Monday, August 7

8/4 Weekend Roundup

So the weekend started off fairly promising. Friday we were going to finish staining our deck, AKA the never ending project, and possibly get a game of cards in at Jake's place in Newark. Saturday was the 1st Annual St. Anthony Social 5K and my first chance to defend my World's Fastest Ellerbrock ranking. Sunday was the annual St. Anthony Social and another one of Gayle's summer family reunion. Sounds busy.

Well Friday started off as planned. I came home from work and started prep work on the deck. W had already stained the railings and sides of the deck and only had the floorboards to do last. So far everything looked great of what we stained and were excited to see the final results of our summer's hard work.

Going from coworker's advice, we purchased a Deckmate to help apply the stain. The idea seemed simple but for one reason or another didn't work out well for us. The stain went down easy and it did everything it said but just didn't get enough stain on the board. I tried to put more stain down but it just got all streaky and bad looking. So we decided to switch to brushes as they hadn't failed us to that point. From that point on everything looked much better. So I am not sure if the Deckmate works better after the initial coat is applied or if we just had a rare bad experience with it. We might try it again as we have to touch up the few boards we tried it out on first so a full review will follow in the future. Since we had to apply the stain by hand it took much later then we expected and had to cancel any trips to Newark that night. Instead we elected to rest and watch "V for Vendetta" (review to follow).

Saturday came with much anticipation for the big race. This was the first time for this event and was used to drum up some business for the social on Saturday night. Race time was 7PM to avoid most of the day's heat but it proved to be more of a hassle than anything for me. There is definitely a lot more reasons for the late start then in the morning so I cannot complain. It just was hard to prepare throughout the day with eating the right things and keeping hydrated especially with a two hour drive from Columbus (i.e. lots of bathroom stops). I'll comment more on the race itself later as I have to upload some photos from the it.

After the race we stuck around the social and ate some burgers and had a few beers. Apparently they were not expecting such a good turnout and they eventually ran out of french fries and burgers (but not beer thankfully). We shut'er down around 11 o'clock after having an enlightening conversation with Columbus Grove's finest regarding tazers and 127 MPH motorcycle chases. Our rag-tag and worn group made the trip to Miller's Lunch to finish up the night (or so we thought). After a few more beers and meeting up with Toad & his gang (not called The Wet Sprockets) a decision was made to find some food. Toad's idea of Flying J's was quickly adopted and we were off on our way. Big thanks to Dave for providing "dinner music" while we devoured way too much breakfast food at 2AM.

Sunday morning came way too fast around 11AM. After wasting the morning in bed we had to hurry to get to Gayle's reunion out at the Columbus Grove Municipal Pool. After the usual visiting with the in-laws we made the decision to head back to Columbus early and skip the Sunday festivities at the social. The heat and the promise of a relaxing afternoon at home proved too much and we were off to Columbus with just a quick stop at Matt's to drop off his book, Eragon, and to pick up the next one in the series.

The only other thing worth noting about the weekend was the Brickyard 400 or what I saw of it between naps on the couch. Apparently from looking at Nascar.com this morning, Jimmy Johnson cheated his way somehow to another undeserved victory. I heard Barry Bonds was seen in the pit crew doctoring up a "special" blend of fuel. On a side note, Jaime McMurray continues his streak of 20ish place finishes and pretty much killed any chance of a run at the chase. How many days until the Columbian Racing Sensation hits NASCAR?


LATINO HEAT!

-ed

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