It was an odd week at work. Maintenance thought this would be a convenient time to do a whole lot of maintenance, so effectively the whole plant was shut down for the week. On Monday, there was a total power outage in building 5 for electrical work; I did go in to check on some stuff and found the lights off and nobody home. I mean, I saw nobody in the building. So I worked from home pretty much all week, but it was also a short week. 

Tuesday, the softball team got hammered. A few players were out including our regular pitcher, and a guy who had never pitched before asked if he could. So, he did. He made it through the game but we got mercied 19-4, although he wasn't really the reason we didn't do very well. 

Wednesday was the last work day before the long weekend. Since the 4th was on a Thursday this year, it seemed logical for me to take Friday off as well. Not that there were big plans, but I did get some local geocache maintenance done on Thursday. Around dinnertime we went to the Zastrow's house for a cookout/games/watch fireworks. Todd grilled burgers and hot dogs, we all played "Poetry for Neanderthals" and "Telestrations," and hung out watching their neighbors set off fireworks until after midnight. The Joneses came home while we were in the backyard and could see us there so they dropped in too to hang out. 

I also had some emergency pool maintenance to do, basically the first thing to do in the long weekend. The pump for the filter has been down to a trickle lately, and it seemed hardly any water was making its way through. Backflushing wasn't helping, so I took it offline and opened it up, and found that the filter sand had hardened into a big lump of concrete. Maybe not as hard as that, but still hardened enough that I had to beat it out with a hammer and a length of aluminum conduit used like a chisel. I don't know what happened there, it's never happened before. Eventually I was able to break the lump apart and get the sand out of the filter, replace the sand and get it all put back together. The flow through the filter seems to be restored to normal now. Maybe I need to keep the pH maintained better, or something....

I had a kind of unusual ride on Saturday. Bronwyn H joined the group for the first time; she has a cruiser bike and was never going to be able to keep up with even the regular B group, but no-drop is no-drop so I and 2 others hung back with her. We did the whole planned route which was out to Summit Chapel and back...I wasn't sure she would make it that far but we got about 36 miles altogether, at around 10 mph. She was so excited to do the whole ride. I didn't mind the slower ride, it allows riders to talk more.

Finally, I was practicing flying the drone this weekend and one crash...the first crash...wrecked it. It's hard to keep track of which way the drone is facing, so which way the joystick makes it go. I was flying it in the backyard and it hit the patio umbrella, turned over and fell about 6 feet onto the patio landing on it's top. One crash, and one propellor no longer spins correctly. It makes a whining noise and spins much slower. But, the vendor seems to have a 100% guarantee and will replace for free, provided you give them a 5-star review. So yeah, they got 5 stars for another free drone. Hopefully it's not sent by slow boat from China...