The weekend has become a giant blur for me…I really don’t know where to begin with what happened so I suppose I’ll just recap some main points:
The Breaking of the Dam: At the Foo Fighters concert, Mike had explained to me all about weeping tiles and the water that absorbs into the ground around your house and if the storm drain is blocked up, then it could potentially come through the concrete. While I admit that I am fairly smart in some things, there are other aspects of life in which I had no idea…for example, all this talk of ‘spring flooding’…I thought they just meant through my basement windows and that I should keep the area around my window clear of snow!
With this newfound knowledge and the fact that I found that our driveway had become a swimming pool, I decided it was due to time to break up the ice in the street to make a path to the storm drain a few houses down. I started with a shovel which didn’t really help matters. I then found my trusty crowbar and started chipping away at the ice trying to make a stream towards the drain. This was (partially) working but I knew I would be in it for the long haul. It was such a nice day out though so I figured it was better than staying inside. My neighbour ended up dropping by and giving me a giant steel rod that could be used to chip ice. This helped out a lot more as I didn’t have to bend over and chip away at the ice. It was heavy and tall enough for me to just lift it up and hammer the ice with it.
Seeing that this was the first time I had ever remotely attempted anything like this, I didn’t realize that the key to chipping the ice is to find a spot that you can chip away from…it’s not about making a little stream in the ice, but it’s more of the matter of getting rid of the ice completely from the street. I found this out after hitting one piece of ice and it broke away clean from the pavement. I thought “Hmm…this will make for a better channel for the water to run through!”. There were literally three driveways full of water that had to run into the drain so the bigger the channel, the better! Two hours later there was a river rushing through our street. Another neighbour came out and couldn’t believe the amount of water coming down the street. It was a thing of beauty actually. My hard work had paid off and now there was no more water in our driveways and I could rest easy that my basement would not flood (for now at least).
The Breaking of My Abs: I ended up going over to Vero’s on Thursday night and we made some dinner and watched Hot Fuzz (which is an EXCELLENT film by the way…quite funny). I ended up spying her pilates ball(s) in the corner and asked if we could try them out. She popped in the fifteen minute video and away we went! I must admit that shoes are needed if you are going to try pilates over a hardwood surface. My socks were flying all over the place! Some exercises were mediocre but some of them were quite hard to do which intrigued me. I would definitely try the ball out again as it’s a good workout. However, in hindsight, while I was sore in some spots, I definitely think I got a better stomach workout just using my regular old sit-up bench.
The Meeting of the Minds: I had to meet up with my school project team to finish up a Quantitative Methods project. We present to the class this coming Friday and I think we are cutting it a little short. It was good to get together as we hadn’t done so too much over the past few months. I must admit that I am not a fan of group work for this reason: I cannot go at my own pace. For example, I think if I would have had a project to work on, I probably would have went home for Easter weekend and either finished the project before or during that trip. But because of it being a group project, I had to stay in town. I’m definitely not knocking my group members…they are a fine bunch. I’m just saying it’s a lot easier sometimes to work on your own on a project, especially if you are one of those people who want to ensure everything is perfect with the report.
The Building of the Bench: Mom and Dad had bought me a workbench to use out in the garage so now that the weather was cooperating a little, it was due time to open the garage door, let some air and construct the bench. We had a few mishaps due to the instruction manual not being very forthcoming with good diagrams (for example we were building it upside down at one point) but we got on track quickly and it ended up being a decent workbench. It’s actually a real nice workbench to use to work on electronics I would think…like when you have to tear apart your computer or something. I think it will also be useful for other projects…I should create something. Any ideas out there?
The Birth of the BBQ: After bonding over the creation of the workbench, Mike and I realized that what called our name was the BBQ hidden under the snow in the backyard. With the sun in my face and the hunger pangs of steak on the BBQ, I took the shovel to the backyard towards the BBQ. Now, at first I thought this may be an easy task but the wind was quite chilling and the snow was quite hard. It’s like it froze somewhere in the middle. Groan. So I chipped away at it little by little until I made my way to the front of the BBQ. Success! I don’t think it took me that long…probably 45 minutes to cut a path and to scoop out the area around the propane tank. Mike joined me as we lit the BBQ and we marvelled at the smell arising from this great steel oven. Seeing that it was a beautiful day (well, the wind was quite cold, but it sure was nice in the sun) Mike grabbed us a few beer and we set up some lawn chairs in the snow in the backyard. It was quite comforting to imagine the summer upon us, but after 20 minutes we realized that it was indeed, freaking cold and we headed inside to watch some episodes of Alias (which Mike had just discovered and I hadn’t seen in quite some time).
We had an amazing feast of steak and potatoes for supper and the next night we also had some pork chops on the BBQ. The season is upon us!
A New Hope Arises: Now, we all know that Vero does not want to watch Star Wars and we found out over the years that the reason why is because she does not care for robots. I don’t know what they did to her personally, but she doesn’t like them. But years ago, she gave me a Christmas gift in the form of coupons that I could redeem to have her watch Star Wars with me. I ended up misplacing the coupons but decided to look for them anyhow and finally found them tucked in a cabinet somewhere. We called up Eric and he joined us in watching Star Wars with Vero. I don’t think she minded it too much although she did cringe whenever a droid would come by the screen. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…I find Star Wars to be a little boring to watch. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen it a few times…but I definitely prefer the more intriguing storyline of Empire or Return over the first film.
And that’s that. It was a fairly lackluster weekend but I’m sure after reading about my adventures you may wonder why I say that. I suppose it’s due to the fact that there was no fanfare concerning Easter per say, other than the fact that Vero and I built an Easter gingerbread house (!!!), or I combined some scrambled eggs and chocolate to make…chocolate easter eggs (get it?) which Vero couldn’t really stomach. I did think of our Lord Jesus Christ sacrificing himself for us but other than that, there wasn’t anything overly special about this weekend.
Perhaps I am succumbing to the everlasting winter! Let there be no snow!
I hope you all enjoyed your Easter long weekend.