Freedom

Vince's brother was kind enough to offer to take the kids for a few days while they're out of school for mid-winter break. It's odd to be home alone. I like it. Do you know what I just did? I went to 7/11 for some smokes and a juice. You know, because I'm trying to be all healthy and shit how. Anyway, I just WENT. No arguing with anyone. No searching for shoes. No fighting over who gets to lock the front door and unlock the car. No begging to listen to rap music on the drive there. No fighting over who gets to talk to me. Just silence. And a quick trip to the store. I'd forgotten that you can go anywhere in under 30 minutes.

WWYD

Say you order some high priced skin care products and makeup online. You receive the products, but aren't happy with a couple of them, so you send them back. Then you come home a few days later to another package sitting on the front steps. It's the entire shipment again. Do you keep it, or do you send it all back? Or, do you just send back the same two items you didn't like before and hope for a second refund?

Wedding Planning

We've been stepping up the wedding planning activities. For us, this means we've actually mentioned it to each other. Deciding to have a teeny little ceremony, including only a bride, groom, maid of honor, best man and some guy to take the video/photos has made a lot of the work disappear...but there is still work to be done. I decided that one of the first things to do was to finalize WHERE we're going to have the ceremony. A few months back, I called Thornewood Castle. The woman I talked to was pretty helpful. I described what I had in mind, and she told me that for what we wanted to do, we could reserve some area of the grounds or castle for an hour for a price of $500. That seemed decent enough to me, especially for such a beautiful place in need of no decorating on my part, but at that time, I had no idea of when the wedding might take place.

Today I called again, in hopes of making an appointment to see the place and then reserve our time. But no. The cum drunk whore that I talked to today says that they do NOT reserve anything at the castle for that length of time. She says that if I want to film a wedding there, I have to pay for the full 6 hours, as well as all the chairs and tables for the 100 guest wedding party...you know, the ones who won't be in attendance. And the full 6 hours? $4,500 on a Saturday. Only $3,500 on Sunday, though. Who the hell decided that weddings should be expensive? The court house route is looking more and more attractive with every day that passes.

Rustic

This weekend, we went to a rustic cabin up in the mountains. Beautiful scenery, lots of pretty snow, a river/creek running behind the cabin. Very nice. Except for the whole bit about "no running water" and "generator provided electricity." And did I mention the Honey Bucket in the yard? The ever-so-close-to-overflowing Honey Bucket? Oh, and the snow? Which means that it was really cold out in the Honey Bucket?

Actually, it was an enjoyable trip. Lots of laziness and even more drunkeness. And a few minor injuries. None of which happened to me, so even those were enjoyable. To me.

Also, there was a potato gun. Maybe not so much of a gun as a cannon. This thing was HUGE and could shoot a potato pretty freaking far. When I first heard them talking about shooting the potato gun later, I had an image in my mind of one of those tiny little guns that you see in the toy department at Fred Meyer. I thought it was odd that the guys were getting so excited about a crap toy like that...but then I remembered how long the fart machine kept these guys entertained, so it sorta made sense. The potato gun was not tiny. It was mad out of PVC pipe and used Aqua Net as the ignition source. I really wish I'd taken a camera. I'd like to have gotten a picture of the potato gun...as well as the liquor storage area. Which was a drift of snow/ice roughly 3 feet high that covered most of the deck area.