August Long Weekend

Margarit and I headed out to the cottage together for the August Long Weekend.  I also had the Friday off, so it was a four day weekend.  Originally we were going to head down to the badlands and stay at East Coulee.  But, at the last minute the girls decided they wanted to stay home.  Margarit and I decided to head out to the cottage in Nordegg instead.  This would be our first couples weekend out there together since we insulated and painted the drywall a couple years ago.

I recently ordered a rustic sofa and matching loveseat on line.  These were delivered to our house a few days before the weekend, and we had them stored in our garage.  We decided we would take one of them out on the long weekend.  We had also ordered some pine seedlings from Clearwater County.  They have a batch raised every year by a nursery and offer them to county residents at a very modest price.  We had ordered 90 seedlings and they only cost us $27.  These had just arrived and were ready for pickup, but only during business hours at the county office.  With the opportunity to head out on Friday morning, we decided that we would pick up these seedlings as well.

Having just purchased the lot next to ours a couple of days prior, this gave us an opportunity to walk the lot and get a better feel for it.  We will take some time to figure out the best building site on the property, and also take some time to think about exactly what we want to build.  We did take this opportunity and planted some of the seedlings we bought on our second lot.

I had purchased my drone a few weeks prior, but had just recently obtained my pilot's certificate.  This would be the weekend that it would take it's maiden flight and I played around with it a bit, trying to learn how to safely pilot the thing.  I also spent quite a bit of time practicing guitar.  After three years of not only collecting guitars but also taking some lessons and sporadically practicing, I am finally beginning to get the hang of it.  Mostly this is because in recent weeks, with my declining work responsibilities, I now actually have more time to practice.  I just play a bunch of my favorite songs on my iPod, and try to play along on the guitar.  I am now able to figure out the chords on about half of what I listen to, and can actually begin to hear the chord changes.  Now I just have to work on my strumming...

Margarit was pretty patient with me.  She did most of the work planting all those seedlings while I was pretty lazy and mostly just played guitar.  But it was a very relaxing and enjoyable weekend.  One evening we went over to our neighbors Rob and Brenda and visited with them around their camp fire.  A few other neighbors from the other end of the subdivision came over and joined in so it was nice to meet some new people.

On a second evening our friends Shelly and Eric came over and we had a campfire of our own.  It was nice to visit and just relax with them.  Eric was gracious enough to give me a hand to carry our new sofa upstairs to our living room.  Next time I come out I will bring the loveseat.

I think this is the first weekend in ages that I actually did not take any photographs.  Nothing with my big camera, no digital snapshots, not even a phone shot.  So no images whatsoever to include with this post.  I will try to change that going forward.