revising my plan. I'm driving to Grand Rapids and eating all of Z Corn's food and drinking all his beer. He can keep the tequila.

Road trip! Sounds like he'll have enough for all of us.

Sure!

There's plenty of pork and beer available, I'll have to run to the produce market for more asparagus though.

Hope you guys don't mind that the HeroScape collection is still out on the dining room table...

[mori]

I will be doing some proper BBQ. Slow cooking over wood smoke. I am leaning towards porketta (porchetta) but it will probably not have a pork tenderloin in the middle like the Italian dish. Get it pre assembled at my local grocer. I got a new car tonight and having it delivered to my workplace tonight or possible Saturday morning. So I will drive my beater truck to work and leave it there while I drive the new car around the rest of the weekend. Arrange a ride to work when it is not a holiday weekend and then get all my vehicles at home. FA Cup final is Saturday, a lot of auto racing on Sunday, and a Monday to honor our veterans.

Got my new car today. Impressions in another thread. Successfully smoked a porketta. It was not really a porketta as it was just a pork butt rubbed in Italian seasoning. I will make a real one this year. Also not happy with the performance of my Traeger Grill but that will eventually be in another thread. But the outcome was outstanding. Almost a quarter inch smoke ring at 155 F internal temperature. Made a sandwich out of a portion. French bread, smoked porketta, sauteed spinach with roasted garlic, lemon zest, red pepper flakes, and lemon juice. Probably could of made a sauce to take it to another level but I am too far into the beer to want to make it happen.

[Jeff V]

Brother got moved in yesterday, despite having no water. He had water when they did the inspection Friday, he went back after the close and...no water. And the water company is closed until Tuesday. I need to make sure that doesn't happen to me next week.

Got the garage cleaned today, and then a neighbor stopped by to let us know he was going to the pool (along with his grandson, one of my son's friends). So we did that this afternoon -- waiting for wife to get ready now, she just woke up at 3:30 and we'll go out to dinner before coming back home then joining those same neighbors for a fire pit. Tomorrow need to get the garage loaded up and packing above 80% before heading out to an early afternoon party.

[Kraken]

After vowing to limit my planting this year to 12 or 15 tomato plants, I emerged from the garden center with a total of 27. You gotta have variety -- a couple cherry tomato plants, two kinds of Romas, some early slicers, and some late slicers to keep them coming all summer -- and if you buy the 4- and 6-packs of itty bitty plants they add up pretty fast. Over the past two days I got 21 of them into the ground, so I should be able to finish that the first half of this week. A few will inevitably die, and my garden has gotten so shady that I won't get the bushels that you'd expect from that many plants.

Feels like an accomplishment to have them planted ahead of tomorrow's rain, anyway, and I'm looking forward to an ample supply of homegrown tomatoes in a couple of months.

I did cut way back on other vegetables. I'm just doing tomatoes, banana peppers, basil, beans, and squash this year. If the weather cooperates I should have everything in by next weekend.

[gbasden]

Travelled to San Jose to hang out with my college gaming friends and got a few days of Pathfinder in. Always a good time!

[AWS260]

Jenny Jump. I've never been there before.

That's a great place to go camping, and I'm not just saying that because you're going to be like 15 minutes from my house. Try not to get distracted by the Land of Make Believe.

It was great, other than packing up in the rain Monday morning. Our group basically took over: both group campsites and about half of the individual sites. Some nice hiking and a Saturday night visit to the very impressive amateur observatory. Most of the sky was overcast, but there were nice views of Jupiter and a couple of its moons.

I came home with warm memories and a tick.

[Jeff V]

After vowing to limit my planting this year to 12 or 15 tomato plants, I emerged from the garden center with a total of 27. You gotta have variety -- a couple cherry tomato plants, two kinds of Romas, some early slicers, and some late slicers to keep them coming all summer -- and if you buy the 4- and 6-packs of itty bitty plants they add up pretty fast. Over the past two days I got 21 of them into the ground, so I should be able to finish that the first half of this week. A few will inevitably die, and my garden has gotten so shady that I won't get the bushels that you'd expect from that many plants.

Feels like an accomplishment to have them planted ahead of tomorrow's rain, anyway, and I'm looking forward to an ample supply of homegrown tomatoes in a couple of months.

I did cut way back on other vegetables. I'm just doing tomatoes, banana peppers, basil, beans, and squash this year. If the weather cooperates I should have everything in by next weekend.

I tried planting from seeds, figuring we had time since we're moving this coming weekend.

Roma tomatoes sprouted in abundance early April then simply stopped growing. They are still 1 cm sprouts.

Two other tomato varieties sprouted in less abundance a few weeks later but now have grown large enough to discern the leaves are tomato plants. Have hopes for these.

Green beans appear to have 100% sprouting success and the pot they are in is entirely covered by foliage. These need immediate transplant.

Green onion have sprouted in abundance, but are still like wispy strands of chive.

A few peppers have sprouted and will likely continue growing.

Everything else did not sprout. Basil, cucumber, zucchini, several other types of pepper -- no sign of life. Will probably fill out the sizable veggie garden at the new house with sproutlings from the plant and dirt store.

[pr0ner]

I wound up playing 3 rounds of golf this weekend. I need a break!

[Kraken]

Everything else did not sprout. Basil, cucumber, zucchini, several other types of pepper -- no sign of life. Will probably fill out the sizable veggie garden at the new house with sproutlings from the plant and dirt store.

Fast-growing plants like beans and squash are best sowed directly in the ground as soon as the soil is fully warmed (early to mid June here). Even if they have a head start, they will need to recover from transplant shock and they won't take off until the weather is hot anyway. You don't gain anything from starting them indoors unless pests plague your seedlings -- a couple of times I've had rabbits or something decapitate every bean plant as soon as it emerges.

I've tried seeding my own tomatoes (indoors) before and found that it's not worth the effort. For one thing, I never want more than six plants of any given variety, and usually prefer to have just 2-3 of several varieties. For another, tomato seedlings are emo. Saucing tomatoes are the only thing that it would make sense to raise in quantity. I did that a few years ago with some heirloom seeds and it worked out pretty well.

[Jeff V]

I didn't want to buy any seedlings this spring because of the move. By next week, all of the smaller, cheaper plants will be gone from store shelves. There will be larger, more mature plants, but at a price that's not really cost-effective. I figured might as well try seeding and see what happens, if we got viable seedlings, all the better.

I did buy 3 basil plants last week, mostly because I needed fresh basil and they were so cheap it was a better choice than buying cut basil. I never seem to have much luck cultivating them all summer though. Next year I think there will be a more substantial garden outlay, particularly to establish berry plants (blue, straw, rasp) along the sides of the house.

[Jeff V]

So the start of summer is here. We have a party planned this afternoon -- the hour-by-hour forecast is 70-90% chance of storms, some severe, from 2 pm to 10 pm. It should be noted that the past two days, 80% chance of storms were predicted, and if the other 20% was sunny and warm instead, I guess we lucked out.

Anyone else doing anything of note this weekend?

[Exodor]

Anyone else doing anything of note this weekend?

We took a day trip to the coast - as did about 90% of Portland, it seems. What should have been an 80 minute drive took 3 hours and it took an hour to get a table at a restaurant.

Still, it was a beautiful day and I really love the Oregon coast.

[Isgrimnur]

Wife is selling booze to those that can’t plan ahead, so I’m sitting at the theater, waiting for Shazam to start.

[Kraken]

Same as every year: putting in my garden. Just finished the tomato patch, which is 75% of the work. I'll finish weeding the rest of it this after and try to plant everything else between rain storms this week. Beans like very warm soil, so there's no hurry on them.

[$iljanus]

Same as every year: putting in my garden. Just finished the tomato patch, which is 75% of the work. I'll finish weeding the rest of it this after and try to plant everything else between rain storms this week. Beans like very warm soil, so there's no hurry on them.

I've been holding off due to the weather but I think it's stable enough to start buying some tomatoes to plant after weeding. I'm holding off on the herbs until further into June though.

[Z-Corn]

I popped seeds waaay late this year but I had them under a light and on top of a germination mat. But then the light burned out yesterday. I think I've got a few plants of each variety I can up pot within the next week.

[mori]

Gave up on pot gardening. I turned my attention to bonsai. Spent the weekend taking the flowers off of my azaleas. Want the plant vigor to go towards growth instead of reproduction and looking pretty. Overcooked baby back ribs on Sunday. Monday has been nothing but rain and drinking beer.

[pr0ner]

I'm in Iceland as part of a weeklong vacation.

[dbt1949]

I replaced the kitchen faucet.

[Jaymon]

I introduced my daughter to Skyrim. She spent an hour making her character. She attacked the very first chicken she encountered, and was killed by the guards. She tried again on a different system, this time she attacked the guy leading her out of Helgen, and was killed.
I think she might be a murderhobo.

[stimpy]

I replaced the kitchen faucet.

And I replaced the slop sink faucet.

[Jeff V]

About 1:30 yesterday afternoon, it started raining - hard. Then it started to hail - horizontally. It took some effort to close my front door, even though there plexiglas storm door was closed. I told the kids to stay away from the windows, and then there was a loud bang -- I thought maybe the storm door was ripped off the hinges and thrown against the house. This went on a good 15 minutes.

Afterward, I discovered the storm door was intact, but my garage door had buckled and the rollers thrown off the tracks. It took 3 of us to open and close the thing so I could get my car out. I nice flowering landscape tree was obliterated. I picked up a few of the pretty softball-sized flowers and put them in vases. My 100lb iron patio table was thrown 20' and upended. My patio umbrella now resembles some sort of angry modern art. There is at least one crack and one hole in the vinyl siding on the front of the house, perhaps a few more. The nearby Menards had part of it's roof torn out, and while there were countless trees down around the neighborhood, the mangy tress I have were none the worse for wear. At least 6 other people in our subdivision Facebook group posted pictures of buckled garage doors. News reported this morning that my town was hit with 70 MPH wind gusts.

A follow-up storm blew through about 2 hours later and dumped more rain on everything. We still went ahead with our party, and it cleared in time for me to grill corn and BBQ ribs.

[Holman]

I introduced my daughter to Skyrim. She spent an hour making her character. She attacked the very first chicken she encountered, and was killed by the guards. She tried again on a different system, this time she attacked the guy leading her out of Helgen, and was killed.
I think she might be a murderhobo.

Achievement Unlocked!

[Unagi]

it's: Badge Earned!
... these days, dude.