Yawn; Another Weekend Come and Gone

What has been a relatively quiet, but wet weekend is drawing to a close.

On Friday evening I did go to my usual Friday-night watering hole, Soby's, for a couple of glasses of wine. A few friends stopped by to catch up and tip one or two with me. It's not the same since my buddy Steve is no longer behind the bar. I was home by 9:30.

I'd like to say that I worked through the weekend on money-making projects, but that just wouldn't be true. I do have several assignments that I should be addressing, but the slacker in me just wouldn't allow it. I did prep a small hallway wall for painting. My house is somewhere in the range of 60 years old and is settling. I'm not sure how that is even possible. The ground here is red clay that is so hard you can't drive a nail into it with a sledgehammer. How this house can continue to settle is beyond me.

As it is settling, cracks are developing at the top of nearly every door on the main and third levels. I patched the ones in my bedroom and painted that wall three or four months ago. I also addressed all the stress cracks on the main level and painted those walls at the same time. Since doing all of that, a crack developed on the hall side over the upstairs bathroom door. I fixed that over the past week and was determined to paint that wall this weekend.

On Saturday I had all the trim work taped off, all the materials at the ready and was about to begin when I received a text from a buddy that he had put one of his dogs down that morning and needed a memorial drink. He said he and his wife would be at the Peddler Saturday happy hour around 3. It was already after 2 at that point. Never one to let a buddy drink alone, I showered and headed to Peddler.

A few other friends showed up as well. We all commiserated for a couple of hours. I had spaghetti sauce thawed for my usual Saturday "Italian night;" so I headed for home around 6. The balance of my evening was spent in my recliner watching movies.

For the past couple of years, I've been spending two or three hours on Sunday afternoons visiting my bartender buddy Natalie at Smoke on the Water. They have a $2.50 bottle-beer special on Sunday afternoons of which I availed myself. Natalie threw in the bar towel a couple of weeks ago, giving up the last two shifts she was working at Smoke. It was a second job for her anyway. By day she is a high school history teacher.

So within a couple of weeks, I lost two of my favorite Greenville bartenders. I would have gone somewhere for a memorial drink of my own for that double-barrel loss, but as you now know, I'm obviously running out of places to go.

In any event, I didn't go anywhere today (Sunday). I stayed home and picked up the paintbrush where I dropped it yesterday.

The sum total of my productivity this weekend was painting a six-foot-long wall, and I can't even blame my lack of accomplishing any money-making work on partying.

I'm not even a competent slacker any more.