Friday evening, I'd just finished chopping vegetables and meat for stir-fry for dinner when K.T. dropped by to pick up the last two Harry Potter books and give me back my key. She suggested that Matt and I come over to her place and have pizza for dinner, and we could watch a movie or something.
Since a) I've been complaining about wanting to get out more, and b) we'd just been hearing at lunch about the great extras on the Galaxy Quest DVD, we agreed, and I wrapped the stirfry up and put it in the 'fridge for later.
We didn't actually watch Galaxy Quest, just the extras, but it was fun - the cut scenes were hysterical, and the "making of" was pretty good. We sat and talked with K.T. and Kevin for a while, then headed home around eleven when I started feeling sleepy.
When we got home, I sat down at the computer, intending to check my mail and then go to bed. I skimmed through the list mail, then followed a link I'd been sent. I was reading the article when my "mail giggle" went off - I had new mail. Assuming it was more list mail, I pulled up the reader to scan the title and delete it.
But no! It was from Kris! I started to read it, realized she'd probably just sent it, and logged into AIM. Yup, sure enough, there she was. She said hi, and we chatted for a while. Apparently, she was feeling a little insomniac. Excited? Nah.
Saturday was somewhat busy. I weeded the mulch beds, and raked the mulch so it was more evenly distributed. I made meringue kisses for the evening's game, loaded and ran the dishwasher, finished up some details for the game, and ran some errands to the bank and such.
The game was... disappointing. K.T. brought one of my favorite recipes - cherry tomatoes stuffed with tuna - and sandwich fixings, and I set out mayo, mustard, and tomato slices, and we had a good time munching our dinner. Then we started gaming, and I got them into the first combat of the night, which was supposed to be a rough, fast battle.
Heh. It took us two hours. The bad guys couldn't hit. The party couldn't hit. It was almost funny to imagine; bands of tough adventurers standing on the road between farmland and forest, swinging their weapons at each other with about enough strength to hurt a mouse and enough agility to hit a barn. By the time it finally ended, we were really all too tired to get into the business of the town that I'd hoped to get into.
I'm starting to get the impression that my gamers want me to hurry up and wrap this thread up so we can play Matt's 7th Sea game instead.
The other detriment to this particular game was Matt's discovery of ants crawling in through the kitchen window. Everything went on hold for a bit while Matt and I wiped our counters and windowsill down with undiluted bleach. And then we had what Matt calls the psycho-itchies for the rest of the evening.
Sunday, I did more work around the house - finally sanding and painting over several spackled holes in our walls and places where the paint had been chipped or gouged. We made a trip to Lowe's and bought a couple of flags for our flagpole, a towel hook for the bathroom, and a couple of other odds and ends.
We were on our way back from Lowe's, coming up on Pierce's Barbeque, when I saw a car start to pull out of their parking lot onto the two-lane highway, hesitate, and then pull out, turning left to go in the opposite direction from me. I slammed on the brake, and the car went into a skid. (Hello? Anti-lock brakes? What happened?) I turned the wheel, hoping to turn into Pierce's parking lot rather than hit this guy. If he'd hit the gas, he'd have pulled clear. But he'd frozen and hit the brake.
At least my turning avoided any injury - if I hadn't turned, I'd've slammed right into him. As it was, I hit the back-seat door, pushing it in toward the tire well. The impact chewed up my bumper, smashed my headlight, and dented my hood and side panels. I doubt I could get my hood open with a crowbar at this point. I pulled the car the rest of the way into Pierce's parking lot, and he pulled across the street to park on the side of the road, and after verifying that no-one was injured, we exchanged information.
In the aftereffects of adrenaline rush, I didn't want to deal with the hassle of the police. We decided to just let our insurance companies deal with it. On the way home, we realized we really should have called the police - the other guy was completely at fault, even if his view had been severely blocked by cars parked on the side of the road. (Pierce's is a very popular barbeque place.)
Too late now, so I'm trying not to worry about it too much. My car is driveable; I even discovered on the way to work this morning that the headlights and turn signal still work - the covers are just squashed. I'll call the body shop down the road from my house this morning that's affiliated with my insurance company and make arrangements to have an appraisal and get the thing fixed. (Yes, I know I don't have to go to a place affiliated with my insurance company. But they're really the most convenient place anyway.)
So, in the aftereffects of that, Matt and I were both sortof grumpy and snippy as we put up the flag.
We got the mounting bracket and flagpole from my grandparents for Christmas, along with some holiday flags of - to be honest - dubious quality. We sorted out the flags we wouldn't be caught dead flying, and took them to the Miss-Mas party, leaving us with flags for the 4th of July, Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. A flag pole with no flag looks pretty dumb, so we decided to just leave off installing the flagpole until later.
We didn't get around to putting it up for the 4th of July, since we were out of town just before, and anyway I didn't want to put it up until we'd gotten a non-holiday-specific flag to put up when there wasn't a holiday going on. We discovered that Lowe's has flags purely by accident, but they had a couple we liked, so we went ahead and got them, and now, only seven months later, the flag is finally up.
Around 7, Braz and Kris came over. They'd gotten to town a couple of hours earlier, but wanted to take a shower and change clothes. They're staying in a hotel until they can move into their new house, so I promised Kris the use of our kitchen until they have one of their own. I fixed the postponed stir-fry for them (after adding some more vegetables and another packet or two of chicken) and then we went out for ice cream. We drove by their new house, though we couldn't get a good look in the dark. The neighborhood looks nice, though. I can't wait to see it!
So this week will be nice and busy. I need to call the exterminator to come and take care of the ants. (Luckily, that'll be free, since that's part of our contract with them - they spray once a month, and if there are any incursions, they come out for free.) And I need to call the auto repair shop and take my car in to have it fixed. And Braz and Kris will be over just about every night for dinner. And there's one or two other things going on that I'm not really at liberty to discuss in public yet.
I wanna take a nap.
Word of the Day: opprobrium - something that brings disgrace; public disgrace or ill fame that follows from conduct considered grossly wrong or vicious; contempt, reproach
I hope getting my car fixed won't be too much of a hassle. Driving home after the accident wasn't any fun, with Matt and I both heaping opprobrium upon ourselves for not calling the police. And we'll probably stay tense about it until after the car is fixed.
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