Even I am surprised at all the junk I've gotten done this weekend. And that's not counting today (so far about half a dozen blog posts).
Saturday I got up and was unsuccessful getting the movie room BluRay player to connect to the home network via wifi - so I sat down and watched the first BluRay disk of Lord of the Rings. Even better than I remembered (which it ought to be - it's in high def now, you idiot).
Next up was installing the old (1998-2003-ish) Dell computer in Collin & Parker's room - since it runs Windows 98 it was the only machine that will run the now-ancient Robert D. Ballard's Titanic: Challenge of Discovery and Titanic: Adventure Out Of Time
games that Parker wants to play. Once I had it up and running (thank heavens for the old Sony monitor that will switch between their current computer and this old one) Parker and I mounted a two week underwater surveying expedition to search for the Titanic, and after we finished that one we put together another expedition to a first-century Roman wreck site (the Isis) while we'll do the next chance we gets. Lots of fun. We found the missing disk 1 for the T:AOT game but haven't run it yet - I have a sneaking suspicion that I would not run on the then-new computer even back in 1998, but I hope we can get it running - I was a great game and Parker in particular would love it. Collin's played the Wii Titanic game and I thought it wasn't nearly as good.
What next? Cleaning Collin & Parker's room. At least partway. But I got two trash bags of broken/old toys out, and started on boxes to organize what's left. (Two bags is nothing for that mess, but it is a start).
Next up I saw my old S.S. New Amsterdam steamer chair on the study patio and decided it was time to oil it. I'll post in more detail later, but this was a chair I bought in Dallas around 1994 or so. It has ship and "First Class Only" name plates and appears to be the same as this chair on the Internet (shown left - mine's not ready for pictures yet), althgough there are several out there. (I don't think it is the 1890's-1940's New Amsterdam - I think it is the one that sailed from 1937 to 1971, but I am not sure either way - the "first class" labels are the older style, but I doubt that means anything). When I bought it someone had slathered polyurethane on it (and done a poor job) so it's taken the last seventeen years (the last few spent outdoors in the sun) to bake that crap off of it so it would take stain or oil. But I noticed a week or two ago that it had all come off so I could now refinish the chair which, to me, means just oiling it with teak oil.
Well, that was a two hour job doing some light sanding, gluing up a couple of split pieces of wood, and then brushing the whole thing with oil. (I know it was two hours because Parker watched the original Tron in the study while I worked). It took a whole can of teak oil and didn't require a bit of wiping down - it just drank the stuff and it's obvious it is thirsty for more, so I'll get another can and apply more, probably next weekend. It is taking the finish from the gray shown in this picture to a dark brown, but it's renewable, and if I ever want to stain or varnish it, I can.I'm not sure what to do about the brass pieces - polish or not - so right now I'm just buffing the oil off the brass and leaving the patina as is.
What was next? Ah, a shower. Following by grilling steaks for our family - we had Jim & Marie and Billie and Steve over for dinner.
Sunday was almost as busy - get the herd up and off to church, then to Jim & Marie's for lunch, then back home to hit the twins' room again. Got two more bags of broken/old toys out, plus two large Rubbermaid boxes of toys packed up, and two small Rubbermaid boxes of Thomas the Tank Engine toys packed and stored in their closet - and two small "working" boxes of LEGOs and space toys. (And one large box now empty, which is an indication we are making headway). Maybe a total of ten square feet of floor cleared now, so we have a place for one of the two decorated chairs from their Trinity classes last year. Still a long ways to go, but the universe of what they can mess up their room with - which is how I measure this - has now decreased by the equivalent of nine boxes of toys. To show how bad it is, I think I am about a quarter of the way through what's on the floor or in boxes. But I am getting there!
After that it was clear the desk in the study and process the last fews days' mail, work all the e-mails received at work since Friday evening, and do some work through the afternoon, then off to dinner with family again.
Then up this morning to work some more e-mails, catch up on weblog posts I've been needing to do, and now it's offf to the office for the afternoon!