In the Before Times, I’d play soccer on Fridays after work with some co-workers on a field behind our office that we shared with the elementary school next door. In the bike cage there was a set of lockers, and I’d been fortunate enough to snag one in which I stashed my cleats.

Fast forward two years and I’ve reconnected with the old crowd, who now play on Saturday or Sunday mornings. Last Saturday I finally brought my badge to soccer and whaddya know…

As Skurge would say:

As it happens though, these cleats were so old that I got blisters on both big toes after playing in them for a couple hours. So it was fun catching up with them but we’ll be getting something else.

That evening, on a whim, I attended a talent show being put on by my family ward.

It went about as well as you could expect.

• I arrived late and came in half-way through the audience staring at an empty stage, being serenaded by a disembodied voice. Turns out it was a little girl singing, and she was self-conscious, so they let her perform into a mic behind closed stage curtains. Cute.
  
• One talent involved projecting a PowerPoint presentation on a TV, and the organizers had brought it on a run-of-the-mill Dell or HP laptop, which decided it didn’t particularly feel like talking HDMI to the TV. I tried to be helpful but it quickly became evident that the problem was the laptop and there was no helping the situation. Eventually someone showed up with a different laptop model and sorted the problem out.
  
• As is usually the case, the organizers made allowances for more “static” talents that were set up on display tables around the edge of the room. There were quite a few more of these than I usually see in YSA talent shows. To fill the time while the technical issue with the TV got sorted, the organizers had the folks manning their stations to take turns describing their work. The second person to do so was an immigrant from Africa who had set up a small laptop displaying an album of 50-odd pictures from her hometown. Unfortunately she wasn’t familiar with the social cues, and cycled through every single one, giving descriptions of most of them. Gentle prodding to wrap things up was lost on her, and no one felt like pressing the point, so when she eventually finished the organizer had to ask that each subsequent person use no more than 60 seconds each.
  
  I feel like this part might have gone better if the audience had actually gotten up and stood in front of these static displays as they were being presented.
  
• When that all wrapped up, the technical issues had been resolved, and we ended the evening with someone who is on the autism spectrum singing karaoke to a cover of What Is Love, where each line is sung by different Disney characters. I swear I’ve heard it before but YouTube is not being helpful; if I’m mis-remembering and it was an original piece then dang. Regardless, it was a fun coda for the night.

Quite the contrast to the talent shows the YSA wards put together, which are almost like professional events by comparison.

The next day was Super Bowl Sunday, and I got together with some friends in one of their apartment building’s activity center… thing… place.

Good times.

Not much to report during the week. This last Saturday I went with a friend to an in-door archery range that she frequents. I started out spraying arrows all over both of our targets, but by the end I had managed to dial in my horizontal aim a fair bit, so that was fun.

On Sunday I did a bit of a dry-run for a dinner I’m hosting with some of my neighbors, who at different times have had me over for dinner. Figured I’d make things square all in one go. So I grilled up some steak and sweet potatoes. I decided to splurge a bit at Costco and get some more pricier stuff than I usually do. And while it tastes great, it doesn’t taste 3x as great as the more regular cuts.

It was raining while I was grilling, so I set the grill just within the garage, with the door open. I knew from experience with having Dad and the Thomases over that grilling this way would lead to some amount of fumes and smoke building up in the garage, so I deployed a new innovation this time around, that seems to have been fairly effective.

A little breezy while I was tending the meat, but it turned out splendid.

Story time: the first time ever I wore what are now my Sunday shoes was when I went to an outdoor baptism back in 2020, on a day where we must have been getting some smoke from wildfires somewhere. On the way back I encountered a wide field that was being leveled and landscaped to be some kind of park.

• 

• 

I couldn’t resist so I hopped out of my car and went exploring. On that outing I nicked one of my shoes, and I’ve just sorta lived with it ever since.

In the words of a once-famous comedian, I told you that story to tell you this one. Lately my mattress has not been doing my back any favors, so today I decided I’d take advantage of Presidents’ Day mattress sales. I knew of a shoe repair store in town, so I decided to kill two birds in one outing. Just before I headed out I figured I’d go and check my mail for the first time in a bit. Found a letter from the water company saying that based on their latest readings, I might have myself a leak. The letter said that in order to tell for sure, I should make sure no water is running on purpose, then head out to the water meter buried in the front yard and see whether it’s moving. I go out and open the water meter cover only to find nothing but dirt. Turns out, moles like to dig in the area, which leads to not-super-sturdy earth. There must be some wireless transceiver there to allow some truck to drive by and grab the readings without visually inspecting the unit.

So I dug and dug and finally scraped off enough to see that yes indeed, the dial was spinning ever so slowly. Great.

A neighbor came by to ask what I was up to and I explained, and he said that he gets those letters every so often, so it might not be anything to worry about. But the needle was moving. While we were talking I pointed out this puddle that always forms at the same spot underneath my garage door. The neighbor noted that there appeared to be water stains on this one wooden door in the garage ceiling above where the puddle was forming. We parted ways and I went up to get a step stool, which was upstairs.

On the way down with it I realized that I needed to use that step stool in my bathroom, where a light had gone out and where my shower head was accumulating hard water build-up due to a leaky screw fastener. I undid the shower head and wrapped the screw threads in plumber’s tape, then read online how you can clean off hard water build-up by submersing the item in white vinegar, so I left that for later as I was still planning on imminently heading out for errands.

Done with the step ladder upstairs I finally brought it downstairs to check out that wooden door in the garage, only to find that it was fairly dry inside, nothing obvious there. Before finally heading out I darted out back for whatever reason and noticed that the water replenishment circuit in my water feature was on. The chance of that randomly happening is quite small, and there was dampness on the rocks beneath the main pool, so I figure that there’s the source of the water leak.

I finally get out the door and get to the shoe repair store only to find that they’re closed on Mondays. Oh well. Found a mattress store very close by and headed there.

As Dad knows from first-hand experience, it takes me a very long time to buy a mattress. I must’ve been at that place for a good three hours, and that doesn’t count wandering next door for a food break. Finally settled on a model that felt great, and saved a good chunk of change. It arrives this Saturday.

Drove from there to a showing of Uncharted, which was a pretty fun flick.

Whelp, till next time!