Slightly weird: last Monday while playing Trivial Pursuit 90s Edition, we had a debate over whether Johnny Carson was alive or not. None of use could remember for certain, but we finally decided that he was. And now he’s not. Call it a Trivial Pursuit premonition. Spooky.
I had a very, very busy weekend and am paying for it today with sleepy eyes and a sore throat. But it was great. Let’s begin…
I stayed home on Friday night as has become a habit lately. I don’t mind going out, but I also like to relax and unwind from the week. I worked on some web stuff (redesign of this page that will hopefully happen within the next couple weeks) and watched some TV. Alas, I did not do any cleaning and my apartment is suffering for it.
Saturday I woke up early for swimming with Buzz. She had already done 5 laps by the time I got there and ended up doing 20 total, so I squeezed in 21 while she did her final 15. A year ago, I could’ve done at least 30 laps in the time it took her to do those 15. She has really improved — it’s awesome.
After satisfying a Chik-Fil-A craving for lunch, and feeling aimless and not sure what to do with the rest of my day, I headed out with the intent of going to RunSport to pick up my mug from the marathon warm-up series. It seemed silly to drive all the way up into town just to get a mug and come back home, so I decided to just see where the day would take me. I didn’t have any plans for that night, but was thinking of crashing Jo’s hula performance after all. (She takes lessons at a dance studio in town, and the studio was doing an informal show that night. I hadn’t RSVPed because I’m an ambivalent RSVPer.) After picking up my mug I decided to see what REI had on sale. Got a couple shirts and a couple pairs of socks, as well as some little climbing people magnets that I put on my bookshelf at work. This is what happens when I go to stores without a specific shopping list — I end up buying random stuff. Just wait till you see what happened next.
From REI, since I was already way over on that side of town, I decided to hit my version of heaven on Earth: IKEA. I hadn’t been since they opened a new, larger store and of course I wasn’t disappointed. I went for a shelf and I left with:
- A small rug.
- Two magazine filing racks.
- Two blue paper storage boxes.
- Two pieces of bamboo.
- Two “knick-knack” shelves.
- Two paper lanterns.
- Two light fixtures to go with the lanterns.
- Oh yeah — the large shelf that was the idea behind the trip in the first place.
I do love that place. Because I am weird and the idea seemed like fun and I “take a lot of pictures” according to Becca, I documented my trip to heaven with my camera phone, which is available for your viewing pleasure HERE.
Before hitting IKEA, however, I had decided that I wanted to go to Jo’s hula performance that night after all. I called Nick to find out the plan, and Ansley was sick and not using her ticket, so I could have it for cheaper than buying one at the door. Perfect, except they weren’t meeting for dinner until 6:00, and it was only 5:00. No time to go back to Clear Lake, so I drove downtown to Tranquility Park and took some photos of the park and the neat statue outside the Hobby Center while the sun went down. I met the hula-going gang for dinner at a great restaurant right on Main Street next to the light rail line.
From dinner we headed to Jo’s performance. We had to sit through a lot of belly dancing (which I enjoyed, though many others didn’t) but got to see Jo perform three different hulas. She was great! I should get her to teach me some. There was also a tap dancer there who was very good; he teaches a hip hop class on Saturdays as well, so I’ll have to go with Jo sometime. Pictures from the performance are HERE. If you, like Becca, feel like I took too many, then 1) get over it and 2) use the slideshow feature, as it allows for quicker viewing. A quick trip to Amy’s Ice Cream after the show capped off a great Saturday.
Yesterday was again busy — I spent the afternoon interviewing high school seniors for the President’s Scholarship at Georgia Tech. This was the second year I’ve been able to help out, and it was a lot of fun. I saw six students in all, and a couple of them were just thoroughly impressive. I’m lucky I got the scholarship when I did; I get the feeling it’s a lot more competitive this days, and I have serious doubts I could snag one if I had to apply today. Seriously impressive teenagers.
I ended the weekend with a soccer game last night, which we WON. Yeah! We won!
