Long Weekends = Ahhhhhh

I like three day, or more day, weekends.

I am taking some time off between Christmas and New Year’s and going with Mrs. Ender and step-son to St. Louis to visit with Mrs. Ender’s side of the family.  It’s the first Christmas since her father died, so I’m expecting more than the usual amount of tension during this visit.

After I submitted my leave request to have those days off, I did the rest of my PTO math and realized that I needed to take an additional 3-5 days off before the end of the year.  My solution was to take each Friday between last week and the 23rd and then stick in an extra day or two to use up all my leave.  We’ve been on a use-it-or-lose-it policy for the last couple of years and I hope that the improving economy means that we’ll be able to go back to banking leave next year.

On my Friday holiday I did a bit of shopping and tried to get my haircut.  Who knew that the Hair Cuttery would be so busy on a Friday?  Maybe they aren’t all as busy as "mine," but they were turning people away, and I was one of those turned away.  Actually, my regular hair cutter spotted me when I came in, temporarily abandoned her customer and arranged an appointment time for Saturday.  I wasn’t so much turned away as turned toward Saturday.

I also got in a bunch of reading, napping and generally relaxing.  I like vacation Fridays.

On Saturday, after my haircut, I went to the liquor store and got another bottle of Everclear then I browsed through the Radio Shack next door for gift ideas and impluse purchases.  I didn’t buy anything, but I did get an idea to drop my The Computer Place to get a 6ft USB cable.  More and more of my electronics use a micro USB connector, and I don’t have nearly enough cables with micro connectors to go around.

The Computer Place didn’t have many (any?) micro USB cables so I went around the corner to Staples.  Staples had the cable I wanted and I also picked up some itty bitty 4GB USB flash drives.  I have a 2GB itty bitty flash drive and it’s the perfect size to move movie files from my PC to the TV.  I should be able to put 3-4 movies on the larger drive.  I also downloaded "Follow Me Boys," "Bridesmaids," "Horrible Bosses" and one other movie that I can’t remember from Amazon and moved them to the itty bitty USB flash drive.

Sunday was soap day, and I have pictures!

I liked the way that the almost clear soap from last weekend came out, so I decided to make another batch.  This batch, at least this early, makes me like the new batch more than the first batch.

Here are my results.  The gold bar on the left is from last week.  I thought it was more clear than it looks now, but it has either gotten more opaque or just looks more opaque when compared to yesterday’s results.  The gold bar has gold coloring (duh) and is scented with SweetPea fragrance oil that I got as a free sample with my last order from BrambleBerry.com.

The new batch — the reddish bar on the right — is colored with Peach + Wine coloring.  I was going for more red, but I’m not unhappy with this result.  I scented this soap with a rose fragrance oil and I tried to slip a rose petal into each slice.  I line my wooden soap mold (a box 10" long x 4" wide x 3" tall) with freezer paper and I marked the paper where I would slice the big loaf into 1" bars.  After I poured the soap into the mold I pushed a rose petal into the center of what would be each bar of soap.  The petals went in nicely, but as they absorbed the oils it seems that they got really soft and started to float.  That dark blob is where the petal floated up to the top.  The next time I try this, I will let the soap set up a bit more before I insert the petal.  Maybe the firmer soap will keep the petal from floating.

That was about all I did over my first three day weekend.

Ender is out.