Monday, April 13, 2015

What a Whirlwind!

This weekend was epic! I had a lot of fun and a lot of stress. By the time it was all said and done I was ready to crash hard.

Thursday afternoon my buddy Joe came to the office to pick me up and we headed down to my parents house in SC. It was a nice easy trip, we got there about 9 pm. Friday we all headed down to Augusta GA for a fun day at the Masters golf tournament! Joe had never been before, so it was a real treat.

No cameras inside Augusta National so this was the only pic we got
We had a blast! It was such a fun day. Warm but not blistering hot, plenty of shady spots to sit and hang out, watching the golfers play through. We saw Tiger pull an amazing birdie on #11, got to enjoy the Amen corner for a while, and ate lunch on the 15th fairway where we caught Ernie Els. We ended up on #6 green and saw the Phil Mickelson/Rory Macelroy group play through. Eventually we made our way back to the gift shop. Joe mentioned that he wanted to get a shirt because he liked the one I had on. When I mentioned that I bought that one when I was there in 2000, he thought it held up well for a shirt that was 15 years old. So after I realized that shirt was 15 years old, I went ahead and bought myself another shirt too.

Then we got back on the road to Raleigh and made it home about midnight. Another late one, but totally worth it. This was a bro-trip for the ages. Great road trip, Joe's a great friend.

Needless to say I slept in Saturday morning. I picked up my plants for the garden from Mom while I was down there, she has quite the nice array that she started from seed this year. I got tomatoes, bell peppers, jalepeno peppers, and basil. The kids got out there and we had so much fun getting our hands in the dirt! Got all of those planted, found some zucchini and squash seeds leftover from last year. Both raised beds are now full, but I have no idea if those seeds from last year will actually germinate.

Full spring garden!

Ella loves planting day

Toms Peppers and Basil Oh My!

Front yard garden in full effect

Me and my girl getting happy
Our last frost date isn't until April 15 but I chose to plant early instead of letting the plants just sit outside for another week. Getting the garden planted is another one of my favorite days of the year! And this year I ended up with more plants than I could use, plus some others I brought back specifically for my buddy Tom.

Saturday night was the stressful part. Now that we've had some employee turnover at the office, I had to do my first software deployment. We start these things saturday night at 10 pm, and we only did 2 of these last year so this was an amazing amount of work that got published. Doing the deployment wasn't too bad, it was a pretty stable release. It was kind of nerve wrecking though because I had no clue what I was doing and it's a pretty large system. We finally finished up about 1:15 AM! Argh, another late night. At least I didn't have anything to do on Sunday.

OH WAIT. Actually I had to be at the church about an hour early for a mic check. I had to sing a solo with the choir in the service! As if that wasn't stressful enough, the air conditioner was broken so the sanctuary was going to be really hot. Sunday was also the day of the Rock & Roll Raleigh Marathon (which I was not participating in) so getting to the church was a challenge since the church is very close to the course on Hillsborough street.

When the time came, I stepped up to the mic and sang cleanly. Hit the right pitches, didn't flub the words, and it came out pretty cool. Wouldn't say I really crushed it but I sounded pretty good up there. And it was a lot of fun.

When church was out I finally had everything done. Tom came by to pick up his plants and we got to hang out for a while. I got to play with the kids outside some. Sunday at the Masters proved to be a lot of fun to watch - the whole tourney was great and I was seriously impressed with Speith. He seems like a real class act. I took a deep breath. This weekend that had pro golf, 11 hours in the car, gardening, working late, and a solo with the choir was finally all wrapped up. Any one of these crazy things would make for a noteworthy weekend. Packing them all in like that was insane and so much fun.

3 comments:

Amber said...

Wow you fit A LOT in! Your tone in your post sounds energized and excited though, not exhausted which is the way you should be after a weekend of fun and spending time with friends and family! My mom is getting ready to plant her gardens too which is early for up here but we've had a super mild winter (it feels like it's been spring since February!)

Abby said...

Holy crap, you fit a TON of stuff into a short time. I bet you are happy, but exhausted.

davepeach said...

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