The weekend pining (and other things)

I knew that if I didn't line up a full weekend, then I would just sit at home and be miserable without Angela's company. So as it turned out I managed to fill in my time and seldom reflect on the crushing sadness of being alone.

Friday night brought the reality of my bright idea of hosting the latest Warren Miller film. It all went well, people clapped and laughed and my cobbled-together prize draw system worked out okay. 

The projectionist was great. He was very, very conscious of time. Everything was timed to the second. When I stood up and said, "ok we have fifteen or twenty minutes' intermission now," he came out of his projection booth and politely let the audience know that the correct figure was seventeen, not twenty minutes.

Win prizes! Stop looking at me!

I was grateful that Janine called in sick to Parkrun. Without any peer pressure I gratefully slept in and had a lazy Saturday morning. Then it was off to Lower Hutt to do underfloor insulation. Sally and Andrew are prepping their house and one of the jobs was their underfloor insulation. So we put a plan together - complete the Epuni job, see what overs and unders we had once all the insulation was in the joists, then sort out Woburn too and see how much more insulation we needed to buy to fully complete both houses.

With Andrew and I both working, we got Epuni all sorted in three hours flat. Sally came to ferry stuff to and from the basement pit, and she also did a lot of gardening work while we were slotting polystyrene into the joists. Nice!

Look at all that lovely plastic, and that cozy polystyrene.
Can I please never, ever go down there again?

I stayed at Woburn for Burger Wisconsin and wandered home to bed.

Meanwhile, Angela was working hard too. She made up some shelving from Bunnings and tidied up her parents' garage. Good result.

Before (with shelving built and ready)

After. Look at all the spare space!

Sunday (after waking up to one of these vivid dreams where I was trying to move stuff using a lift that never stayed open enough for me to load things into it, and then I ended up sharing the lift with Nik Kershaw. No I don't understand either.) I harvested our chilis. We have a good wee crop, all of them green and probably quite spicy. Straight in the freezer for guacamole and salsa to come throughout the year.

Yum

Then back for more scrabbling around under houses. Sally and Andrew's house this time. We were checking their polystyrene insulation and putting back the bits that had fallen down.

It was in much better nick than we were expecting, which was lucky, because it was tight and dirty down there. We put back the few that had fallen down and didn't try to pack around the nests of pipework.

At the narrowest point I couldn't roll over and since I needed to work on my back I had to crawl around using my lat muscles on my back to propel myself - at least it seemed that way. Then I had trouble getting back - I needed to find a point under the bearers (about 10cm lower than the rest of the floor) that I could get under. The first point - no dice. Now I was disoriented and not too sure where I actually was. Next point - tight but doable? I got most of the way. Had to stop, relax, breathe right out and PUSH. Pop! Now I was good.

It's just like childbirth really.
Andrew plays midwife.

Getting Andrew's makeshift overalls off him

I grabbed a shower and headed home. It was Warren Miller Part 2. But I've been there done that so it should be easy this time - right?

Yeah nah. The projectionist was a little stressed. Full house tonight and they hadn't got a complimentaries list from the promoter so weren't sure how they'd fit them in. The next movie was back-to-back with ours so they were even more worried about timings. I'd forgotten to charge my devices so my phone was bumping along at 10% battery and my laptop was a complete unknown - would I be able to do the draw at all? On top of all that, Civil Defence would be running an emergency alert test right in the middle of the film and all our phones would squawk at once.

I put my confident-in-spite-of-little-knowledge leadership pants on and told them it would all be alright and I'd sort it all out. And it was (even though I didn't, really).

Queues out the door with 10min to go

Hi, I'm Mike and I'm as nervous as I was last time. But here is my game face.

Full house!

Right, it's now Monday morning and time to get stuck into work. I slept in and missed the gym but that means I can work from home which is quite the relief really.