I am certainly not entirely keeping pace with my weekender updates, but to be fair a lot of recent weekends have been us just hiding from the cold weather and watching movies or playing video games for long stretches. We’ve also spent a lot of time in the basement sorting and cleaning because the Kid has signalled an interest in moving into the downstairs bedroom but that requires a lot of reorganization, painting, and a list of other interconnected and downstream effects related to clearing out that room so she can move in. In other words, if you haven’t heard from us it’s probably because we are in the basement clearing it up.

But we did get out on a date night on Friday night. I had bought tix for Karin for Christmas to the symphony—experiences not more stuff, right?—and the show was a trio of former Broadway divas on tour and singing musical hits in accompaniment with our local orchestra. It was solid.

Saturday was busy, but not for me. 

The ladies had their morning fitness routines and I chilled with the dog.

And then it was prep for the annual dance studio gala event. This is our first year technically not being dance parents, though, even though Karin still takes some adult fitness classes there. Problem is that she was president of the parents society last year, so that means she is still loosely tied in the handover of the complex jobs of both transition and making sure all the know-how of running this big event get passed along to the next generation. She was over at the hall all afternoon helping with setup, and then they both ditched me to attend the show and dinner, the Kid going along to watch some of her friends dance.

I stayed at home and ordered a pizza (for Pi Day!) and cracked a beer for myself as I hunkered down with the dog and pushed through a couple episodes of the show I’ve been watching (Fallout). And then I retreated into the basement to noodle on my music stuff until well past eleven when the gals stumbled home.

I have this old amplifier stereo system with some reasonably good shelf speakers that have been sitting in my office gathering dust. All of it is well over twenty-five years old, though it still works. I (a) have been thinking that it was broken because the volume dial on the amp is finicky and (b) its very much got some old connections that don’t sync up with anything modern like HDMI or bluetooth or USB. But then I got to thinking: my music stuff doesn’t have modern connections either: it leans into standard audio jacks and the like. I dug through my box of old cables (you know, the kind every self respecting guy has in a closet) and managed to string an audio connection over to where my synth and pedals are setup, found the remote control at the back of the shelf and dusted off the equipment. It was damn near magical, filling the whole room and half the house with rumbling bass and wah-wahs of electric synth.

The next morning I met a few of the crew for our Sunday run. Various excuses—a fun run race, mostly—meant our little group was just three strong, but we logged ten klicks and even made it down into the snowy trails for a part of it.

Later that afternoon I was back down in the basement with my audio stuff out again, and had not only played for a solid hour or so with the synth but then realized that I also had the connections to hook up my iPhone to the audio cables. I put on some Pink Floyd and turned down the lights and just chilled. It was a vibe.

Of course, the Kid turned on the Oscars after dinner. I can’t say I ever care much to watch, usually because—as with this year—I haven’t seen many or any of the films yet. But we watched the whole damn thing, me mostly explaining the little nuggets that I understood about the voting process and the seat fillers and also trying to look up everything on our phones when we were like who-is-that and what-was-she-in-again?

If the weather reports are to be believed, the temperatures are about to do a one-eighty sometime today and perhaps even usher in a spring thaw. So, maybe next weekend—fingers crossed—I’ll get outside a bit more.