Crowded houses

What a busy weekend we had! Saturday morning we rushed to attend to our daughter's first spring festival, or how you call the celebration of the term ending? Well, it was quite nice a happening. We were placed unfortunately close to a speaker which was turned on and off without warnings. The person responsible for audio system wasn't too professional if you ask me. Otherwise it was lovely.

From there we drove to the city of Akaa almost immediately. One of my wife's godchildren was graduating, so we really had to hurry to get there. It's only natural I guess, but the people from two families were clearly segregated, like in South-Africa years ago. They were sitting in two groups, on the both sides of the house. When I hastily visited the other group, I got remarks that could be interpreted as bitching. Only the star of the event was freely mingling among the crowd. The house was packed although most of us got to spend time outdoors. Luckily it didn't rain.

It's not for me to judge, but... Well, the graduate is a very tall man nowadays. Everyone (bar me) was joking about his height and it just didn't stop. His mother was the worst. She's proud of her son, no doubt, but this kind of one-subject conversation starts bugging me after a while. I think the graduate himself is also up to here of hearing envy remarks about his height. Well, his parents are short, maybe it's worth mentioning about two dozen times a day then..? And the guests had nothing else to talk about, clearly revealing that they really didn't know the graduate that well...

It's almost like if a woman graduate were praised after her good looks only. Nothing to do with her achievement under celebration. No compliments about her brain. Wouldn't that be rude in some unintentional way? Or, if people were praising how beautiful breasts a graduate had? Yup, it's the Smek in total action, but in spite of my overdoing isn't that so?

Well, it was a beautiful day all Saturday and everything seemed to roll nicely. +25 degrees was another topic of the day. Sunday was welcoming us with a 28-degree-in-the-shade weather. Can't get much more Summer in one day. It was time to do some house painting. I have done painting for a living when I was about 20. I developed exasperation for solvents and I haven't been a fan of painting ever since. Over-exposure for turpentine did the trick. Painting outdoors with latex paint isn't that bad, so no more murmur about it.

Then an obligatory manual lawn-mowing session. In the heat it's a bitch but it was time. A lot of yellow dandelions were blooming all over the yard. They look nice for a while, but basically they are weeds (not trying to create a tenuous link to Hairy's current post, LOL!).

I had been digging and constructing a terrace in our backyard with my wife. It's been an on/off project for some time now and we had planned on proceeding with it. We laid tiles on the ground. The result looked ok. It remains unfinished, but it's come a long way now.

My wife invited one of our neighbors for BBQ'ing sausages. It meant that it was time to go shopping for more sausages. We decided to ride a bike to the 'city' of Nokia. Yeah, it was Whit Sunday (helluntai/Pingstdagen) and most of the shops were closed. They had recently broadened the opening hours in Finland to include Sundays, except for official holidays. And this was one of them. Siwa shops are usually open on Sundays, but the nearest Siwa wasn't. Their slogan "Surprisingly close" turned into "Surprisingly closed" in my mind, as we drove to a kiosk which was open. Good for us, good for them - it was pretty crowded there.

I have advertised it before and I'm gonna advertise it again: Kabanossi is the best class A sausage you can get for barbequeing. It's well worth investing, forget the cheap flour-power sausages. LOL!

In the evening I felt nauseous. I had sunbathed without a cap part of the day, so a sunstroke was only a stroke away. I slept bad, waking up feeling not too good. I should use a cap at all times in the Sun. Another thing bothering me were the allergic reactions to hays. It's normally not until midsummer before I start getting those symptoms, but now it seems that the nature is ahead of its time. The possibility of drawbacks is evident and almost inevitable. Almost. Indeed, rain and cold has been forecast already for this week!