GatewayRedbirds.com

Offshoot of the sports thread - since sports isn't keeping most of us busy in relative isolation, what is?

The lack of travel (both work and leisure) and relative lack of get-togethers with friends has opened up a lot of "free" time around the house. We've been able to knock out a ton of projects this year.

- Built a custom coffee table for the living room
- Built a custom dresser for the master bedroom
- Stripped all of the woodwork and re-painted the final bedroom in our house that hadn't been updated
- New kitchen tile in one of our rentals
- Built a robustly rabbit-proof fence around the garden
- Puppy-proofed the back yard
- Adopted 3 new puppies within a month (long story)
- House-trained said puppies (all males - we've cleaned up a lot of pee this year)
- Installed outdoor post lights around the pool
- Complete remodel of the guest house (rental) on our property - busted up the existing tile floor, re-leveled the concrete slab, installed new floors, updated electrical, painted everything, etc.
- Used my chainsaw mill to slab up a large ash tree that fell in my yard last winter. Built a coffee table for the guest house with one of the slabs.
- Drank approximately 1,683 beers (I may be underestimating - I have ripped through a [expletive] ton of beer this year. Luckily a lot of the projects above are nicely complimented by a cold beverage.)

At least the year hasn't been a total wash.

In the process of building a home, so that has kept us plenty busy w/ all the decisions involved.

Popeye, when you're done can i borrow you for a month or two??? JHC!

#NotAHandyman

I've mostly been spending time with my kids, watching Netflix, playing games, etc. My son is applying to Mizzou so we're in full scholarship search mode now. Daughter turns 15 this week so driving lessons will be beginning thusly as well.

And i think I've had about as much bourbon as you have had beer.

Not much. Watch good movies and series on tv and play with my kids. Lots of music as well.

I don't envy those of you with kids. It has to be rough keeping them busy and entertained, particularly when schools have been virtual.

I've been working about sixty hours a week just like before the pandemic.

I have been in my hot tub quite a bit more. And over the summer, we definitely used our pool everyday. I'm tempted to put a heat pump on the pool so we can extend the use by 2 to 3 months each season. We have a nice inground and don't plan on moving so it might be a good investment to go ahead and do.

I did buy an outdoor propane heater for the patio as well so we have been able to be outside a whole lot so far even in December. Helps break things up with the kids too.

I have actually cut down on drinking quite a bit. I don't like the recovery time it takes.

Popeye making me feel guilty.... grandbaby born at beginning of covid, I typically babysit, hang out with her quite a bit.

Outside of that, I spend about all my free and flex time on some sort of local-ish outdoor adventure. Mainly paddling, which is great social distancing. Trained all spring/summer for, then paddled across MO in the MR340. Training meant a lot of paddling, as well as some trail running

Now that that is finished- day expeditions - paddling local rivers and bike shuttling back. Scouting out tomorrow's warm day. maybe paddling the Mississippi from Elsah IL to West Alton MO and biking back

Its been a lot of fun. seen some amazing things and places. Met and made some good friends doing this which seems counterintuitive in pandemic, but we are all outside people.

Do you drop your bike off at a location, drop in upstream with your canoe, paddle down to the bike, then bike back to the car and go pick up the canoe? How do all the logistics work?

-Work
-Spent a lot of time on the lake in the summer/fall
-Kids baseball picked back up in the summer so we did that and got in some tournaments which suck the weekends away real quick