Well hey there!

Busy weekend. I was out Friday night hanging with the West-siders. We were munching on jelly beans when my crown popped out. I was shocked at first, then mad, then confused, then mad again, then I just stopped caring. I put the crown in a baggie and decided I'd figure it out later.

I got home around 1 and worked to drill in the pedestals for the bed so I can boost the height up another 5 inches. By 3 I had the holes drilled and bed hoisted up. I slept in the higher bed and really enjoyed having it up that way, so I think I'm going to stick with it. It gives me a full foot of space to store stuff underneath. And, since I have a one-bedroom place, I can use all the storage I can get.

I may have mentioned that with the leftover wood from the bedframe I also assembled a shelf/table kind of thing. Basically, it's a shelf on the wall, but the wood was cut and laid out to appear as if it was a table. This was much more difficult to plan and build than the bedposts. Why? Well, the headboard and footer were completely abstract. As long as the bottoms were flush with the ground, any other measurements could be guesstimated and "eye-balled". With this shelf though, the shelf is a certain length from the wall, has to be perfectly level, has to be a certain width, etc. It was pretty tough to get an abstract branch to conform to the guidelines, but once I stared at them long enough, the solution jumped out at me.

So, I took out the tarp again and peeled the rest of the branches, made the cuts, primed and sprayed the branches, then hammered/screwed them into the shelf. I'm sure my neighbors loved me.

Oh, here's the final product. :)

On saturday morning, I drove to Mom & Dad's for a visit. I'm officially old now. I dropped off a large bag of rice, and they exchanged canned goods with me. Yea, I know.

Anyhow, after a while, Mom and I went over to Nana & Papa's place. I showed them photos of my apartment and we caught up for a while. We came back home and I headed out to dinner.

Sam and Denise met me at Sweetwater, where the wait was something like two hours. We didn't hang around. Instead, we drove out to Ruby Tuesday's and waited there for half an hour. After dinner, we went to Mike and Robin's place, where the old gang from TruSecure was there, hanging out. Pat got us all together to reminisce and catch up. It was great seeing everyone again.

Mike left TruSecure for a gig at AOL. I was happy to hear about that. Man, was I happy to hear about that. I can't wait to hear from the rest of the gang that they're off and happy somewhere else. (maybe even making a few bucks more too!) He and Robin were great hosts. We had a good time yammering, playing foosball, swapping stories and what-not. Good times.

I left their place around midnight or so and headed back down to Richmond. This morning, my main priority was to get my butt on the track and start running. (today's goal was 7 miles) I had about an hour to clean up the apartment before getting ready for church. I ended up getting some lunch with Branda over in Carytown (it was so cool seeing Carytown again...it's been a while.) Anyhow, my day got shifted a bit, and when I came back to the apartment, it took longer to clean up than I had expected.

Right as I was finishing up, Paul came over. I was hosting a Superbowl Party for the geeks. Everyone eventually made it over and we hung out here for the night. Two things really shocked me tonight: The first was a really cool gift from Olivia - some plant life! She hand-painted some Southwestern designs on the terra cotta base. It looks awesome on the new table. (thanks again Olivia. That made my night!)

The other big shocker was how fast the pizza arrived after I ordered it. I ordered Papa Johns online, and within 20 minutes or so, there was a knock at the door. I figured that Superbowl sunday was like the biggest day of the year for pizza joints. I didn't even think about the pizza...assuming it would take an hour or so. Good stuff!

I didn't run after all, since I had some cleaning up to do when everyone left. I think I'm going to take it easy tonight and tackle the run tomorrow afternoon. I'll have to wait until school lets out before I head to the high school track. Oh, and check this entry out. One of my first ones from when I started running last year: (chuckle)

We've come a long way, baby.