February 21, 2005, 23:59Have done this weekend (comparison)
I recently
posted my plans for this weekend. How closely did those plans match reality? Find out. . .
.
Saturday morning, Joe came over with Jared, his boss at the construction company. They had a look at the roof, and reported that it was in worse shape than I'd realized (which is not all that surprising, given my ignorance of many things in and around the house). The estimate for replacing the roof itself would be about $2200. But given the condition of the wood underneath, that would probably need to be replaced as well. Based on the size of the roof, that would probably be another $3000 or so.
We also talked about the website that Jared would like for the business. I'll be figuring out a good price for what he's seeking, and try to find a good place to get it hosted.
After that, Joe and Jared left to do some advertising. Jared came back a couple hours later with another guy (whose name I forgot; I'll call him Tree Guy here) and checked out the trees around the house. Tree Guy said that the big tree with the crack down the middle in the back yard could be saved... one of the lower large limbs would have to be removed, to relieve some of the weight, and a band could be placed around the tree to keep it together. Also, it would need to be tarred (but not gzipped) to keep water from getting in the crack and expanding it further.
Later, Joe called from Washington, so I went to pick him up, stopping off at Wal*Mart on the way over to pick up a few groceries and supplies. At Joe's, we watched ten or fifteen minutes of
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, already in progress. Joe asked if I wanted to go out to supper, his treat... I'm always up for that. :-)
We dropped off my groceries at home, then stopped by campus and also picked up fellow Psi Phi members Eric and Ryan C. I didn't know Ryan would also be coming until he exited the building, so I found that I had some cleaning to do in order to return my back seat to its normal two-person capacity. We got that taken care of, then went to IHOP, where we each faced the usual dilemma: "Should I order supper, since it's suppertime, or should I order breakfast, since it's IHOP?"
And, as typical, I got breakfast. :-)
After supper, we went back to Eric's room in Harper Hall. Eric had a computer game called
Evil Genius, where you try to fend off secret agents who attempt to infiltrate your secret lair, amass treasures both valuable and ancient, and generally try to take over the world. It looks quite entertaining.
Joe showed me an episode of
Clerks, the animated series, which lasted only two episodes on ABC's Saturday morning line-up before being pulled for inappropriateness for children. I can definitely see why... this show belonged in prime time, not kiddie time.
Since it was getting a bit late, Joe and I took off from campus, but we did stop by my place to watch the second episode (Eric loaned me the DVD collection), in which Dante and Randal get stuck in a freezer and relive some of their favorite moments from past episodes. Er, from past episode. Rather amusing.
After the second episode, I drove Joe home. Just as we were crossing the railroad tracks on Diebel Rd., the red lights started flashing and I saw a white light down the tracks a very short distance away. The white light, as it turned out, was from a box near the crossing, not a train, but that didn't stop my heart from pounding from the instinctual panic response. I dropped Joe off, then went back. At the railroad crossing, the arms were still down and the lights were still flashing, but there was no train in sight. I waited about five minutes, then gave up, turning around and driving all the way across Washington. Going through town is slower than taking the highway all the way back, but since I could've ended up sitting at the railroad crossing all night, this was probably better.
At no point throughout the day did I destroy the TV to Goodwill. Maybe next week.
So, that was my Saturday. Now on to Sunday.
While I did technically wake up in time to get to church, by the time I'd've had a shower, I would have been late, so I didn't go. This is getting to be a habit that I need to break.
For lunch, I tried to fix sausage patties. I had put the sausage into the freezer, to keep it fresh longer, but I didn't realize that it needed to thaw out before preparation. So I worked and worked and worked to saw off pieces. Eventually made four of them, and they cooked up alright. The remainder of the tube is back in the freezer. (Note to self: Take sausage out of the freezer when you get home from work this Friday.)
I knew before leaving Peoria that Dad and Dan would be at Jim & Earla's house for at least an hour, but maybe as long as two hours. At I neared Bloomington-Normal, I didn't know whether I should go directly to Dan's apartment, which would require exiting to US-150, or go to Jim & Earla's, which would require staying on I-74 for a few more miles before exiting to I-55. The solution to this problem? Cell phone! Yes, I finally used it for a personal call. (I feel so dirty.)
About a half mile before the exit I would take to get to Dan's, I pulled over to the side of the road, put on my 4-way flashers, and called Dan to see where he was. He said they hadn't left yet, so I pulled back onto the highway, staying there until I got to the I-55 exit.
I only stayed for a few minutes, then drove Dan over to his place and began cleaning up. The majority of the moving was already finished, but there were a few large items left (a desk, some chairs, and a long table), and there was much cleaning to be done. We mostly worked in Dan's bedroom and whatever the name of the adjoining room was, getting posters taken off the walls, finding stuff of interest in the closets, and so on. At one point, a guy named Lance, along with two other people (one male, one female) who apparently didn't have names (or if they did, they kept them to themselves), thinking that Dan had wanted to talk to him. When they found out that Dan actually wanted them to help him get moved, though, they didn't stick around for long. To their credit, though, they did at least carry the desk down the main stairwell on their way out.
I found a crumpled notebook which apparently was the diary of one of Dan's former roommates. It was full of teen angst. My apologies to the girl whose name I've forgotten and whom I've never actually met, but I find that sort of thing much more interesting when it's written by Joss Whedon. :-)
As I was leaning over to pick something up, my belt fell apart. Specifically, the buckle came detached from the strap. I was pulling up my pants the rest of the night. Need to get a new one.
Dad showed up later, with cleaning supplies, such as pushbrooms, cleaning sprays, paper towels, and so on. A lot of time was spent on the stove, which started out quite nasty-looking, and ended up... well, okayish. After some more activity, we decided to call it a night, and started taking stuff out to the cars. We left the two chairs, since things aren't quite finished yet and people will need a place to sit while they're over there.
Next, we went to get some supper. Dad suggested Domino's... we could get either two larges or three mediums for $15. Since a large is 14" and a medium is 12", I calculated that three mediums would be the better deal (108
π"², as compared with 98
π"²)... and as a nice side-benefit, we could each have our own pepperoni pizza. Dad called it in, and when we got to Domino's, they told us that one of the pizzas was actually double pepperoni and double cheese... they had made a mistake with someone else's order (they'd ordered a
large double pepperoni, double cheese pizza, not a medium), so we got a free upgrade. Hooray! Of course, this threw off the one-pizza-per-person thing, so we ate all of the upgraded pizza first, before going into the other two.
Upon leaving Domino's, Dad turned onto Hershey Rd., while Dan and I kept going out further, intending to get onto Airport Rd. to avoid the "speed humps" around Dad's neighborhood (which were installed to annoy drivers into not driving through), since we had Dan's fragile dishes in the back seat. However, we found that Airport Rd. didn't connect to the street we were on, and after wending our way through a neighborhood (a twisty maze of little passages, all different, as Dan described it) and getting to Airport Rd., we found that that road itself was closed a few blocks closer for reconstruction! So now we had to go through a second neighborhood (a maze of twisty little passages, all alike) to get to Dad's house. We did avoid the speed humps, but I would've much rather avoided the ten-minute detour. :-)
After consuming much pizza, I got to play with the kitties! Both of them were very static-clingy. Big Kitty preferred to sit on top of boxes, while I got to pick up Itty Bitty Kitty and hold her. (The cats' names are actually Sunny and Sable, but I can never remember which one is which, so I gave them nicknames a couple years ago... though at the time, they were "Itty Bitty Kitty" and "Medium". Eventually, though, "Medium" outgrew her nickname, so I picked the more appropriate "Big Kitty".) The hair clump on Itty Bitty Kitty's side was gone, which is good, because it really looked like it would feel uncomfortable.
Before I left, Dan and I talked, and I loaned him some money to take care of bills until he can find another job. With him living with Dad now, I feel more comfortable giving him money, since he will be much less likely to spend it on... well... things he shouldn't.
I stopped by Kevin's place for a few minutes, to return
Callahan's Lady and get the sequel,
Lady Slings the Booze. He had some difficulty finding the book, searching several bookshelves before eventually finding it about eight books to the right of where he originally thought it should have been. :-) It's currently fourth in the reading queue. Matt, a friend of Kevin's whom I'd met last summer, was also there, so I did a bit of catching up with him. Fafhrd, Kevin's cat, was friendly as usual.
I returned home, and found that I'd accidentally left a straw hat that had been filled with small trinkets and things of Dan's in my trunk. Oops!
When I went to watch the episode of
The Simpsons I'd recorded ("There's Something About Marrying"), I was surprised to see that it was rated TV-14 and had the disclaimer: "This episode contains discussions of same-sex marriage. Parental discretion is advised." Of all the controversial subjects that
The Simpsons has dealt with over the years (prostitution, drugs, rock and/or roll), why pick now to start issuing warnings about them? I thought it was a rather well-done episode; the Springfield resident who came out of the closet wasn't who I'd expected, but it made sense. There was one moment that I thought was a bit cheesy... toward the end, somebody made a particular proclamation, and everybody in the room started clapping and grinning (even people completely uninvolved in the situation). That just didn't feel right, either dramatically or in the context of the characters.
davidh
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