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So here’s what we’ve got coming up in the next month or so for me:

• Tonight (7/12) I have to go try and track down a pencil skirt and/or blouse to pull together a “Sexy Librarian” outfit for the show this Friday (see below).
• Tomorrow (7/13) night I have rehearsal for the show on Friday (Grotesque Burlesque).
• Wednesday (7/14) night is Game night.
• Thursday (7/15) night is the final dress rehearsal for Grotesque Burlesque. We also have a softball game, but I’ll have to miss it – since I’m kinda in charge of the stage hands for the show – I really can’t miss rehearsal.
• Friday (7/16) is Grotesque Burlesque, pretty much from the time I leave work until 1 or 2 in the morning.
• Saturday (7/17) Phlome and I need to get an early-ish start and head up to OK for his 20 year HS reunion.
• Sunday (7/18) after more reunion activities and visiting family we’ll head back home.
• Monday (7/19) morning I drive down to Austin for a terribly exciting “TCEQ Training Providers Seminar” which will run through Wednesday afternoon.
• Thursday (7/22) we have a double header – and hopefully our last night of softball for the season.
• Friday (7/23) night we’ll make a short trip out to the club, come home earlier than usual and get ready for Saturday morning.
• Saturday (7/24) we’ll head South to Texas City, where we’ll spend the evening before our cruise
• Sunday (7/25) drive 20 minutes into Galveston and board the boat
  • Where we’ll be until Saturday the 21^st – WHOO HOOOOOOO!
• Then the next Friday (8/6) I have another show at the Lakewood
• I get to go back to Austin on Friday the 13^th – not sure if I’m going down Thursday or Friday yet – or if I’m coming back Friday or Saturday
• Then we’re hosting our Christmas in July in August (aka A very Beaver Christmas) on August 14^th
• Family reunion August 20 – 22
• Then a show at Excuses: Pantheon II – Ancient Boogaloo! In late August.

It doesn’t slow down a whole lot after that – in September I have more shows, at least one concert and a wedding. By then it’ll be time to start getting ready for Halloween, then the Holidays. This year is practically over already. *sigh*

I’ve been feeling at a loss for my blog topics lately. So this time I’ll just recount the weekend then plan out the week.

Friday I was supposed to go to a birthday party of a friend that was to include dinner, lesbian bar, and a stripper. By about 7 pm I had decided to flake. I was tired, and had a lot more planned for the weekend. Plus my stomach hasn’t exactly been cooperating with me much lately. I feel like I suffer from a stomach ache at least briefly almost every day. Sometimes it goes on longer. So instead, Phlome and the Squid rented 2012, we ate popcorn and stared in awe at the indestructibility of limos, RVs, single engine jets, and John Cusack.

Saturday Phlome and the Squid ran errands while I did a couple loads of laundry and finished watching the Firefly series (again). Then Saturday night we went to another friend’s birthday party at Excuses with intentions of staying out long enough to get in line to watch the Irving/Dallas stadium implosion. We stayed up late enough, but when we drove by the stadium, we decided that it wasn’t worth waiting in line for a chance to get in, when home and a warm comfy bed were so nearby. Yeah folks – we’re real party animals.

Sunday was our last softball practice of the season, followed by linner (lunch/dinner) at pizza hut. Then I watched Serenity. I am now well prepped for our Serenity role playing game nights out at zero/elanna’s starting next week. We had planned to go see Clash of the Titans, but alas it will have to wait for another weekend.

This week is looking to be pretty busy:

Tonight and Wednesday I have Lollies Rehearsal from 7:30 – 10

Thursday is our last scheduled season game, except for one rainout make-up game scheduled in two weeks. We really need to win this game. If we can win out the last two games we make it into the finals. Which I think just means we get a free t-shirt.

Friday night is the first night of the Lollies shows for April at the Pocket Sandwich Theater. Before the show we may take the Squid out for dinner to celebrate her new drivers license.

Saturday we’re going with a good size group of friends to Scarborough Faire. Then Saturday night I have the 2^nd night of the Lollies at the Pocket.

I hope I don’t have anything going on Sunday other than a possible viewing of Clash of the Titans. I’d really like to just rest on Sunday. Saturday’s gonna be a long day.

My dad came up from Houston for father’s day weekend.  I took him out to dinner to celebrate at Texas de Brazil.  He seemed adequately impressed, though obviously not used to eating American sized portions (Texas American no less).  He only got 1 of each available meat option (actually only the red meat, he skipped the sausage and chicken options).

This was the first Father’s day I’ve spent with my dad in 22 years.  Since Phlome was up north spending fathers’ day with his daughter, it was just me and dear ol’ dad.  Lots of long silences.  We played some cards, watched a movie, and tried our best to keep conversation going.  Problem is, I don’t pay much attention to Politics or the war.  I know it’s there, I know I should pay more attention, but I just don’t.  We talked about family, and dogs, and travel.  He went off a bit on immigration and talked about national ID cards.  I’m pretty sure my dad is a Republican.  I’m still coming to terms with that.

So besides spending quality time with my dad, I did some house cleaning and suffered through some shoulder pain.  I may have over done it on chest and shoulder day w/ the trainer last week.  Then to make things worse, I slept wrong on it.  So I got some muscle relaxers.  Those and the Bed-Gay patches worked wonders.  Though I may need them again tonight.  Yesterday was abs and back.  I think Thursday will b legs again.  I hate leg day. 

I also got my diploma in the mail.  I pretty much decided via lack of action on my part, not to go to my graduation ceremony which is this Saturday.  I’m just kinda not feeling the love.  The only thing that I really wanted to go there for was the free champagne.  And that’s just sad, given that I’m not a huge fan of champagne to begin with.  I love having it to celebrate with, it’s all sorts of fun with it’s golden bubbliness.  But after 2 glasses, I’m ready for something less fizzy or more potent.  Not to mention that time I got sick off of too much champagne at a friends wedding.  Champagne hangover is worse than death.

Ok, so eventually I do want to have some sort of celebration.  Mom suggested something on the cruise.  Sounds like a plan.  Perhaps we can pick a night on the cruise to celebrate.  I’ll think on that later.  For now, I had better get back to work.

I think this weekend went very well.  I managed to pull off a surprise party for Phlome thanks to the help of some of our very good friends.  Several people had to send their regrets due to unforseen circimstances or other things getting in the way.  They were missed, but we soldiered on without them.  I almost blew the surprise with some carelessness on my part, and rather annoyed phlome quite a bit in the process.  Though I think he’s forgiven me now.  Here’s some pics I took w/ the new camera phone (seems we all forgot to bring a real camera.)

Here’s a so-so pic of the cake I got him:

The petite fours from society bakery (as was the cake above).  You can kind of tell from this angle that the cake was designed to look lopsided.

The cookies Reptile and I made.  That is Mrs. Reptile’s armadillo standing in for the doormouse:

The unbirthday boy himself:

I got my new phone yesterday. I love it.

I visited my dad down in Houston this past weekend.  He’s doing well.  His cousin has a small beach house down in Port O’connor - an unincorporated area on the coast, about 3 hours south of Houston.

So,  my 9:20 flight out of Dallas didn’t leave Dallas until 11:20, and I didn’t get to tulsa until 12:15.  Turns out the plane I was on had a rounte of Dallas > Houston > Midland > Dallas > Tulsa.  The storms Thursday night in Houston delayed the flight to Midland, thereby delaying the flight to dallas, and my flight to Tulsa.  The flight left Midland about the time I was supposed to be landing in Tulsa.  It was a long night.

However, there is some good news from the weekend.  My grandfather is back home, and out of the hospital, his lungs are doing as well as they can.  No results as of this afternoon as to the 2nd biopsy they had to do, since they royally fuXX0red the first one.  I sersiously think my grandfather has a suit on his hands.  But we’re not an overly litegious family.  Puncturing a hole in your lung on accident, instead of taking a biopsy of a tumor is evidently just a minor incident.

My dad is responding very well to his first round of treatment his white blood cell counts are back to normal.  He’ll do it again at the end of the month.  My hope is to go visit him in a couple of weeks, or mid June.  I’ll talk to him this week and find out exactly when.

I am heading up to Tulsa to see the fam this weekend.  I’m flying out of Love tonight.  It’ll be the first time I’ve flown SW as far as I can remember.  I hear nothing but good things.  And this time when I fly, I won’t have sinus congestion like I did a few weeks back on my trip to Tampa.

The plan is to get something done to my hair (finally) on friday afternoon since nothing’s really going on until mom gets off work.  Unless my grandfather is out of the hospital, I imagine we’ll spend a good chuck on the weekend up there with him.  There are rumors of a cookout, but our cookouts generally only consist of burned hotdogs and hamburgers, so I’m not exactly thrilled about it.  Anyway, everyone have a nice weekend.

This weekend we are going up to see my great grandmother and celebreate her 100th birthday. She won’t actually be 100 until Tuesday, but the fam is all getting together this weekend.

2007
February 13, 2007: Mildred Pearl Peggy Hamilton Holland celebrates her 100th birthday in Guthrie, Oklahoma.

For the most part we had a pretty good weekend. Cleaned the house and took it easy Friday - did some more cleaning before poker night on Saturday. Then I came in 3rd in the poker tourny, Phlome came in first, so we all went out after the poker party.

Sunday Phlome and I blew our wad at Lowes, and got most of what we need for our soon to be garden.
What are we hoping to expect in the next coming months?
Strawberries
tomatoes (2 kinds)
bell peppers
chili peppers
mint
basil
watermelon
cantaloup
Mesclun Lettuce

Then we got a call from Phlome’s mom, letting us know that the hotel where we have blocked off rooms for our out of town guests is telling people we have no rooms available, and that we only had 2 in the block and they’re already taken by my cousin.
I’d already been through this with them once a few weeks ago, when I was told I had to book all of my rooms by February 28th - which is just plain dumb. The contract I signed says cancel by 2/28, and all rooms must be booked by 3/17, or the rooms will be released.
After getting very stern with Wayne on the phone, who informed me there was nothing he could do, and I would have to wait til Monday to speak with a manager, Phlome and I drove to the hotel ourselves, and made Wayne call the manager. Turns out their system releases all reservations if there is no activity for 2 weeks. Then wtf is the point of booking in advance if they’re just going to drop it!? We made reservations 2 months in advance to ensure we would have rooms. And guess what. They had the rooms available! They lied to us and our guests saying there were no rooms available, even booking one of our guest in a much more expensive room because of the lack of availablity.
The manager was able to tell Wayne what he needed to be told in order to get our rooms. So now, we do have available rooms, in case you were wondering.
But I think I’m probably through with AmeriSuites now. If it weren’t going to be so difficult to contact all of our guests to tell them of the change, I would have cancelled altogether and gone with the HoJo near the rehearsal dinner restaurant.

Ok - sorry I got a little carried away with my rant there. It’s so terribly frustrating. I’ve been trying my best to make things as simple as possible so I won’t stress out over this wedding, but so often I feel like I’m doing a lot of it on my own. Phlome has helped out tons, and there’s no way I could have made it this far without him, but still, I feel like most of it falls on my shoulders.
My bridal party and family are all out of town, my wedding consultant failed me miserably, and I just feel lost most of the time, like I still dont’ have a grasp on what needs to be done. I’m constantly making lists and rechecking them, making new ones, comparing them to theknot and other websites, running through them in my head, but I alwasy feel like I’m forgetting something.
I think my failed weddng consultant is the biggest disappointment. I really just want somebody who “knows” whats going on. In the end it all falls on me. I’m the only one who knows what I want, and the only one who can ensure it will happen. I just feel an impending disappointment drawing near.

arg - ok seriously done.

Ok just some randomeness because it’s been too long sense I’ve blogged.
My excuse is laziness.

1) Barley likes to chew on corners. Any corners. The last couple of days we have had the windows in our room open because it’s nice outside, but too warm upstairs in our house. The dogs love this. Especially Barley. Unfortunatly my hope-chest sits right next to the windows, and when Barley got bored (ie, not enough going on outside) he decided to gnaw on the corner of my hope-chest. He has also chewed on the corners of our hottub, the corners of the steps to our deck, and the corner of one of the laundry baskets.

2) Vegas is exhausting and expensive. That’s pretty much the extent of my impression of Vegas. Though I think it deserves another chance. Waking up at 4:30 Vegas time each day, and staying up til midnight or later Wed. Thurs and Fri, made for a somewhat cranky Ninsi on the weekend.
But I did make it on the VooDoo Lounge website. Scroll down a bit, and there’s me with my co-workers (4th one down).

3) Given the opportunity to get out of the backyard, both dogs will take you up on it. But they won’t go too far. According to the neighbors both dogs were out most of the weekend. But when we got to the house around 4 (and discovered they were gone) I walked to the end of the block and saw Luna. I called her, and she came bounding towards me. Barley was right behind her coming around the corner of one of the houses. Luna was so excited she jumped up high enough for Barley to run under her, and for her to practically land on top of him. She probably got a good 3 - 3.5 feet off the ground. I think they spent most of the weekend with the white Samoyed that hangs out in the neighborhood. He’s really a sweet dog, and I wouldn’t mind at all if Barley and Luna made friends with him.

4) UPDATED for Phlome - Lately we’ve been noticing a lot of trash in our backyard. I’ve been kinda blaming it on the contstruction guys next door - but that house is built now. So then I thought maybe the crazy wind was blowing stuff into our backyard. But then there was the PVC pipe - well another chew toy for Barley. But when we got hoem from the weekend, there was A LOT. So I started throwing the cans of beans over the fence to where the construction workers were working. Then I started picking up the trash. A lot of mail. Hmmm, maybe barley got into the recycle bin while we were gone? No, because neither of us goes by Manuel Carlos. And you know what Mr. Carlos, we also don’t live at your address!!!! But the broken coke glass is what really pissed me off. Who the hell throws broken glass into someone elses backyard!? Maybe someone who doesn’t like dogs. Maybe someone who owns a rabbit, which they don’t keep caged, and runs around in our front yard. Maybe someone who called Animal Control on our dogs when they didn’t do a damn thing wrong!?!?!? I think maybe it’s about time for a rabbit dinner. So we threw their broken glass back into their back yard, and gathered up all their mail and trash (except for the empty cans of beans which were already thrown over the fence) and put it back on their front porch. If we see it again, we’re going to call the city and have them cited for littering. Our other neighber suggested we do this, letting us know that it’s a $300 fine.

Ok - that’s about all I’ve got.