Friday was Michael’s birthday. I spent the evening home with the cats and a couple good books. He ended up heading out for the evening to build the fire and be the rock carrier for the monthly men’s sweat lodge down in Malvern as a way to spend his birthday in service. While he was there he was asked to be the support person for the upcoming The Sun-Moon Dance (info here), which he agreed to and will cause him to be gone from this upcoming Friday through Monday (which works out well, since I’ll be on call/working this weekend anyway).
Saturday was spent doing some major cleaning of the house while the weather was still tolerable. Saturday evening we headed down to the Bird Song Peace Chamber for a fire ceremony (more on this in an entry to come). After the ceremony Michael and I headed up to Ortino’s Northside to relax with a couple of beers. I grabbed a Saison DuPont – Belgian Farm Ale, recommended by the bartender we trust. It was quite a treat even though it had a strange skunky smell, surprisingly dry and crisp, now one of my favorite saisons. I also grabbed a Allagash Curieux – Burbon Oak Aged Ale, which our bartender described as obviously burbon-y, and sort of burns when it goes down. Wow! I had to try that. It didn’t disappoint, I won’t be finishing a whole 750ml bottle myself again anytime soon, but it was an interesting change for an ale to be so liquor-ish.
Sunday it was starting to get hot. I spent the morning outside with Caligula writing a letter on my laptop until it got too warm for me and I headed inside for the afternoon to read in the air conditioning. Michael can tolerate the heat much better than I and spent the afternoon outside exploring the area behind the garage where we have an accidental tree nursery. Some walnut saplings (4+ ft tall), a couple spruce and some others. He ended up planting the walnut where an old shrub I didn’t like used to be. For dinner that evening our friends David and Constance took us out to the Parc Bistro for dinner to celebrate Michael’s Birthday. The dinner there was good as usual, even if the Chimay cheese on the cheese plate we ordered was much more mild than ones we’ve had in the past.
Finally, I started going to the gym in the evenings. On my way up to Vidalia Marketplace near where I used to work the other day I realized how much I valued that time I used to spend commuting home, some days it was quite theraputic. I certainly don’t want a commute again! Between time and money lost of commuting I never want to go back to that. But I think I did need a way to ease from work to evening time better and the meditation/grounding methods just haven’t been cutting it. So Michael suggested I head to the gym in the evening so I have that time I need after work. My only concerns were how full the YMCA parking lot is in the evening as opposed to the morning and how tired I was the last time I attempted to do the gym thing in the evening. I went last Thursday evening and yesterday evening and learned that most of that is families spending time in the pools and child-centric events, rather than adults in the main workout room, there is plenty of space for me to get my workout done. I also found that taking the hour+ of commuting out of my day gave me some of my energy back, I didn’t feel nearly as tired as I had in the past when going in the evening. I think this will work out well, I’m home by 5:30PM for a shower and a reasonably timed dinner.