What A Weekend I've Had!!!

The weekend starts off with a bang.

Tisha is going to be in San Antonio all weekend, so for the price of a tank of gas (as oposed to the 3 or 4 tanks I buy when I drive to Levelland) I get to spend a day with my daughter!!!

The plan is that I get to sleep a quickly as I can when I get home Friday night, then wake up at 10 am so I can be in San Antonio at 1 pm.

Some people use Niquil or sleeping pills to get to sleep fast. I'm an old-fashioned boy; I shoot Jager.

Two shots, I climb into bed and pop some X-MEN: EVOLUTION in the portable dvd player.

I watch the fist episode on the disc, and I'm REALLY digging it! A little too much. It seems that the combination of the surround-sound effect of the headphones, the pretty good writing and really good animation of the show, and the alcohol are combining to have the reverse effect from what I was going for. I'm having too good a time here.

I need to get sleepy.

Two more shots of Jager.

Also, it's looking like and animated Action show isn't the best way to go. Maybe if I listen to some stand-up comedy... Stand-up is designed to activate the brain; the comedian paints word pictures so that he/she can engage you with a specific image, then surprise you with the punchline, which will be a humorously exaggerated image. Plus, they work with themes and ideas to give the jokes structure.

The point is that stand-up uses the mind.

And I've found, by falling to sleep to books-on-cd, that when I'm not laying in complete silence and dark, TRYING to fall asleep, but instead my mind is engaged creating images, and just not worrying about anything, I'm much more likely to actually doze off. The images created by the words I'm hearing become other images, just the random jetsom of my subconscious.

So I try some Bobcat Goldthwait, his album I DON'T MEAN TO INSULT YOU BUT YOU LOOK JUST LIKE BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT.

I end up laughing a lot and listening to the WHOLE album!

Okay, two more shots and some George Carlin that I've heard at least three times already.

I guess I ended up drifting off around 5:30 am -- which isn't too far from the time I usually fall asleep.

It never fails! When you WANT TO go to sleep, you just can't!

So I wake up around 12:30 pm to the phone ringing. It's Tisha. She can tell by my voice that I'm still asleep.

"You slept through your alarm, huh?"

"Yep. Sorry! I'll get in the shower NOW!"

I have a vague memory of the alarm going off... I set it for 10 am -- which would give me an hour to get up and get ready. My memory is looking at the clock and seeing that it's 11:28 am. I think I remember sitting up.

Then I DEFINITELY remember waking up to the phone.

So I get to San Antonio some 2 hours later than I intended, but once I get there all is right with the world!

Tisha has braces now, and they look COOL!

Plus every time I see her she's taller than the last time!

Her best friend Marisa had accompanied her on the trip, and her grandparents/adoptive parents had business that they were still busy with, so the three of us catted around the Riverwalk.

Mostly shopping. Tisha wanted UT gear, and they both wanted to find gift to take back to their boyfriends.

I brought the camera, so I spent a lot of my time shooting them and the sights.

We bombed around downtown SA for a while, but when we got back to the place Connie and Dale were, they were STILL busy! So Tisha and Marisa and I played what I call "Travel Clue" for a while in the lobby.

This is basically CLUE without the board and dice. You ask questions and mark down stuf on your little notepad until someone figures out Who and How and Where. Without the board, the game moves a LOT faster, and you can fit the whole setup into a plastic sandwich back that you can slip in your back pocket. (I keep mine in my Homestar Runner satchel that I take everywhere with me.)

Oh, yeah! When I got to the building where Tisha was, and I met Marisa for the first time, Marisa takes a single look at my bag and says "That's Homestar Runner"!!! I know RIGHT OFF THE BAT that Marisa's Good People!

So anyway, we get 2 and a half games in before Connie and Dale are finally through.

Tisha and I tend to play this game whenever we're together for more than a day, so we've got our strategy down, AND we have a good sense of how to keep an eye on each other. I won the first game because I had my eye on Tisha and I spotted the moment she figured it out. (So she SHOULD HAVE won, but I exploited the rules of the game and stole her thunder. Yes, I AM that much of a bastard.) But Tisha won the second game. Because I stole her first win, she was less careful and moved faster on the accusation.

Then, before we were far into the third game, Connie and Dale were done and we all hit the Alamo!

After the Alamo we did more shopping. I got to talk politics with Dale, which is something he LOVES to do. He's a Conservative and I used to be way-Liberal, but I lean more toward Libertarian nowadays. Still, he loves to debate ideals with me. I don't know why. I'm guessing it's because his household is full of women, who simply REFUSE to even listen. (That's not always true: Tisha can be very political at times. Year before last she and Dale and I got into a debate in which she her views were more conservative that Dales! Dale and I were on the same side of that debate!!! Almsot NEVER happens!)

After shopping was dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe -- and that was my FIRST TIME to go there! Not the one in San Antonio, specifically, but ANY Hard Rock Cafe!

That was pretty cool.

Then we went to the River Center mall. It was neat, it's this multilevel mall BUILT AROUND THE RIVER!!! So where ever you are in the mall, the windows you're ALWAYS looking out over the river!

I hadn't had coffee all day, so while the ladies shopped for clothes, Dale and I went for coffee -- and more politics talk.

We closed the mall and then hung out at their hotel room for a bit, then I came home and caught up on the last 2 episodes of GILMORE GIRLS -- which were both GREAT!

Then I woke up a little before 5:00 pm today, JUST in time for the weekly Family Dinner w/Mom and Brian.

After that, I went to see FINAL DESTINATION 3... AND IT WAS GREAT!!! The third movie in the franchise is JUST AS GOOD as the first 2!!! Those are some filmmakers who REALLY, LEGITIMATELY CARE about us, their audience!!!

Then after the movie I finally gave into the silent hype... Every time I go to Walmart Stephen King's new novel CELL just keeps yelling at me, "BUY ME! YOU'LL LIKE THIS ONE, BUY ME!!!" Only, because it's Stephen King (hit-and-miss for me) I would rather have the book-on-cd. His longest, least intriguing tomes are still great when you're traveling, or while you play Tomb Raider 3! PLUS, with my ZVUE I can take my books ANYWHERE! (After I convert the discs -- there are 12, 13 hours of play! -- into mp3s, of course.)

So while I was still riding the adrenalin rush from FD3, I stopped by Borders on the way home and grabbed CELL on cd -- unabridged, and 30% off!!!

And while I've been writing this entry, I've also been converting the discs to mp3s. I'm about to start Disc 10.

And that catches you up with my weekend.

Perhaps less exciting for you than it was for me... But this is my blog, so nyah :P