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Last weekend was yet another in a long string of actually good weekends punctuated with moments of me anxiously thinking "I'm not wasting my precious weekend am I??" Apparently I continue to need to prove to myself that I'm doing alright so I managed to snap a couple pictures along the way and with this weekend approaching being one in which I'll be working (I work every other weekend), I might also want to revisit/live vicariously though last weekend at some point.
Friday was grocery shopping day. That doesn't sound exciting, I know, but we decided to attempt to actually eat at a real-live restaurant while we were out. Like I mentioned last post, Massachusetts is in Phase II of opening back up and in addition to retail being open, restaurants are allowing outdoor seating (I think that's a bit silly- why not just allow limited capacity inside??- but I'll take what I can get). There's a restaurant we like that's conveniently located adjacent to our supermarket of choice so we put in our name, wavered at the wait time (1.5 hrs!), decided to go for it, then killed the time by doing our shopping and taking a stroll around the shopping center. It ended up being a 2 hour wait due to the fact that they had issues with their system and lost our name but by the time we realized that we were in too deep and went for it anyway. By the time we got our beers (large ones), we stopped caring and just enjoyed being able to eat at a restaurant again. I gotta say, it's the thing I missed most.
For my first restaurant outing in months, I think I made an excellent choice and got the classic New England summertime treat: a lobster roll. I got mine with a side of sweet potato fries- not so classic but a person favorite. Lobster, plus the fact that lobster rolls scream "summer" to me, plus this being the first thing I've had served to me in ages, PLUS the 22 oz of Founders Porter made it a delightful outing, despite the wait.
On Saturday we didn't have any solid plans but I decided to try and tackle something I've been meaning to figure out for quite some time now...
Last year, my mom gave me an extra sewing machine she had lying around (because that's definitely a normal thing to have extras of hanging around the house). I've only used a sewing machine maybe twice in my life thus far and each time my mom did all the hard bits- I just stepped on the pedal and ran the fabric through. This seems to be a fairly basic, if not super current, model (I seem to remember my mom's having more dials and things), which is good because I took me half the day just to figure out how to set it up.
My first project is hemming a curtain. Very simple and straightforward and I won't be sad if I somehow mess it up, which is highly likely. I've got the machine threaded, the curtain cut/pinned/ironed but... that's it. I briefly had a go but very quickly it turned into a jumbled mess. Ah well, I'm just happy I'm finally giving it a shot. It'll be nice to learn a new crafty skill that's actually useful. Cross stitching is all well and good but how many funny Star Trek samplers do you need (answer: a lot. It was a trick question)?
On Sunday we decided to go for a "little bike ride" and somehow ended up going a full 20 miles.
There's my sweet ride. I suppose I should've taken a better picture but I was too busying hydrating at the time. It's a Montague Crosstown and has a rear RackStand which my backpack is lashed onto. M has the Urban model, it's wheel is peaking in the bottom left. The cool thing about these bikes is that they fold up, basically in half and the front wheel gets removed and it all gets tied together. The folding process is super quick and uncomplicated (when M does it anyway) and makes it so we don't need any sort of bike rack on our cars or special vehicle to transport them. Where physical activity is concerned, I've found it's best to remove any sort of barriers to it happening because we will jump at the chance to find an excuse not to do it. Also, an interesting tidbit: these bikes were designed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the HQ is still in Cambridge. Shop local, right?
It was a really pretty day- sunny and warm but not hot. Everything was so green and nice and while there were quite a bit of people on the trail, it didn't seem too overcrowded. We did this trek last summer with M's family and not only was it hot but I made the foolish mistake of wearing denim shorts. My poor, poor derriere. This time was so much better (but my derriere still suffered a little, that bike seat takes no prisoners).
It wasn't just the glorious day that got me to invest twice as much time and effort into this bike ride than I had originally planned. It takes more than a few rays of sunshine to get me out and pumping out the miles, I also require...
Blueberry ice cream! Yes, yes I will bike 20 miles if you promise really good ice cream. Good health is not enough of a motivator for me apparently and anyway, life is about balance.
The rest of the day was filled with games and me trying to be crafty, like the rest of my free time this weekend. It was a good mix- I exercised/got outside, ice cream was involved, good food, fun games, projects started... yep, another good weekend in the books. I feel like the weather is really helping me lift my mood and this weekend is supposed to be in the upper 80s (about 31 C) so despite having to work, I think I'll be able to get some good out of it. I'm sure the kids will be dragging me outside at the very least.
Ooh, that looks like such a nice ride, and with ice cream at the end? Yes, please! Good luck with the sewing machine! I used to use my mom's (a really old Singer from the 70s), but have never owned one of my own.
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