Journal Entry: April 20, 2009

Friday afternoon I got off work an hour early. I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up chili fixins, then got it started and turned it down to simmer. T-- agreed to stir it for me, so I disappeared into the office for my workout.

After that I took a quick shower, and by the time I was done D-- was already at the house. K-- and N-- came over shortly after, and we all sat down to a delicious dinner (if I do say so myself). Afterward we watched last week's Lost, which K-- and N-- had put off so they could watch it with us (something my astute readers will recall that we, thanks to a mix-up on my part, had not done). Anyway, it was well worth a second watch.

After that K-- and N-- headed home. D-- and I sat up for a while discussing movies, but exhaustion drove me to bed before too long. It was probably 10:30 when I kicked D-- out.

Saturday morning I woke up early (for reasons of my own), and got in my workout before seven. Then we all spent some time lolling around the living room until T-- took AB with her to the ladies' luncheon at church. That had her out until noon-ish, so I called D-- and asked him if he wanted to join me for some really crappy Mexican food for lunch. We went to Pancho's, which is a place I remember fondly from my childhood. I've been a couple times in my adulthood and, seriously, it's really crappy Mexican food. As D-- observed, you're basically paying $8 for a lunch buffet that consists of the kind of food you can get out of a plastic tray in the frozen food aisle at your grocery store.

Oh, and not only is it lousy food, but the only one in town is half an hour away, so we wasted nearly two hours on the venture. But, y'know, none of it really took me by surprise. I dunno, it was just a weird craving for an awful Saturday-morning experience.

We got back home a little bit before T-- did, and I played a little Too Human. Then we watched some TV during AB's nap. After about an hour of that, I helped T-- load the car, because she had a crop Saturday night, and needed to early to get some shopping done. I stayed home to watch AB, and D-- hung around to help out.

K-- came over around 5:00 with his little one, after dropping N-- off at the crop, and we all sat around watching Clifford the Big Red Dog for forty minutes or so. Then D-- and I took AB up to McDonalds to grab some dinner for all of us, and when we were done eating I set up Rock Band. That was considerably more fun.

AB got the first turn, banging on the drums in Freestyle Mode, then D-- and K-- played for a bit while I chased AB around. 8:30 finally rolled around and I put her in bed, then I joined in for a few songs before my knee started bothering me.

Once again I was just exhausted by the end of the day (the cruel combination of forty-minute workouts and early mornings), so I sent D-- home around 10:30 and crashed early.

Sunday morning I woke up at six again, but this time I made liberal use of the snooze button so I didn't get out of bed until nine. Then I got cleaned up and met the girls at church, but we left early so as to get to our Easter party on time.

Some family friends of D--'s, the Huddlestons, have sort of taken AB as an adopted granddaughter. (Pictures of Diana at the zoo with AB and T-- litter T--'s blog, and she also went along with them to Sesame Street Live recently.) Anyway, she wanted to have a big Easter egg hunt, and invited my little sister's family and K-- and N--, too. So we all drove out to their place in the country east of I-35 for lunch -- grilled chicken breasts -- and then the egg hunt.

Glorious pictures were taken, and I think everybody had a great time. We got home around 3:00, and had no real plans for the rest of the day. I went back to my office to write, and ended up spending most of the time working on the fantasy project D-- and I are working on together, and chatting with Carlos about it. I felt bad for not making progress on the Ghost Targets book, but it was a fun diversion to spend an afternoon working on the other series.

After that I did my workout, and that brought me to 21 days in a row. I've read before that it takes 21 days of repeating a new action to make a habit of it, so I'm hoping to benefit from that. Anyway, whether that's true or not, 21 days was my goal, and I managed it somehow. So yay! Let's all celebrate.

I finished that, got cleaned up, and then T-- suggested Johnny Carinos for dinner. We invited D-- to join us, and while we were there Dr. Baird got seated at the next table over. He was my favorite Bible professor in college, but it's been so long since we last talked that I didn't think it was appropriate to interrupt him at dinner. He had a full table of guests, in addition to his family. It was still a surprising turn of events, though.

Then the night went to getting caught up on Kings, and after that we had to watch some Home Movies to cleanse the palate because, damn, that is some serious TV.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.