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Journal Entry: May 14, 2009

Tuesday night I got home late from work, but I still ended up doing thirty minutes on the elliptical before dinner. D– came over, and T– made this peppercorn turkey breast that was phenomenal.

After that we watched the Biggest Loser three-hour season finale (while D– read a novel and I played the original Fallout), and then it was time for bed.

Yesterday T– had to work, so AB went to the babysitter’s. We have a couple ladies at church who are great with AB and are willing to watch her for free, but the price we end up paying is her missed nap. They have too much fun with her to try to make her go to sleep, so she just spends all afternoon running around and rolling in the dirt.

T– picked her up and had her home by 5:00 and she put her down for a quick nap before church, but when she tried waking her up at 5:45 to get ready for dinner, the girl threw an almighty fit. It was crazy. She’s always cranky when she wakes up mid-nap, but this was nuts. T– ended up putting her back in bed, and I went to dinner without them.

I met D– and K– and N– at Qdoba, and D– and K– ended up spending most of the time talking about work stuff. That gave me a few minutes to get caught up with N–, which was nice.

While we were there, we started watching the severe weather coverage on the TVs, and by the time D– and I got back to the house it was pretty clearly Lost was gonna get preempted. We held out hope anyway.

With the same level of faith, K– and N– came by after church, and when we switched to the show (after AB went to bed a little early), it was actually on. They saved the weather reports for the commercial breaks, and opened them all with, “Don’t worry, you’re not missing any Lost.” It was a two-hour season finale, and we were an hour and twenty-eight minutes into it when I guess they found some rotation or maybe it was because the metro area was threatened, but they finally decided we could just miss Lost after all. So we saw a chunk of it, but didn’t actually get up to the Incident. Lame!

We watched the actual weather for another half hour or so, and saw the tornadic system split in two and neatly dodge Edmond and northwest OKC. Nice that. The winds we got yesterday were crazy anyway, though — there’s limbs and trees down all over our neighborhood, and one neighbor ended up with a whole tree toppled out of his front yard and right across the drive. Nasty stuff.

Anyway, no actual damage at our place, and apart from the disappointment of missing the end of the show, things are going pretty well.

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

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Journal Entry: May 12, 2009

Sunday morning, I woke up early enough to have a delicious breakfast and then write a rather extensive blog post before rushing off to church with T–‘s family.

Afterward we celebrated Mother’s Day with the whole clan by throwing a cookout at her parents’ place. The men provided and prepared the food. For me, that consisted of buying a couple bags of chips and some soda. To legitimize the process a bit, I let AB choose the chips.

Anyway, the party lasted a couple hours and then people started slipping away. Around 3:00, when the house was finally empty, we put AB down for a nap and then left her in her grandparents’ care while T– and I headed up to the mall.

I’d bought her some clothes for Mother’s Day and, of course, got the wrong size. Further, the place I got them from (Motherhood Maternity or something along those lines) has a demonically brutal return policy, so instead of a present I basically got her an errand. We turned it into a positive, though, by taking the afternoon for some shopping time together. We ended up a Town West mall which was a real blast from the past. (For me it was the first time since high school.)

Then we picked up a Papa Murphey’s pizza on the way home, had that for dinner, and headed back to OKC around seven. That put us in a little after nine, and by the time we got AB in bed and all our stuff in from the car, we basically had time to watch an episode of Scrubs before going to bed. We ended up watching three.

Monday morning I woke up sore again, and when I got home from work I decided to try a different tack. I spent forty minutes on the elliptical machine — no resistance, and at a relatively slow pace — and when I was done I felt better than I had in days. Then I spent several hours folded into the couch, working on my laptop while we watched Monday night television, so I did another ten minutes before I went to bed. Today I woke up feeling a lot better. So that’s promising.

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

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Journal Entry: May 10, 2009

Friday
Last Friday (the first of the month), after work, T– went out shopping for the evening with Diana, leaving me to watch AB. I ended up taking her to the mall for dinner in the Food Court. N– met me there and helped me find a Mother’s Day present for T–. In the process, I got to see what it’s like to try to run errands with a child in tow. It wasn’t actually as bad as I would have guessed.

I got home from that eight-ish, and D– called to see if I was free to go out later. T– showed up right after that called and confirmed that I was, so around 9:30 D– swung by and picked me up. We checked on a couple coffee shops but they were closed, discussed a couple different bars, and ended up going to On the Border. We sat in the bar, finished a pitcher of sangria and two or three bowls of chips, and ended up taking home a bag full of leftovers somehow. Chips, salsa, queso, tortillas…. We think maybe the waitress had a crush on D–.

Saturday
Saturday morning T– got up early and took AB out garage saling, so I took the time to get some work done. I mowed the lawn and put down some weed killer, got a couple old Wal-Mart bags out of a tree in the front yard, cleaned up the house some, and even did a little writing. Then I got cleaned up in time to meet T– and AB at IHOP for lunch.

After lunch was my niece Lola’s birthday party — a tea party at my sister’s house — and I’d received conflicting reports concerning whether or not boys were supposed to be there, so I picked the most self-serving option and skipped it. D– and I went to see Wolverine instead, which turned out to be a chick flick, somehow. So there really were no winners.

My grandma and my aunt Darla’s family came up from Dallas for the party, so after the movie we all went out to dinner at Ole. It was excellent fun. Sometime in the afternoon T– had mentioned that we really needed to watch Quantum of Solace (she and I hadn’t seen it yet), and then when we mentioned that at dinner my brother-in-law said he hadn’t seen it, either. Or 300. Or Transformers. We were aghast, so I told my sister her husband was going to spend the evening at my place.

We watched the Bond flick, and then T– went to bed. Then we put in Transformers and I was yawning before the end of that one so I ended up going to bed, but D– and Jeff stayed up to watch 300. Good for them.

Sunday
Sunday morning we had church, and then headed up to Jason’s Deli to meet N– and K– for lunch. After that I took the girls home, then headed back to Edmond to play some Demigod with K–. Two hours disappeared like that, and then I headed back home in time to have dinner with T–. We had a pretty quiet evening, playing Hi-Ho Cherry-oh with AB and then watching TV after she went to bed.

Monday
N– went back to work on Monday, and T– got to watch Jason for the afternoon. She also made up a delicious pot roast and tempted N– and K– to come over for dinner. After they left we moved to the living room to watch our Monday night shows (only comedies left now, and it looks like tomorrow might be the finales of those). I brought my laptop out of the office to work while we watched, and finally got started recovering my documents folders.

Before the robbery I’d had all my active writing projects divided unevenly across two working directories — one on my computer at work (which I’d brought with me from Lowrance, where I did a lot of creative writing at the office), and the other on my computer at home. There was a lot of overlap between the two folders, but they were nowhere close to synced. On top of that, I’ve been doing more and more work on Google Docs lately, which is not reflected in either folder (but, also, was not lost in the robbery).

Anyway, my backups consisted of a three-month-old backup of my folder at work, and some CDs that contained 3-, 5-, and 6-year-old backups of my home folders. Again, there was some overlap but it wasn’t identical.

So I started the process of reducing this massive piles of documents down to only the most recent version of each document. I went through my novels first, gathering them into project folders by series and novel, but I haven’t even begun the process of comparing individual files there. Then I went through my academic papers (only about 30-40 of those), and got those cleaned up.

Then I started working on my poetry, and ended up spending all of last week on that project. I had 160-something poems, but they were scattered (and frequently duplicated) across nearly 200 files, many of which were collections of several poems at once. To clarify the collection at the expense of a little extra effort, I decided to break them all out into individual files, again saving only the best version of each. That meant a lot of comparing documents. I also decided to make the styles consistent across all the documents and label each one according to the oldest date I knew it had existed (which mostly meant going off the Last Modified date on the big collection files, so it looks like I wrote several dozen poems on 13 January 1998 and a couple dozen more on 1 August 2002, but whatever).

Anyway, I started that process Monday night.

Tuesday
Tuesday T– got to babysit baby Jason again, and I got to go to work again. Yay! But while I was at work I got an email from Dr. Agan, one of my professors at OC, saying that she had sent off my recommendation letter to OU and, oh, by the way, would I be willing to teach Technical Writing at OC in the fall.

That’s a big deal. T– was incredibly excited for me, as were most of the people I told about it. D– said it sounded like too big of a time commitment, especially with me going to school in the fall (and he’s not wrong), and B– said it sounded like a miserable experience for someone with social anxiety (and he’s not wrong), but I think in the end I’m going to do it. We need the money, it’ll look great on a resume, and I’ll have a lot of support from my old Tech Writing professor, who goes to church with us. She also mentioned that I can make it a half-classroom half-online course, so that cuts the time investment considerably. I’ll have a lot of work to do at home, but I can handle that. It was the extra hours out of my evenings I was really worried about.

Wednesday
Wednesday night we tried to go to KFC to get Oprah’s free chicken (or something), but everyone in the world did the same thing so we ended up going across the street and getting Popeye’s you-have-to-pay-for-it-but-at-least-you’ll-get-it-in-the-next-two-hours chicken. We met D– and N– and K– there, then I went to church (for a change) so I could meet with Gail Nash (my old Tech Writing prof) and learn what I told you in the last paragraph.

After that K– and N– came over to watch Lost which, for various reasons, took us almost three hours to accomplish. It was a good one, though.

Thursday
Thursday night, I think we watched some TV and I worked on my poetry. I don’t remember anything exciting.

Friday
Friday was my RDO, and I’d promised T– I would watch AB in the afternoon so T– could get a haircut. Once again she woke up early and took AB out garage saling so once again I got up and mowed the lawn. I also cleaned out the closet in my office because we’re going to be switching the office and baby’s room soon, and I did some work in the garage, too.

Then T– called to say she’d lost track of time and wouldn’t be home before her haircut. She was in Edmond so she dropped AB at my sister’s place, and I got an afternoon off. I spent it working on my poetry (and finished up that project), and doing a little writing.

Then T– got home and put AB down for a nap, and a few minutes later K– showed (that’d be around 3:00), to take me to the theater.

We had plans to go see Star Trek for K–‘s birthday, and it being opening day decided we needed to be there early. K– and I went to save spots in line (T– and N– and B– showed up in time for the movie), and we ended up getting there way too early. We’d brought our laptops with us, though, and we set up an ad-hoc network and spent the time playing Demigod. It was fun. There was a little initial concern about how much we’d look like dorks, but come on, we were waiting in line for the Star Trek movie. That ship had already sailed.

The movie was fantastic. Of Star Trek, I’ve only ever seen Generations and First Contact. Maybe (maybe) two or three episodes total of any of the series, ever. So, yeah, I came to it new. The movie was good enough that I’m thinking of finally watching some of the shows. We’ll see.

After the movie everybody headed home (it was already after nine, after all), but I stuck to my recent pattern of doing way too much on weekends and went over to B–‘s place. I caught up with B– and E–, telling them all about my teaching opportunity, and then we watched Comedy Central’s roast of William Shatner. That was some funny stuff.

Saturday
Saturday morning I had to wake up early so we could pack the car and head to Wichita. We’re there, now, to celebrate Mother’s Day. I spent most of Saturday laid-up with back pain, but John and I took AB out to dinner at Chili’s in the evening, then after we came back John ran out to rent one of the old Star Trek movies on essentially the same principle that led us to having Jeff over last weekend. Unfortunately they didn’t have Kahn or the one with the whales, so he grabbed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Ummm….

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

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Journal Entry: May 1, 2009

Tuesday T– made enchiladas, D– came over for dinner, and we watched TV while I played Demigod. The end.

Wednesday, D– came over right after work to babysit AB for the evening so T– and I could go out on a date. We’ve started something of a ritual of going out to dinner whenever I finish a novel (and she finishes reading it), so she can give me her full feedback and I can ask any pressing questions I have (such as, for instance, “Is it any good?”). That’s always a lot of fun, and this week’s was no exception. We went to Texas Roadhouse and talked about GT: Expectation.

Then after that we went to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art to check out the openings of a couple exhibits. One featured Oklahoma modernist architecture, and the other was a collection of original prints (woodcuts, lithographs, that style of thing) from nineteenth-century France. That was pretty cool.

We also wandered upstairs after checking out the exhibits to stroll through the permanent collection again, and ended up spending some time on a couple medieval maps from France and the Netherlands. Cool stuff.

We got home in time to watch Lost with D–. It was awesome. And then it was bedtime.

Yesterday T– had to go work in Tulsa and I had to stay late at work, so we had a competition to see who could get home latest. I won. Or lost. Whatever. We had leftovers for dinner, watched some Thursday-night TV, and then I headed to the office to spend my writing time working on a programming project. It was fun.

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

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Journal Entry: April 28, 2009

Yesterday, I finished Ghost Targets: Expectation! Let there be fanfare and a parade in the streets. Or whatever.

And then, to be perfectly honest, I finished it again today. There were a couple scenes earlier in the book that became necessary by the end of the book, so I still have to go back and fill those in. But yesterday I finished chapter fifteen and got to write “The End.” So that’s what matters.

T– picked up some Mazzio’s for dinner, after going grocery shopping, and D– came over to watch Heroes and Chuck with us. Honestly, that’s the whole night. I finished a Hard difficulty Tournament in Demigod using an Assassin character for the first time, so that was fun.

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

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Journal Entry: April 27, 2009

Last Thursday I got chapter thirteen finished over lunch, then went home and typed it up. I skipped my workout (haven’t done anything since last Tuesday) because I’m having trouble with my knee. I took those four days off to rest it, and I’m going to start back with leisurely walks for a week before I get back to my high-intensity workout. Hopefully that’ll be enough.

Anyway, I came back out of the office around six and T– ran up to McDonalds to grab us some dinner. We spent the evening watching TV, and went to bed relatively early. Nothing really noteworthy.

Friday was my RDO, but I woke up early anyway. I’ve been working on that, trying to establish a real six o’clock habit. This time my goal was to get up before the rest of the family, lock myself in the office, and finish up my novel before I came out.

Unfortunately AB heard me getting ready, so I ended up on babysitting duty before I ever made it to the office. We played a little bit, and then I took her to the living room and started an episode of Word World for her. She sat on the couch next to me, in rapt attention, and I did half of chapter fourteen in my scribblebook.

T– got up a bit before nine and we all had some breakfast, then she started getting AB ready for a trip to Guthrie and I finally headed to the office. At that point I was able to type up what I had and finish off chapter fourteen in about an hour and a half. It’s the climax of the book, which is always the easiest chapter to write. After that comes the denouement, which is almost always the hardest, because by that point, as a writer, you’ve really already moved on.

Anyway, I finished my writing for the morning, emailed K– to ask if he wanted to meet for lunch, and then I changed into some work clothes and went out to do some work in the yard. I put down some Turf Builder (weed killer plus grass seed) front and back, and then mowed the back yard before I heard back from K– saying he was available but we’d have to make it quick.

So I ran up to Jersey Mike’s and had a turkey club, spent some time chatting with K– about Demigod, mostly, and then ran back home and mowed the front yard. Then I grabbed a shower, and by the time I was done T– was back from Guthrie with AB.

I went ahead and played Demigod for a couple hours while AB slept, then came out spent some time with the family. At 6:00 T– headed up to church for a Game Night with our small group, but I wasn’t up to that. I watched AB instead. I’d planned to go to IHOP for dinner, but at the last minute I decided to just stay home. We had chili and crackers and watched VeggieTales, which AB really seemed to enjoy.

Saturday morning I woke up early again and watched AB again, this time while T– went shopping garage sales with my little sister. She got home around 9:30 bearing breakfast, and after we’d eaten she took AB out to play in the back yard, so I went back to my office for some more Demigod. Around noon we headed to Taco Bell for lunch, then went to Homeland for some grocery shopping, then went home and put AB down for a nap.

While she was sleeping, T– and I curled up on the couch and watched Twilight, which was precisely what I expected it to be.

Then I divided much of the rest of the afternoon between playing Demigod and coordinating plans for the evening by phone. Then around 5:30 D– showed up and entertained AB for a bit before we headed over to my sister’s place for Poker Night.

At which point we had Poker Night. I didn’t get home until nearly 2:00 in the morning, and I promptly crashed.

Sunday morning I got up late and joined T– at church about five minutes into the service. I got a couple pages written on chapter fifteen, and then we went to Carl’s Jr. with K– and N– for lunch. That was fun, but AB is a real handful when we go out to eat. Still, we don’t get to see enough of those guys these days, so it was well worth it.

Afterward AB went down for a nap and T– went to the mall to do some shopping with N–. I played my game some, then emerged again when AB woke up and we played some games until T– got home.

D– came over around 5:30 and we drove up to Freddy’s to grab some dinner for us all, then brought it back to the house to eat. After that we watched some TV while I played my game and D– read some novel, and then somehow the day was done.

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

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Journal Entry: April 23, 2009

Yesterday, at work, I officially got the sort-of-demotion that I mentioned last Tuesday. My supervisor took the other tech writer and me into a conference room, laid out the problem for me, and then we spent half an hour discussing exactly how it should be resolved. I’m basically stepping into the publication process to do a full review of every document she prepares, including all of the ones currently in process.

That’s the ugly part. The next two months or so are going to be crushingly brutal while I try to get through the backlog of existing projects. Once that’s done, reviewing her new projects will probably only add eight to ten hours a week to my schedule. Unfortunately, by that point I’ll also be fully trained to do her job, which I see as a possible sleight of hand involved in this whole bit. I don’t mind reviewing her projects, but at that point they could just as easily have me start working some of the projects through the system, and that becomes tens and hundreds of hours, not just eight. I don’t want to mess with that.

But, y’know, it’s their Administration. They can run it however they want.

I went to BWW for lunch, because I needed a break, and learned that my waitress has gotten another job, so she won’t be there anymore. Lame! I mean, great for her, but lame.

My back has been hurting, too, almost as bad as last summer. My physical therapist said that when my back starts to hurt a little bit I walk differently to accommodate it, and that’s what causes the real problems. So that explains why I’m having the same issues even though I haven’t done anything resembling the sort of work that caused the original problem. That’s really neither here nor there, but I figured, as long as I’m whining….

After work I got home to find my little sister with her two kids at the house. They were out in the back yard, playing with T– and AB, so I slipped stealthily back to the bedroom without saying hi, and crashed on the bed. My brother-in-law showed up shortly, though, so I had to get up to let him in. I managed to avoid going outside, though. Small victories.

We had dinner at Qdoba, which is pretty much awesome. I’ve got a real appreciation for those chicken burrito bowls lately — rice, beans, chicken, cheese, salsa, lettuce, and cilantro in a cheap plastic bowl. I get the same thing when I have lunch with D– at Moe’s. It’s cheap, delicious, filling, and relatively healthy. Yay!

No, that was not a paid advertisement, but I did accidentally watch Biggest Loser last night, so you were well within your rights to wonder.

After dinner we went home, and I fetched the laptop out from the office so I could try out a new game, Demigod. It’s fantastic. I recommend it highly. It consists of short matches (15-30 minutes) that feel like RTS battles, although you don’t do anything like base management. Instead you’re playing a hero tasked with killing the heroes on the enemy team, destroying their fortifications, or capturing and holding strategic locations (“flags,” but the gameplay is what’s usually called “king of the hill”). A given match will consist of getting a certain amount of points from one of those three things to win, but every match becomes a mixture of all three.

There are eight heroes to choose from. Half of them are assassins, capable of wading into the battle and murdering everything, and the other half are generals, who can summon 5-15 minions to do battle for them. Each of the heroes has its own skill tree, and you can level up and customize your hero’s abilities through the course of the match.

I had fun. Ended up playing it from seven-thirty straight through to eleven. I really wanted to get some writing done last night, and didn’t because of the game, but after the day I’d had, it was just the evening I needed.

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

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Journal Entry: April 22, 2009

About a month ago, our preacher did a sermon on fasting in which he discussed the physical, emotional, psychological, and (of course) spiritual benefits of fasting. It struck a chord with me, and as I had missed breakfast before church, and was already planning on skipping the Second Sunday Fellowship afterward, I decided on the drive home that I would just go ahead and fast for the rest of the day.

Then I got home, got bored, and called D– to see if he wanted to do something, and that something ended up being lunch. Alas.

Before I got around to that, though, I came up with a grandiose plan to begin fasting regularly, and as 21 is my favorite number, I thought it might be a good idea to fast on the 21st of every month. Then, as I said, I went out to lunch and forgot all about it.

About a week ago, D– was over for dinner, talking about his vegan diet project, and he said offhand that I couldn’t survive for a day without meat. I pointed out that, about a decade ago, I’d gone a week without eating at all. I could go a day without food, let alone meat.

That was a long time ago, of course. I was deeply, deeply spiritual back then (unblunted by the woeful ravages of real life), and my goal was forty days and forty nights, and I don’t think I told anybody I was doing it (because Jesus said not to). Anyway, that was probably a really stupid and dangerous endeavor, but it’s something I’ve never forgotten.

But, yeah, last Thursday night we were talking about it, and decided we should do a 24-hour fast, and I said it would have to be after Sunday because I wanted to finish my 21 days on the elliptical, and being low on energy didn’t seem conducive. We settled on Tuesday, because that seemed the most convenient. So that was yesterday.

So that was yesterday. I had my last food Monday evening (a handful of jelly beans, around eight o’clock), because I was working on the traditional sunset-to-sunset fast. Woke up yesterday morning hungry and drove into work, where I had a carton of fresh fruit in the fridge. I left it there. I brought one of my big OU cups to work, full of ice water, and refilled the frequently from the water fountain, just to have something in my stomach.

Around nine in the morning I heard the secretary making the rounds, filling up the candy bowls, and I wept a little (not really). I thanked the Lord that no one had brought in donuts (yes, really). I spent my lunch break taking a nap in my car.

I dunno. I’m not going to paint it as some huge trial and tribulation, because it was just one day. It really wasn’t bad. It was distracting — I spent all day having to think about food, instead of mindlessly chowing down on it — but it wasn’t really difficult. I got home from work and there were homemade cookies on the countertop sitting next to the open gallon bag of jelly beans. Then T– started making dinner for her and AB, quesadillas and cheese dip, and it smelled delicious. I’d anticipated that, though, and I took a walk to get away from the house. By the time I got back, around seven, they were done.

We watched TV, Castle and Heroes, and after sunset I ate a big bowl of chili leftover from last Friday. It was good, but not lifechanging. I kind of wish I’d kept going.

Anyway, it wasn’t until halfway through the day that I remembered my decision, about a month ago, to start fasting on the 21sts. It was entirely coincidence that I followed through — we picked Tuesday for much more practical reasons — but I was glad of it. I think I’m going to try to follow through on that plan.

But, yeah, that was my day yesterday. Disjointed, vaguely meaningful, and characterized by a deep, deep suffering that really wasn’t all that bad. I missed breakfast and lunch and had a late dinner. Somehow, I was able to take meaning from that, and I think that’s the part that matters.

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

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Journal Entry: April 21, 2009

Yesterday’s post I forgot to include an update on my writing, but I did a lot of writing on Friday, none of Saturday, and then some more on Sunday to get me up through the end of chapter 10 (at 40,000 words), and started into 11.

Yesterday I did another 1500 words over lunch, which should make it a simple matter to finish up chapter 11 today. I’m hoping to get a good start on 12, too, which puts the story just shy of the epiphany that leads to the climactic standoff. I’m looking forward to writing that part.

My twenty-one days complete, I had thought about skipping yesterday’s workout to rest my knees (which are both hurting a bit), but when I got home from work I decided to do it anyway. I kept it at low resistance and went a little slower than usual, but I put in my full forty minutes (and got all caught up on Dollhouse).

While I was doing that, T– ran up to Mazzio’s to pick up some pizza for us and D–. Afterward we watched a couple episodes of Heroes to get caught up, as well as Chuck (which acts like it’s heading a series finale instead of just a season), and Rules of Engagement. When that was all done, I didn’t feel up to writing anymore, so I went to bed early.

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

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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.