Journal Entry

Friday, September 14th
Friday was a busy day at work, catching up on all the things I'd put off to finish the A/C manual. It was a good sort of busy, though, and I finished the day ready for the weekend.

I came home, and had some chores I'd offered to do for T--. The biggest one was vacuuming the house. I started going to the chiropractor last week (did I mention that?) and he told me definitely not to do any vacuuming. But, yeah, what does he know? He's just a doctor....

So an hour later, I was sitting on the couch unable to move because of the pain in my lower back. Ugh. It's not really that bad, though, because I don't really like to move. So I watched some TV with T-- and waited for Mom and Dad to get home from work.

I'd offered to play some WoW with them, and Dad really wanted help getting his epic mount (a rather long-running quest), so I joined them around 5:30 and we spent a couple hours getting mostly done. The end of the quest requires another paladin, and D-- had offered to help with that (which would make it easy-breezy), so we decided to call it a night at that point. Good thing, too. I had to go play host for T--'s parents.

Oh! Before that, N-- called to invite us out to dinner which was an extraordinarily tempting offer, but I already had the WoW commitments. I had a good time, though, so I can't really regret missing out on the Jack Daniels Burger.

Anyway, when T--'s parents got in, we all sat around and talked for a while, and then T-- and her dad ran up to Wal-Mart to try to find him an OU shirt. They were gone for over an hour, but they brought back ice cream. We each had a big bowl, and then went straight to bed. Experts say that's the best thing to do with ice cream....

Saturday, September 15th
Saturday morning John and I watched AB while T-- and her mom went shopping. T-- and her mom spent a lot of time shopping, Saturday. They only left us with AB for a couple hours, though. Around 11:00 they got back, and at the same time K-- and N-- showed up, along with D--, to head to Norman for the OU game. N-- got us all tickets a couple weeks ago, through her work.

It was a blowout game. Everyone knew it would be. In fact, it was so foreordained that they didn't even televise it, so it was a good thing we went. A good team is fun to watch, even when it's mostly unopposed, so I think we all had a really good time. We've managed to go to one game a year for the last four or five. It's been fun.

That did take most of the day, though. We left the house around 11:00, and the game started at 2:15, and we stayed for the whole thing, so we got back into OKC around 7:00. We stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings and picked up some dinner and took it back to the house, which happened to coincide with one of T-- and Karla's brief rest stops at the home for the day, so they got to eat. After that, they went back out to Kohl's (it was nearly 9:00, but the shop didn't close until 11:00) and took John with them. K-- and N-- went home, too, exhausted after the day at the game. It is just an exhausting experience.

D-- hung around then, and we tried to watch the USC v. Nebraska game, but it got depressing pretty quickly and we had no choice but to turn it off. The commentators were just too infuriating. There are times I think USC could just stop charging tuition, and instead set up a kissing booth staffed by the football team, and fund their entire academic program off the donations of the national sports media. I hate those guys so much.

Argh.

Sunday, September 16th
Sunday morning we went to church and I got two or three pages written on "Royal Holiday" (which, incidentally, is very much on the verge of becoming Royal Holiday, if you catch my drift). During the sermon, McElroy was talking about some famous classic hymn that was written when a dude was inspired during a sermon and just scribbled down a poem, which became the song through an interesting and convoluted means.

Anyway, Karla looked over at me, frantically scribbling in my scribblebook, and raised an eyebrow. I quiet-laughed, as one does in such situations, but frankly, I'm writing a cheap rip-off of a third-rate Hepburn movie set in an overwraught and generic fantasy world, as an aside to a larger and still fairly cliche story. So, yeah, I don't think it's really the same thing.

After church, we went to Abuelo's, and K-- and N-- and D-- all joined us. It was a fantastic lunch (Abuelo's always is). Then we split up, and the family went back to the house to help T-- get ready for a purse party at 3:00. A few minutes before that was supposed to start, D-- showed up to take me over to K--'s place to watch the Cowboys game. Thank goodness for late afternoon kickoffs, know what I'm sayin'?

That was a really good game. N-- went to the purse party, but she called on her way home around 5:00 and asked if we needed any snacks (which, natch, we did), so we finished the game in high style. As did the Cowboys. It's looking like a good year!

Then I went home, and I really should have spent the evening working on homework for our marriage seminar (as should have T--), but we discussed with open, honest communication, and both, in harmonious consensus, agreed that we, as a family, ought to procrastinate. So we watched some Dead Zone and I played Heroes on T--'s laptop, and it was a good night.