Bachelor Pad Weekend Recap

For the benefit of my sister Michelle, who emailed last night and asked where's my weekend update blog post, here's my recap from my bachelor pad weekend!  I know she is expecting/hoping for something way more exciting than this post is probably going to be, but here goes anyhow....

As I mentioned previously, the wifey was going away from Thurs morning to Sunday evening to visit her sister in Albany, or more specifically Duanesburg, NY.  I had mentioned that this was only the second time she has been away without me.  I've been away several times for work/training classes or what not, but hadn't had the place to myself in quite a while.

Where do we start...Well, Thursday night I cooked up some mini penne pasta/ragu and Armour small frozen meatballs and let me say, if you've never had them, go get some!  They are really the best frozen meatballs ever.  I let them sit in sauce in a bowl for about 30 minutes and then microwaved the sauce for 2 minutes with the meatballs in there and it was good stuff.    I then vacuumed and steam cleaned the carpets, with the 4 furry kids that is a pretty common activity and something I'm an expert at by now.  I watched some Big Brother, some other random shows and that was about it.   

Friday I worked from home.  After work I read a bit of my stock trading book, did some stock research for next week and had leftover pasta/meatballs.  Caught up on some stuff on the DVR...Pawn Stars, American Pickers and a new one I recorded, American Restoration.   PARTY!

Saturday I woke up, had a family chat on IM and began my day of stuff that needed to get done.  I mowed the lawn and then went to Five Guys for lunch.  Yummy good stuff and they were insanely nice in there for some reason, asking if there was anything else I needed, how the food was and even opened the door for me when I left.  WeIrD.  After that, I got the oil changed in the wifey's car, gassed it up and went to Publix and did a tad bit of grocery shopping.  I even used two coupons, pretty impressive eh?

I'm known for hating the grocery store, but by myself with a short list of specific items that I put together and going when it's not busy wasn't too bad.  I then came home and then took a little cat nap, with the cats of course.  After that I ran the dishwasher, did some laundry, did some cleanup and then watched a TV movie 'The Fall of Sam Axe'.  It was a movie staring one of my favorite actors Bruce Campbell and it's related to the USA network show Burn Notice.  Needless to say, it was terrible, but at least I saved the wifey from having to watch it.  By then it was around 10pm.

At that point it became the 'night of 1,000 clicks'.  When I say clicks, you know that sound a screen door makes when you open it and walk away?  It starts to retract on it's own and then CLICK.  It latches and the door closes.  Well imagine that times 1000 over.  Let me explain...

Our neighbors on the side closest to our living room/patio recently moved in over the last few months.  They're renting from our prior neighbors that we really liked and were sad to see them go.  Overall the new peeps are nice and relatively quiet, no dogs or anything and it's a couple around our age with a son around 8-10 I'd say.  She just had a baby maybe 3 weeks ago and I think her mom and some other relatives have been over.  I remember our prior neighbor saying they were a Colombian couple.   I only mention that because I think it's relevant to the story.

Like I mentioned, it was 10pm Saturday that the clicking began.  That is only a factor when he cooks out, the problem is he cooks out relatively often.  I'm not quite sure what he is cooking on his smoker type grill, but whatever it is he goes out there well over 100 times to check on it, no joke.  And I'm assuming he doesn't want to let bugs into his patio and with all his patio stuff there isn't room to put it in his patio, like our last neighbor and I do, unfortunately.  This went on until at least 1:30am when I finally went to bed.  Normally you probably wouldn't notice it, but houses are close in Florida and where I sit is right next to our sliding glass door and just outside that is our screen patio and on the right is their screen patio and once you hear it, you can't not hear it. 

So anyway, it is what it is and I thought the odd thing was that they had just started to head outside at 10pm and were still up past 2am.  This is a couple with a new born less than 3 weeks old hanging out with what I think are older parents and maybe a sibling.  I think the mom has been staying there for a few weeks, so I would think she'd be exhausted also.  Pretty sure there were drinks involved too, but they weren't being loud or anything.  But, what do I know eh?  Maybe it's a cultural thing that they function well on a lack of sleep and like to cookout after 10pm, or maybe the baby just sleeps really well.  At any rate, once I went to bed I could no longer hear the clicks, so all was good...

Sunday I went to the pool for a bit, played some games on my phone and finished cleaning up the house.  Then I went to pick up the wifey at the airport around 7pm and all was back to normal....I have to say, I really did enjoy my solo time.  Normally I'm not a big fan of being alone for extended periods because I tend to get bored quickly, but this wasn't an extended period, so it was a fun little change of pace....And another amazing thing was the cats did NOT wake me up to be fed.  I told the wifey when she left that they would be perfect while she was gone and not wake me up at all and it was true.  Normally they wake her up without fail between 5:45am-6:30am with other potential middle of the night noises/playing.  While she was gone, nada...I woke up around 9 and they still weren't even bugging me for food. 

It was fun and I know she will enjoy her alone time next week when I head out myself for the trip to NY for Harborfest, but I'm glad to have her back home safe and sound....As you can see, it wasn't all that exciting, but hopefully I at least made it into an interesting read....Happy now Michelle?  :o)