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Yesterday was Wednesday, so we met up with K– and N– and D– for dinner, this time at Souper Salad!. I brought a burger from Freddy’s.

It was a fun dinner, though, and afterward D– and I went back to the house to play Rock Band while the rest went to church. They all came over afterward, too, and I showed off my changes to the office, then K– joined us in some rocking. D– went home around 9:30 and the other two went home around 10:00, I think, and then T– wanted to watch something on TV so I put away the instruments.

Then I set to work ripping some old songs Brad and I had made off of an ancient cassette tape. The quality is terrible, but it’s enough for D– and me to remember how they went, because we sat through hours of playing and perfecting them.

I ripped the whole tape into a single WAV file, and now I’ve got the task of breaking it up into songs and doing what I can (with some relatively low-end software, and no technical expertise at all) to clean them up. The originals were never that strong, in terms of mixing, and the decade since has not been kind to my magnetic media.

Still, I spent some of this morning listening to the tracks I got, and the nostalgia aspect is near overwhelming. Those were some good times.

I also got to have lunch with K– and N– today. They met me at Buffalo Wild Wings for my regular Thursday lunch. It was awesome.

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

Yesterday after work, T– and I ran up to Wal-Mart to grab some stuff for the office. We got a small bookcase to go under the window, a new curtain (because I’d been using a bedsheet thrown over a curtain rod), and a power strip for her desk. Then I built the bookcase while T– made dinner. After that, we just played with AB until her bedtime.

Then T– and I went back to finish setting up the office. I got my old XBox hooked up so we could watch Get Smart while we worked. I scanned old documents and T– set up her desk with all her crafting supplies. It was a pretty productive evening — quiet, but pleasant.

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

Yesterday was wildly productive. I woke up early and painted (as I think I already mentioned), then went out to lunch with T– and AB, and then when AB went down for a nap, instead of breaking out the game I went back to the office with T– and started clearing books off shelves.

We’re rearranging. Yesterday we moved two bookshelves into the bedroom, and threw away another one that had long been falling apart. Because of that, we also had to consolidate two bookshelves down into one, so the five remaining are all a lot more densely packed than they were before. The new setup leaves all the fiction in my office, basically, and everything else in our bedroom.

It also opened up room for T– to move her crafting table back there, and for me to set up the Rock Band drums and hook them up to my computer with a drum kit program, so I can practice the drumming exercises in my book with realistic sound effects. Pretty cool.

Anyway, rearranging furniture took up most of the day. In the evening T– picked up a pizza from Mazzio’s and D– came over to watch Heroes and How I Met Your Mother with us. Afterward he took the game home with him, because he’s got plans with other friends tomorrow night. That’s okay, I’ll need another evening to finish setting up my office.

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

So, I normally don’t post on my days off, but none of you knew today was going to be a day off for me, so I decided out of merciful kindheartedness to update after all.

Friday was my last day of classes in Chicago. There was one afternoon flight out of O’Hare to get me back to OKC on before Saturday, but it was so early in the day that class would have had to end ridiculously early for me to make the flight. I mean, hours and hours early. Classes usually end early on the last day, particularly when the last day is a Friday, but still — it was extremely unlikely, so I booked my return flight for Saturday. Then I spent all day Friday hoping the class would end early enough for me to make it out, absurd or not.

Class ended exactly half an hour too late for me to make it out. Ugh.

While I was waiting to find that out, though, I checked out Digg at some point and found an article about the top 13 barbecue joints in the country. I clicked through them all, and one happened to be in Chicago. Not only that, but it happened to be within about ten miles of my hotel, so reasonable, even. I decided to check it out.

So about six o’clock I headed east. Went about a mile down, got on the interstate, and stopped. During rush hour, on a Friday, I was headed into Chicago proper. I hadn’t really thought about it like that. So it took me a solid hour to go ten miles or so. Maybe fifteen. I also knew from the article about the place that it was takeout only, so I was pretty sure my food was going to be totally cold and inedible if I had to make an hour drive back to my hotel room to eat it.

Luckily that wasn’t the case. I was able to find a parking spot not far from the restaurant, walked down to buy the food, walked back to my car and then made it back to my hotel room in less than fifteen minutes. Part of the difference was that rush hour had ended, but most of it was that I was heading out of town instead of into it.

Anyway, I spent most of the rest of the night eating the basket of ribs. It was phenomenal, and way too much food. Just damn delicious, though.

I chatted with D– and Jeff, and watched most of Michael Clayton (which is basically this: imagine someone decided to do a remake of Pelican Brief except they wanted three incredibly awkward five-minute scenes, scattered throughout, where George Clooney drives around in a car making serious faces and not saying anything (or having anything said to him) — that’s Michael Clayton), and also got packed for my trip home.

Saturday morning I woke up at 6:00 so I could be at the car rental place two hours before my flight. That’s what they requested, which seemed a little overboard to me, but I was at the mercy of their shuttle and I had no idea how often it ran, so I was there two hours early.

Turns out the shuttle runs every ten minutes, so I was at the airport an hour and forty-eight minutes early, which is a little more than the thirty minutes they recommend. So I got to spend some time reading. Between that time and the flight home I finally finished my French book (which I’ll write more about in a separate post). The flight home was uneventful. Once again I got a row all to myself, so it was pretty comfortable, and I still adore direct flights.

D– was waiting for me curbside, so I threw my bags in his trunk, and we headed straight to Wichita. We stopped at Pops for lunch, because D– had never been and it was early enough in the day that we thought we could get seated quickly, so he thought it might be a good time to check it out. His analysis was the same as mine: not worth the hassle. I had a decent chili burger, he got an orange soda with a picture of an Indian chief on it, and then we headed north again.

I got to T–‘s parents’ place around 1:30, and selfishly roused AB from her nap because I’d missed her for a week, and then played with her and talked with the in-laws for a couple hours before we had to head to Topeka.

Julie’s wedding was amazing. The setting was beautiful and elegantly decorated, the poetry reading in the middle of the ceremony was resplendent and transcendent at the same time, and two folks got hitched. Then the reception took place at an old train station that had been converted into a fancy hall for exactly that sort of purpose. They had a literary theme for everything (we were seated at the Neil Gaiman table, and went home with a couple books from the Topeka library as keepsakes). Instead of a groom’s cake they had huge jars full of candy — colorful and whimsical as decorations, but with little plastic baggies a la the candy story in the mall, for guests to take home. Awesome. Hot tamales and jelly bellies are so much better than cake (although apparently there was also a cake). Also: open bar. First wedding I’ve been to with one of those, and they were using Grey Goose for the vodka coctails. Hell yes.

So T– drove us home.

We didn’t get back to Wichita until after 1:00, and I absolutely crashed. Sunday morning I slept through church, then we had lunch at her parents house, and shortly after that we got our stuff packed up and headed home in time to catch the Cowboys game. We were about an hour late for kickoff, but thanks to the magic of TiVo, that wasn’t a problem.

Except our TiVo apparently had reruns of Law and Order and King of the Hill set to higher priority than Cowboys games, so I did miss the first hour. Lame. Still, D– got into town around 4:00 and he came over and we watched the last three quarters. It was an intense game, mostly in a bad way. Still, glad I got to see most of it. I’ve seen way too little football this year.

T– grilled up some bacon-wrapped fillets for dinner, and after the game we played Rock Band until the wee hours (by which I mean 11-ish). I was exhausted, though, so I finally sent D– home and went to bed.

Today I got to take off work on comp time for the hours I spent traveling to and fro. I slept in, then got up and finished the paint job on the garage. It looks good, but mostly it’s just nice to have it done.

I don’t have much planned for the rest of the day. Going to relax and enjoy being back with my family. Tomorrow, it’s back to the old grind, but I’m really glad I got to take today off. I’m glad to be home, too. It’s amazing how long one week can be.

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

I tried to post this last night, because it was such a thing, but Blogger suddenly won’t work on my laptop for some reason, so I’m just adding it to my journal entry, during class.

Anyway, Sunday when I first got in, as I mentioned, I drove up to a Target really close to my hotel, and found that it was closed. I didn’t mention (because it didn’t seem relevant, since I’m not a basketball fan) that right next to the Target was big-ass wedding cake-looking building that I first mistook for a huge mall, then for a double-huge movie theater (because it only had one entrance and no storefronts), and then finally discovered was the Chicago Allstate Arena.

It’s about a five minute walk from my hotel, on my way to class, so I’ve passed it nearly every time I’ve left my hotel. Anyway, last night I ran out to grab some chicken for dinner, having decided not to do anything with my evening, and I got around the corner and ran into a huge traffic backup. I thought it must be an accident or something–

Okay, I’ll cut to the chase because you guys are all too smart to sit through my narrative without guessing. It was the Weezer concert. The Weezer concert was a five minute walk from my hotel. DAMMIT! And I would have gone, then and there, to see if there were still tickets left (my guess is yes), but I’d just spent all my allowance money on a jacket that I’m only using for one more day.

So, yeah, took me forever to pick up my chicken.

I also skipped the gym last night, because my calves were really sore. I could have gone down just to do my shoulders, but I’ll just do shoulders and biceps tonight before I run.

Anyway, journalwise, after class (which let out early, because we were way ahead of schedule), I ran up to the nearest Wal-Mart to grab a cheap jacket because it’s been freezing up here (and, after all, I do need a new jacket). The nearest Wal-Mart is about a forty-minute drive from my hotel, but only about ten from my class, so I went straight there from class. I’d intended to do some comparative shopping, driving all the way back to the Target by my hotel and really hoping they had a better deal than I’d found at Wal-Mart, but I discovered a mall right by the Wal-Mart that consisted of Kohl’s, Sears, and a Target (and one furniture store). That’s pretty much my ideal setup for comparative shopping, so I looked around and picked up a $50 fleece jacket that ended up being $35. Coolio. I also got T– a memento, because I hadn’t yet.

I found a $12 hoodie that looked good enough, as soon as I walked into Target, but it was only midafternoon and my whole plan had been to kill some time, so I went ahead and did the shopping thing. Apart from blowing my Weezer money on a jacket I won’t wear again between tomorrow and December, I’m happy with what I ended up getting.

Anyway. After that my little sister called and we talked for my whole drive back to the hotel (which probably wasn’t wise, considering the near-miss with the train, but I made it back alive). Then I read for about an hour, ran out for the chicken, and came back to the hotel to watch School of Rock and play a video game. That was my whole night. Probably one of the best yet, mainly because School of Rock repeating is a lot better than Sex and the City coming on after Family Guy when you don’t have the time to go searching for the remote.

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

Yesterday was the last day of our Intro class, so we got out a little early. I went back to the hotel, spent 40 minutes in the gym (where I worked biceps and added a minute to my running time), and then stayed in my hotel room for the whole night. I had leftover pizza for dinner (still not stunning, but already paid for), watched some King of the Hill and A Knight’s Tale (twice in a row, because that’s how TNT rolls), and tried to play some single player Civ.

It was supposed to be multiplayer, but D– recently rebuilt his computer and forgot to reinstall, so it was just me. Not so much fun (and, by extension, it only killed an hour), so I switched back to Spore and, as I said, sat through two airings of the same movie.

I brought a lot of work to do while I’m here — some business, some personal — and I’m doing the business part as soon as I get done with class every day, incorporating what I learned into the project I’m doing on deadline. As soon as I finish that, though, I veg for the rest of the night. I have no motivation at all to do anything useful with my evenings (apart from the gym, and that’s a horrific battle in my mind every time I make myself go). It’s a shame, because I have more time available to be productive than I could normally find in a month, but I’m just not doing anything.

And that’s that. I did talk with T– and D– last night, and on Tuesday I talked with B– for ten minutes or so, too. Anyway, it’s weird living alone out of a hotel room for a week at a time. I’ve tried my hardest to arrange a Friday flight out (and tried to get to Wichita, to save me a drive), but it’s just not an option. Bah.

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

So, immediately after I posted yesterday, I made myself into a liar. I went out to the car for lunch, amazingly found myself with a solid GPS signal, so I checked on nearby restaurants and found a Buffalo Wild Wings about four miles away. The GPS said it would take about 8 minutes to get there. Between traffic issues and Lowrance just lying to me (and, yes, me missing one turn and having to double back), it took twenty minutes to get there.

That’s okay. We have an hour for lunch, and I was pretty confident I could get back in about 15 minutes. That only left 25 minutes for lunch, but I go to BWW in OKC all the time, and I can usually place an order within 5 minutes, and get my food at the table 2 or 3 minutes later (yes, really — it’s just lunch).

Not so much in Chicago. I got in and was seated, and fifteen minutes later somebody came to take my order. I should have left, but I knew it wouldn’t take any time at all for them to shake 8 boneless wings in Hot Barbecue sauce and bring the basket to my table. Again, not so much in Chicago. I waited 15 minutes before someone brought my wings. It took me 10 minutes or so to eat, and then 20 minutes to get back to class, so I was all kinds of late.

So, yeah, I should have stuck with Subway. I’ll probably grab some more boneless wings for dinner Thursday night, and just take them back to the hotel, but I’m definitely not going back for lunch. I appreciate my OKC branch a lot more now, too.

After class, I went back to the gym again and added a minute of running to my workout. Then I cleaned up, and went down to the front desk to ask where I could find a good Chicago style pizza to try. They have a deal with a local pizzeria that delivers to the hotel, so I took advantage of that. It was pretty okay, but probably not worth the cost. I should have just gotten some Pizza Hut.

Oh! I’d been saying all last week that I would head into Chicago proper on Tuesday night, do the tourist thing, and if I had a good enough time, I could go back later in the week. I spent all day yesterday thinking about it, though, and just decided I wouldn’t have any fun at all going into town all by myself. T– and I are planning on coming here for a vacation next spring, and I know I would have a better time just waiting for that, so there you go.

So, instead of going into town, I spent another evening watching Psych and playing Spore. I did a better job getting to bed at a decent hour (11:00 instead of midnight), but I never fell asleep so I finally turned on the TV and found a new Chris Rock special on HBO, which was good enough that I stayed up until 1:30 watching it.

So, yeah, I’m dragging today. It’s the last day of the Intro class, though, so we’ll probably get out a little early, and maybe after all this I’ll be tired enough to fall asleep tonight. We’ll see.

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

Last Friday night we had K– and N– and N–‘s mom over for dinner (I made some of my incredibly awesome chili), and then Rock Band. We played until 11-ish, I think. It was a late night for Preggers McKnockedup, whatever time we finally quit. We all had a lot of fun, though.

Then on Saturday I watched AB while T– went to get us some lunch (and not really much before that). We had Schlotzky’s, which I’d been craving for most of the week. Then the afternoon sort of metled away. I think I took a nap and watched some football.

At 3:30, the babysitters showed up to watch AB for the night, so I ran up to the church with T– to help her set up for her crop, then I went over to K–‘s to play Rock Band and, later, watch OU trash Texas Christian. Both were a lot of fun. Around 10:00 N– got home and reminded me I was supposed to send the babysitter home before her curfew, so I cleared out. I probably watched some TV or something until T– got home — I don’t really remember what I did.

Sunday morning we went to church, then met all of the above plus D– and his mom at Jason’s Deli for lunch. After that, I went back to the house and finished packing for my trip (in a state of minor anxiety the whole time), and then at 3:00 the Cowboys / Redskins game came on, and I only got to watch the first (abysmal) half before I had to head to the airport.

T– dropped me off. I got through security and then found an airport bar showing the game, so I watched another (abysmal) quarter before they announced boarding for my flight.

The flight to Chicago was surprisingly pleasant. It was a small plane with 2-seat rows on either side of the aisle. I had a window seat reserved, and the guy in the aisle seat had a 7-month old girl in his lap (who turned out to be a screamer). Just before we took off, though, a stewardess came by and said the row behind us was empty and we could feel free to move back there if we wanted. He did, so I was left with the row to myself (and room to stretch out). It was a direct flight, 2 hours, so I had no trouble keeping busy and in no time I was in Chicago.

The Chicago airport was huge, though, and — contrary to K–‘s advice — I’d stuck with my carry-on only policy, so I had to lug a week’s worth of clothes and my laptop bag across half a mile of airport. Then I had trouble figuring out where the rental car booths were, because there weren’t any. I finall asked somebody, and he sent me out to stand on the passenger-pickup sidewalk and wait for a shuttle from Avis.

That took a while, and then I spent half an hour in line (most of it at the teller, waiting for someone to tell her that, yes, the car was waiting right outside the door. She finally got that confirmation, sent me out the door, and I drove half a mile (three right turns) to my hotel. That bit was nice. Still, it took me an hour and a half to get from the airplane to my hotel room, which is almost as long as it took me to get from OKC to Chicago….

The room is nice, though. It’s a suite, so I’m treating one room as the living room (the desk is in there, so that’s where I use the computer, but it’s also where I watch TV, even though there’s one in each room). That makes it a little easier to go to sleep when I finally go to the other room.

I hadn’t eaten before leaving for the airport at 5:00, though, so after I dropped off my bags at 9:30, I was still starving. I ran up to a Target that my GPS told me about nearby, but they had closed at 9:00. Ugh. There was a Chili’s in the same parking lot, so I broke down and bought a real meal. It was awesome.

I also asked the waiter for directions to a 24-hour grocery store nearby. He told me there wasn’t a Wal-Mart within five miles (as T– had already found out, when I was on the phone with her), but he pointed me to a chain called Dominick’s, not far from the hotel. I grabbed some soda, some juice, breakfast bars, and string cheese for the week. I also sort of did my math wrong so I got way too much soda — but I’m me, so it’ll get drunk.

I got back to the hotel around 11:00, and went to bed around 11:30.

Monday morning I woke up at 7:15, learned that my hotel doesn’t have a free breakfast (it must be the only one in the country…), and was very glad I’d picked up the breakfast bars. I grabbed one, and two cans of Coke, and headed out to my training.

My training…I’ll talk about that later. It’s 8:30 to 4:30, with an hour lunch and two fifteen minute breaks. It’s about fifteen minutes from my hotel. On Monday, for lunch, I went to Subway. I might just go there for lunch every day this week, and save my diversity (and choice-making, and exploring) for the evenings.

I get a $64 per diem for meals and incidentals, that doesn’t require receipts. No matter what, I get $64 for every full day that I’m on travel. That lets me eat out prett nice every day (the only real positive of the whole trip). On the other hand, since it doesn’t require receipts, I can always eat ramen every meal and pocket three hundred bucks for my troubles (which would go toward our electric bill, or something lame like that). I’m trying to split the difference.

Anyway, after training yesterday I changed into some workout clothes and ran down to the gym in the hotel. It’s pretty nice, and by some miracle was entirely empty, so I did shoulders and biceps on the free weights, then ran on the treadmill for half an hour. It’s my goal to do that every day this week, but we’ll see.

After that I called T–, grabbed a quick shower, and ran to Chipotle just down the road for a quick dinner. I hadn’t been before, but it’s basically just a slightly-more-expensive Moe’s, with fewer toppings. For a dinner on the road, though, it was pretty good. I had three chicken soft tacos, and then went back to my hotel room. Then I watched Psych and played Spore until midnight.

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

I don’t know how we even got a loan on our house. I’m pretty sure it’s FHA, but there were all kinds of things wrong with it.

One specific problem is exposed, unpainted wood around the frame of the garage door. That’s bugged me ever since we moved in, but I never did anything about it. Now that the facing above the garage is all fresh-painted, though, it stands out even more.

So when I got home from work yesterday I took down the weather-stripping, scraped loose the old, gloppy, tearing caulk along the edges, and scraped and sanded all the old paint job to prep it for new paint.

I didn’t actually do any painting, though, because I had to get cleaned up for dinner. D–‘s mom came into town (they’re heading to Texas for a family reunion over the weekend), so we all went out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse.

Afterward, they came back to the house and she played with AB. I spent most of the evening running back and forth to the office, still setting up my newly rebuilt computer. Our guests left around 9:45, and T– pointed out that we had a new My Name is Earl and a new Office to watch. I pointed out that, now that file server was back up, we had a lot of stuff to watch, but she wanted to watch the new stuff. We finished the Office opener, and then headed to bed around 10:30.

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