Welcome Back Suckers Weekend Recap

Howdy y'all!  I hope you had a great weekend.  It was our first weekend back from vacation.  I'll do a separate post about that.  It was hotter than hades to welcome us back after having been in our ideal weather of 55-60 degrees and breezy which was literally not cool to return to.  Neither of us were ready for that and it looks like we're in it until winter, just like I said we'd be.

We were thrown back into adulting by having had an issue with our network on day two of leaving so we were getting no security updates because there was no internet.  This affected several things that made you just want to scream.  Nothing you want to do more than deal with a network problem after an 11 hour drive.  We checked the radon monitor and yep, the initial home test I recommended that everyone do whether you think you have radon or not was confirmed after a full month's worth of data at 5.8.  We had to get paperwork submitted to the HOA to get that ball rolling which will be about $1100.  The Mr had to take in his car to Hyundai to FINALLY get a fix for his 'hey your car could randomly catch on fire' issue they've known about for three months and they came out with a laundry list of stuff he should get done.  Funny how we have a dirty air filter when it was just changed.  They did recommend the brakes getting done and we thought the price of almost $1000 sounded insane and called around and it was pretty much the going rate.  The knocking hot water tank after a thorough flushing is going to have to wait for replacement next year.  (FYI- a "no flushing needed" hot water tank is a load of sh*t.  Flush the hot water tank once a year)

That birch arbor we put up in 2020 to keep us entertained and we hoped one day covered in shade, needs to come down since it caught a lovely case of varnish fungus rot or some nonsense.  

It was a jerry rigging kind of year so we did what we thought would last and it didn't for as long as we hoped.  I ordered a metal one that looks like it'll just fit the loveseat and we'll have to start over.  The wisteria came back but the jasmine they said would if I kept it protected, didn't.  Lucky for us though because the wisteria isn't super established and I had to hack off all of the dead jasmine.  Of course the arbor isn't set to arrive until this week or next depending on when they decide to ship it.  Obviously because we are us, we'll need to loosely assemble it to make sure the loveseat fits because if we put it together completely and it doesn't, I'd be taking a long walk off of a short pier.

Then the Mr decided he needed some kind of switch for his new ceiling fan since the installation basically killed one of the two working light switches from having to cap it.  Well, it was basically a two hour ordeal and having a color blind man working on electricity doesn't fill one with confidence especially when he didn't take a before pic of what it looked like if he'd have to go back to the original.

Vacation vibes...killed.  

(source)

At least it wasn't as stressful as this time two years ago.

That moved us into the weekend.  It seems like every year there is some big undertaking needing done on the patio to get it together.  We've already had to replace the furniture covers this year and they weren't that old.  I guarantee in 6-8 weeks, we won't even go out there if this heat keeps up the way it has and any flowers we buy will be crispy.  Tale as old as time...

Sadly, the arbor didn't take much to come down.  We were both sad to see it go because it was done at a time when we needed some hope (and everyone else got to the metal arbors that would fit before we could) so it kind of symbolizes something to us.  We also had to put it together in the garage so we weren't on full display, a piece was cut wrong and thankfully I had a spare birch pole randomly hanging around to cut to fit and then we had to carry the fully assembled arbor under the cloak of darkness around to the back patio hoping our nosy neighbor wouldn't catch us.  Always an adventure. It's weird to see the space without it now.

But we're looking forward to getting the new one up and giving the vines a spot to establish.  Fingers crossed.  It was a two shower Saturday for sure and the Mr promptly napped after his and thankfully my headache went away.  We did a few random geocaches that evening and weirdly enough found the future grave of my 3rd grade teacher at one of them.  That was a trip.  On Sunday, we did a little more work on the patio.  If you have cedar fencing, you know they gap over time.  Well, when you have nosy neighbors who we've literally caught peeking through them, you make a solution.  This backer rod foam is perfect to go between gaps and I use these pot scrapers to work them in without damaging the wood.  So that was my fun for Sunday.  The Mr did some patio work and got our pics hung up out there.  I'll take pics of it all when we've got the patio together and hopefully done.  

We got a month of Peacock Premium Saturday night so I could watch Maneskin's performance on Eurovision (heal up soon, Damiano!) so we had streaming access to Firestarter with Zac Efron which we watched last night.  I only saw the original about 5 years ago but still didn't remember enough to know if it was close to the original movie or not.  It was okay.  I wouldn't necessarily recommend it but wouldn't steer anyone away from it either especially if you read the book or want to see how it stacks up to the original.  I will say John Carpenter's scoring skills are still on point.

That was that.

How was your weekend?

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