Originally, my son was supposed to come over this weekend, but I found out at the last minute he wasn’t going to be coming over, as he was gone all weekend on a scout trip. We had planned to get a bunch of work done around the house, so now our schedules were clear to get stuff done.
I had planned on working in the back yard, cleaning up the leaves and such, but Friday and Saturday turned out to be nothing but rain, so we concentrated on indoor projects. Such as the microwave in the kitchen.
New Kitchen Cabinets and Microwave
Our microwave in the kitchen died in…uhh… let’s say May or June. It was over the stove type, so running out and grabbing another microwave wasn’t the simple solution. We have so little counter space that getting a small microwave for the mean time wasn’t an option either, so we went without a microwave for most of the summer. A few weekends ago, Marty and I bought a new over the stove Samsung at Best Buy, but I then discovered that the installation of this microwave depending on it being mounted beneath a cabinet, and it could not be hung on just the wall. (The previous microwave should have been too, I later found out, but it’s wall mounting bracket was good enough that you could get away with no cabinter. Not possible with the new one) The way has never had cabinets, just a microwave/stove and fridge. So, I found some cabinets at Lowe’s that would fit perfectly, and bribed my father in coming down for the day to assist (This wasn’t a job I was going to be able to do myself, and Marty is a bit too low to the ground to be of assistance) Marty and I grabbed the cabinets before meeting my father for breakfast (deposit on his payment) and were able to get rolling by 10:30AM. The whole install took less then 3 hours, so we were able to have things wrapped up in time for a few beers and lunch at the Engine House on Cass.
Marty and had been considering meeting the LUV crowd in Royal Oak for dinner before heading over to Mike’s party. (Something we had dismissed when we thought we were going to have child this weekend) but decided against it because it was still raining cats and dogs (and I don’t like to mix a little drinking and crappy weather) and we were worn out from all the project work by the time we got everything cleaned up, so we camped on the couch for the evening. (I had been upgrading my Apple TV during the day, so we had to stress test it.. <G>)
Sunday was productive too, but in a less organized fashion. Still had work to do on stress testing the newly upgraded AppleTV, but we were able to get out in the morning between church waves at the local pancake restaurant, and order up a couple of plates of banana pancakes. After that, we just got odd and end things done around the house. A little after noon, we went up to Meijer to pick up the stuff we needed to make a pot of beef barley soup, and some stuff for reorganizing things down by the bike workbench in the basement (a badly needed new shelf for crap, and some stuff to setup a charging area for our 6+ biking lights.) The charging of bike lights had been a mess of power strips, transformers and power cords taking u the end of my workbench, so now there is a whole shelf dedicated to charging batteries. Much nicer now. And, we had the pot of soup developing over the afternoon too.
Pot of soup on the stove
When we finally had the soup together, we decided to head out for a quick bike ride while it simmered on the stove. We checked the weather, and found it to be in the mid-30s. As much as that didn’t sound fun, it’s winter, and it’s time to face the reality of cold riding. So, we dressed up in our funny clothes, and headed out on the CX bikes. I admit that although I knew there were chances of snow, I was surprised when I looked out and saw snow on the ground. Not too much, but enough to catch you by surprise. So, we headed out for a quick 15 miles out toward Metro Beach and back, and came home to a house smelling like yummy soup. Took showers to warm back up, and dove into a couple of bowls of soup and some tasty sour dough bread I had picked up to go with our feast. The soup was awesome, and now I have a microwave to warm up leftovers tonight. Can’t beat that!.
The snow I wasn't expecting.
So, that was our weekend in a nutshell. Other then the work in the back yard I wanted to get done, it was a productive weekend. I suppose I’ll have to scape frozen leaves off the back yard later this week. Nature is a bitch to finally get the leaves down just in time to rain on them, but that’s life.
Today, it’s back to work, on the first Monday that really feels like winter. Come On Spring!