Late Night with Esther

Around 9:40, Esther (friend from Cornell, spent significant time in Israel, now back home in MD), IMed me, not having the best of days. We chatted for a while, and I decided to go visit and hang out for a while. At 10:40 I left (to go back to Rockville, despite R.E.M.'s best advice), had a grand old time--we can really just hang out for hours, it's great. Got back a bit after 2, now IMing the coolest girl I know in Oakdale, and in the morning I suppose I'm being a Good Brother and joining the 'rents on a trip to Winchester to help Shauna pack up and come home from college for the summer. Dammit, I should get to sleep in on my day off! :P

A rainy Saturday

Up too early--9 or 10am, on a Saturday! Joined the 'rents for the drive out to Winchester to help Shauna back up and get outta town (first year of college over).. the lot of us plus Jen (her roommate) ate Chinese at Dorothy's Kitchen in Martin's, the psuedo-Wegmans of Virginia. :) Shauna and I dropped Jen off, and somehow still managed to beat the 'rents back to Manassas, without ever seeing them on the same route. Helped unpack Shauna's stuff--there's now -two- kids' worth of crap piled about the public areas of the house! (Also, I got a water bottle from Shauna--formerly holding Trek 'Optimized Performance Beverage', it's a nifty hard plastic bottle with a ring built into the cap and a carabiner attached. :)

Sorted/stored a backlog of receipts, which had the side-effect of neatening up around my computer, and later dad/Shauna/I will all go Mother's Day shopping, because we're all terrible procrastinators. :) (Should also balance a couple checkbooks, and clean my bird's cage--even got some cleaner in a bottle specially designed for the task!) (Update, 6:18pm: Cleaned! Update, 7:28pm: Balanced! Only off by $0.50 after two months, decided to just write that off rather then check through two months of math.)

Steph/Matt/Brendan are here at the moment, to show mom that Brendan is, in fact, still alive--he was pretty sick yesterday--but she's at Wal*Mart, so they're hanging around watching some kids movie with Brendan. (Excitement from yesterday--Steph had put Brendan in his car seat and was walking around to the driver's side, when the car spontaneously locked itself, repeatedly--malfunction in the auto-lock-at-speed feature, apparently--and she had to call Matt to abort his errands, go home and get the other key. Fortunately, it wasn't hot out, or a window probably would've been broken instead.)

And despite the rain and warmth, it's not too bad outside. Also, I'm finally listening to the new music Shauna gave me a couple weeks ago--Béla Fleck, Ben Folds, AVP, Badly Drawn Boy, Blur, BT, Coldplay, Daft Punk, Dave Matthews, Noel Gallagher/Chemical Brothers, Radiohead, the Smiths, the Stone Roses, Thinking Out Loud, Tom McRae, The Cure, 2501, Covenant, and a few soundtrack songs/quotes. Lazy, me. :)

Nothing like the last minute..

Between 8 and 9pm this evening, I, Shauna, and Dad all found Mother's Day gifts for Steph and Mom. Then we wandered into Sears and drooled over power tools. :)

Tomorrow's plans: Brunch (mom, dad, Shauna, me, Steph, Matt, Brendan, possibly others from his side, don't know), then I work 12-8ish (inconvenient, eh?) and then maybe dinner out too. And maybe, hopefully, hanging out with Phill while he's still in town. Possibly late-night, it's happened before. :)