False alarm

No snakes in our back yard. Sheew!

My weekend plans didn't turn out quite the way I expected but it was still a good weekend. We saw Shrek 3 and thought it was pretty funny. Not quite as good as the first two, but still worth seeing. After that we went to our friends' (Dave and Tami) house and played cards and chatted till almost midnight. Poor Dave had to get up at 6 AM. I hope he made it into work alright.

Saturday we went to the my parents' lake cottage and we took Paula's sister-in-law and her two kids along (one is 5 the other is three months). My brother, his daughter, my sister, her husband, and parents were all up as well. The weather wasn't great, but we had fun. Brock was pretty entertaining and everyone enjoyed taking turns holding the baby.

We spent Sunday afternoon at my parents, watching the race and playing games. We had planned to go to a party that evening, but we were too tired.

Monday morning we slept in late, and we spent the afternoon doing yard work.

So, not quite what we planned, but still fun. I hope you all had a good weekend, too.


-- C.

SNAKE!

Since Paula is off work for the summer, she's been doing a lot of yard work. She called me today and said she had finished mowing the front yard but wasn't going to mow the back yard. She was picking up sticks and saw what looked like a snake skin. I don't know if she saw a snake or not, though. But that was enough for her to pack away the mower and wait for me to get home. So that's what I have to look forward to tonight. I'll grab a (long-handled) shovel and go for a hike in my back yard looking for ravenous monsters.

After that it's a trip to Cinema Grill for dinner and a movie with some friends. Tomorrow is a trip to the lake for more kayaking. Sunday is lunch with my parents then a trip to Indy for a par-tay. Monday is ... hopefully reserved for just sitting around doing nothing. I'll probably have to mow the back yard though.


-- C.

I survived!

Paula was gone all weekend. She left Thursday and just got back yesterday afternoon. I managed to make it. My bachelor training kicked in, but then so did bachelor bad habits. I got everything put away before she got home though.

Did you know you can design and order your own Kleenex box? We were online sending some "e-cards" to her friends on Mother's Day and they had an ad. We clicked on it, uploaded a picture of ourselves, threw in some decorations, picked the background color, and a week later we had a Kleenex box with our picture on it. Pretty nifty! I think it's great that you can customize things like that. We had M&Ms with our names on them for our wedding, and we ordered some for our nephew's birthday (with his name on it of course, not ours!). I know you can order Star Wars figures with your head on top, too. Some neat stuff.


-- C.

STOMP

We saw STOMP last night and enjoyed it quite a bit. They are very creative with their musical instruments and how they play them. They started off with push brooms, moved on to matchboxes, kitchen sinks, rubber tubes, their bodies, trash cans and lids, lighters, and many other things. My favorite is when three of the guys can out on stage with oil drums strapped on their feet.

STOMP is pretty funny too. They don't say anything, but you can tell what they're thinking by their body language.

Several times during the show are very quite. They use silence as effectively as banging on metal lids.

If you get a chance to see them, I recommend you do.


-- C.

New cell phone

I got a new cell phone through work. It's an LG VX8700 with a 2MP camera. It's very sharp looking. As I was looking through the manual, it talked about sending a text message to a land line. The service will do a text-to-speech conversion and actually read it to the person who answers the phone. Pretty cool. Of course, there is a small fee involved.

What do I do with my old cell phone? Donate it somewhere?


Have a good weekend! I plan to spend some time at the lake.
-- C.

Learn something new everyday

My five-year-old nephew taught me something new about NASCAR. He likes to drive "Junior's" car. All these year's I thought his name was, "Dale Earnhart, Jr." but according to Brock it's "Dillon Hart, Jr."


-- C.

Sadness

Paula only had a half-day of work today since the school year is almost done. To celebrate she wanted to take chai tea and hot chocolate in to some co-workers. As we walked up to our favorite cafe, I noticed the shade on the door was still closed and there was a note. They changed their hours and don't open till 7:30 AM, which is far too late for either of us to get a drink in the morning before work.

It's a sad, sad day.


-- C.

Weekend chores spread over into Monday

Paula got off work early yesterday, so she did some work in the front yard, trimming trees & bushes and pulling weeds. When I got home I fired up the lawn mower and attacked the back yard. It was well over-due for a mowing. In the back of the yard by the fence I saw a frog scrambling for his life as the mower loomed closer. He was trying to hop over the tall grass that I hadn't gotten to yet. Fortunately I saw him in time.

My brother-in-law stopped by last night and picked up our two old couches. Our living room is back to normal, but with the new sectional couch in place. It looks pretty nice.

On my way into work this morning, Paula called me and said she just saw a turkey a few blocks from our house. I'll have to get me a huntin' rifle. Or a turkey trap. Or something.


-- C.