It was supposed to a completely empty weekend for me. The girls were in Upstate New York with their mother. I had anticipated grabbing some chips and continuing to push through the lead pile, some for Historicon, some for other projects I'm pushing through in record time.
Then Maja reminded all of us she had play rehearsal, for that one final play she wanted to do before they officially moved up there.
Friday night and Saturday morning, I let Maja life her best life as a teenager. Doordash then lock the doors, the house entirely to herself. I was able to knock out some of that painting AND start pushing down the backlog of posts without adding to any. By the time I needed to go get her at noon on Saturday, I felt positive about my projects AND I got two Georic Gazetteer entries finished... and they were entries on my personal production schedule, not just stuff on a whim!
After dropping her off at rehearsal, I went back to the apartment and finished up a different type of painting project, cleaning up my mailbox.
I have a very laissez-faire relationship with the landlord, so I knew he'd never get around to replacing or at least cleaning up and repainting my beat up mailbox on the front of the yard.
After work on Friday, I had pulled the box off the front and proceeded to brush, chip, and sand the rust and failing paint off. Barely getting a coat of paint out of white can of spray, gave me a double excuse to go to Walter's Hardware in Wilkes-Barre.
When I still worked downtown, I loved to visit Walter's. It was the classic small-town hardware store in the center of the city, PLUS an entire wing dedicated to model trains and RC cars and planes.
It was fun to wander around, but it was my go-to spot for Zap-A-Gap at a reasonable price. In recent weeks I finally used my small can of Zap-Kicker Accelerant for an annoying project, and between the spray paint, the accelerant, and some new numbers for the box, I'd be golden.
I completely forgot that they were retiring and closing the shop, probably before July 4th.
Completely bummed I was quickly soothed to see a 15% discount off of everything, not that I had a budget for much more.
The can of Zap-Kicker I just used up lasted me at least 8 years.
I now won't run out of the stuff until 2041.
Of course, things couldn't go smoothly. Apparently I failed to hold open for the customer behind me. Luckily they got a hand on the door before it closed and they snuck inside, proceeding to raise a ruckus.
A racoon followed me into a very urban hardware store.
Apparently it wasn't a first time, and the folks there quickly found boxes and relocated the perturbed shopper, letting me finish my errands in piece.
Four coats of paint later, I think freshly white non-rusty mailbox will last at least the year.
After picking up Maja from rehearsal, we sat down and had some much-needed pizza, took a quick nap, talked about the convention, and actually got her to the painting bench for HER items.
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