Journal Entry: July 21, 2008

Thursday night, T-- went to a church picnic with K-- and N-- (footage is available on her blog). I wasn't feeling up to pretending to be friendly with churchfolk, so I opted out. Instead, D-- and I grabbed a pizza from Falcone's, and took it over to B-- and E--'s place.

You know, I really need to spend more time with them. We had a great evening. D-- worked on B--'s computer, I borrowed a couple of books from E--, and we watched Shakes the Clown. That was my first time seeing it. Just...bizarre. Hilarious, but bizarre.

Amazingly, B-- failed to get us all smashed this time, so we made it home at a reasonable time without too much drunkenness. I think it was about 10:30 when I got in.

Friday was my RDO. I slept in, then spent the morning working on a writing project (and chatting with my little sister about her book-in-progress). Then in the afternoon I mostly lazed around the living room. T-- did the same. We went to On the Border for lunch, and probably went out for dinner, but I don't remember where. Friday evening just sort of melted by. We finished off Arrested Development, though.

Then, around 10:00, D-- showed up and he and I went to see Get Smart. It was everything I hoped it would be. I also rushed home and added Get Smart: The Complete Original Series to the top of my queu on Blockbuster. It appears to come all on one disc. I'm baffled.

Saturday morning T-- woke me up at the unthinkable hour of 8:30 so she could go shopping with N--. I watched AB for most of the morning, then D-- called and asked if we wanted to go to the bagel place for lunch, and naturally we agreed. I have something against letting T-- use our kitchen. I dunno. Right afterward we dropped AB off with the babysitter at our place, then we went up to the mall and got in line for The Dark Knight.

While D-- and I held out spot, T-- went shopping in the mall and got our niece a birthday present. Then, forty minutes in or so, K-- and N-- joined us, and a few minutes after that they opened the doors. The movie was pretty much fantastic. An artistic vision. It was dark -- you'll be amazed how much so -- but the story was well told.

It was longer than any of us expected, too. We got out of the theater right at 5:00, and we had dinner plans with the Vickis -- friends of ours from high school, plus their husbands. We went back to the house and T-- got started grilling while I ran to the store for some last minute groceries. By the time I got back, the guests were well installed in our house.

We ate, we talked much and browsed nearly all of T--'s scrapbooks. Then D-- showed up (around 10:00, once again), and we talked some more, then we turned on the Wii and bowled some and golfed some and then we spent twenty minutes browsing YouTube. We finished up with some Christopher Walken from SNL, and it was after midnight by the time they left (and they had a drive back to Tulsa still ahead of them, the poor souls).

Over-socialized and late-to-bed, I slept in and skipped church Sunday morning. D-- called and asked about lunch and he and I ended up picking up Taco Bueno for everyone. Afterward he went home for a nap, AB went down for a nap, and T-- got on her computer to take care of some work stuff. Free to spend my time however I pleased, I decided (for some reason) to work on my To Do list.

I hung a picture in my office (an old drawing of a red fox that I've had forever, that T-- had framed for me as a gift), replaced a burnt-out lightbulb outside the front door, cleared out some overgrown shrubs in a flowerbed, sawed some dead limbs out of the swinging tree in our back yard, moved some of AB's baby stuff into storage in the attic, cleaned up my office workspace, and then enlisted T--'s help and we hosed down the woodwork on the front of the house and gave it a thorough scrubbing. That last was an amazingly successful project. The house looks a lot better than it has since we moved in.

That list of chores took up all of Sunday afternoon. When AB got up from her nap, we took her with us to Wal-Mart to take care of some business there (shopping for a nephew's birthday present, and getting a new key to the Tulsa house), and then we picked up some dinner from Popeye's on the way home. That was an awful experience. They overcharged us, made us place our entire order twice, made us wait twenty minutes for our food, and then gave us the wrong food and none of the drinks we'd paid for. Ugh. Then T-- tried to call the customer service number on the receipt, to place a complaint, and found it out of order.

The chicken was good enough, though, and afterward we watched Hot Rod (which I enjoyed more than T-- did), and then got to bed at a reasonable hour.

There's my weekend. We may have some developments on the Tulsa house (nothing to open champagne bottles over, but good news nonetheless), but I'll wait until I'm clearer on the details before sharing that.