The usual, cramming the weekend full of things

Blog 051908

As usual, a fairly busy weekend but mostly good.

I didn’t sign up for over-time this weekend because I wanted a break. I’m not sure of the last time I had two weekend days off. My mind is a bit blurry on the subject though. The previous two weeks I did 56 hours and 48 hours. Combined with the 48 hour week we were short a man so it made the week exhausting.

I got out Saturday and was worried because my brother has the kids. The house becomes quite cramped because almost all the various entertainment media of computers, TVs, games, and stereo are all in the same room. Everyone hangs in the living room. But my brother jumped ship because of an appointment and brought the kids up to my mom’s. I stayed up to cash my paycheck and stopped at Lowe’s. There I bought some grass seed, a rake that I made sure was made in America, and another raspberry bush. The bush was only $4.50 because it was half dead.

I got home and read some of Harry Potter 6. I’ve gotten into the book after putting it down in boredom. I caught some sleep and then went to my parents for a visit and supper. They had marinated steak and it tasted terrific. People usually think I’m a vegetarian but I took the biggest strip. It was a solid and quite good. At the moment, I can’t recall what I did when I got home Saturday night. I was somewhat tired because I hadn’t slept much. I didn’t stay up late because my brother sleeps on the living room couch when the kids are staying over.

Sunday was fairly busy as always. I woke up really early which pissed me off. One of the things that really sucks about naps is that I get into a sleeping pattern of 3 or 4 hours of sleep and then I’m awake regardless what time it is. I know I awoke somewhere around 4am or so because it was pitch black in my room. After some tossing and turning I eventually fell back asleep for a few more hours finally getting out of bed around 8 am. I was reading some more of my Harry Potter book before 8 so I think I woke around 7:15 am or so.

I hopped on the computer to do some fantasy baseball stuff which resulted in me winning this week 8-6 and remain in 2nd place. I took a shower and then planted my new raspberry bush. That took like 5 minutes and I hardly got dirty at all. Some Rockband on the Xbox 360 was after that. I got my nephew to play it too which was kind of cool. He actually stopped playing the Playstation game he was playing to join in. It was fairly fun playing in a band with him in the game. I asked my brother if he wanted in and he game me his uppity, “I play the real thing’. The whole point of me asking was to make it a family thing instead of his usual watching from the couch with the usual, ‘good job’ which sounds mechanical even to me.

I am concerned that my nephew does nothing but play video games and that’s it. If there’s a good reason to do something physical he’ll do it. He helped a lot the other day with the firewood at my parents. But he’s starting to get fat and I have to believe it’s all about his diet and lack of exercise. It actually makes me long for the days when my parents would kick me out of the house and ‘play outside’.

After some Rockband I headed out to catch the new Narnia movie. It was okay. It seemed like they really added in a lot of scenes that weren’t in the movie. I was really surprised by the amount of violence in it. It was implied several times in the flick that a mouse would slash people’s throats with his miniature sword. And the mouse was a good guy. In two of the main combat resolving scenes it seemed the movie makers outright stole ideas from The Lord of the Rings movies. It really gave me a ‘been there, done that’ feel which took away from the movie.

In the end, the movie was decent but I vastly prefer the original one.

From there I headed down to Connecticut to a comic shop. It’s not that far from my house, maybe 20 minutes but because it’s highway miles and out of state although just over the border it feels like it’s 30 to 40 minutes. The shop actually has a lot more stuff than my friends’ shop that just closed but it’s still awkward feeling to me. I forgot about another store that’s fairly new and maybe five minutes closer that I may try instead. A couple of friends go to that one so it may get more of a hang out feel than the CT store.

I ditched going to Wal-Mart and went home and took a nap after reading my favorite comic book first. When my alarm went off 40 minutes later I didn’t want to get up. I kept saying ‘5 more minutes’ until I got up about another 30 minutes after I had intended too. I drove to my parents in a zombiefied state and had supper with the family. I woke up after everyone left and hung out with my parents chit-chatting during the nightly national news.

Mom sent me how with some stuff and I called up a friend to see about playing cards. No other players were there but I went anyway. Turns out I haven’t been there since before Christmas except for one random Monday night. After awhile the regular card crew showed up and we had fun geeking out to Magic the Gathering. My play style is all about making the other guy groan in misery and if I can win that’s cool to. So the other guys usually either kill me first or leave me alone depending on how I affect them. In the end, I think the other guys like my decks because I play stuff no one else does which adds a wrinkle to the game rarely seen in their playing cliché. In my first game and going first I was able to Dark Ritual a Pox on the very first turn which made the others groan like hell. Nothing like losing a third of everything before you even have a chance to play. That’s my play style – screw everybody! And I love it, too.

So I got home around midnight and crawled into bed after brushing my teeth. And here I am Monday morning with a slew of chores to do which is fairly typical but I don’t have to leave the house which is nice too.