drwex | At last, a weekend with spontaneity (Reply)

People who've known me a long while will be amused - I'm sort of the opposite of spontaneous. I like having a plan and sticking with it. Plans can be as simple as "let's see what's over here" or "I wanna hang out for a bit and see if someone interesting comes by" but at least it's a PLAN. People who respond to "What do you want to do?" with an eye roll, uninterested shrug, or "Idunno" comment tend to get the death stare from me.

So, I had a plan: the weather was going to suck and I was going to get the kids through a mountain of chores, take K to his Aikido, and then play some games. Pygment was away all day. We got through step 1 (dishes, much cleaning, and some laundry all got done, and the kids' rooms were muchly improved) and step 2. Then I realized that holy cow it was not only not a sucky weather day it was downright gorgeous. And I further realized that we had promised

ceo's Benjamin a new bike - the hand-down of L's old training-wheeled bike. And actually as long as I was going to consider bike delivery there were a LOT of my friends showing their stuff down that-a-way. Phone conversation with ceo confirmed that the weather down there was also excellent and there was a good chance we'd be able to drop stuff off and maybe even see a studio or two.

So I dropped off K and went back to the house to grab the bike and the one-page printed map. It was already mid-afternoon, but I figured about 2-3 hours of this would be as much as the kids could manage anyway. They bitched and moaned the whole way down, but see above about me and plans. I had a new one, and they could sit in the bloody car if they wanted. (I'm a thoroughly evil parent, too, as the kids will tell you.)

There was bike delivery. There was wandering. There was food. There was art, though I decided I really couldn't justify $400 for the one piece that really interested me. There were lots of dogs to be petted and unexpected meetings to be had.

Sadly I missed seeing about 3/5 of the friends I intended to visit and the Sunday return trip was foiled by a combination of Pygment's sinus infection and L's excessive misbehavior. But still, it was a good weekend, even though game failed on Sunday due to lack of quorum.