Friday night was one of the more interesting nights in recent memory. After work I stopped by Flathead Industries to see what kind of furniture they had and left feeling ambivalent about the selection. From there I shot over to Verizon to get a firmware update and new battery for my 2006-era Motorola V325, an oldie but a goodie. (I had been using a Samsung SCH-i760 smartphone but didn’t need the PDA functionality anymore. Plus, that thing took forever to answer calls. I’d hear an incoming call ring in, press the green button to receive it, and wait 3-4 seconds before it would actually pick up.) ANYway…tangent alert.
While waiting for the clueless Verizon technicians to update the phone’s firmware, I paid a visit to Target to see what their prices on furniture are like, and to potentially pick up some household items I need. Well, I walked out empty-handed. $40 for a trash can. A trash can! Ridiculous. I’ll stick to the tried and true leaving-piles-of-rotting-food-and-sticky-paper-towels-all-over-the-floor method, thanks. Returning to Verizon, I spent another 20 minutes in line before getting the phone back. At least the battery life is good now 
Feeling less than productive by this point, I decided to get a haircut. Easy as pie. Feeling pounds lighter, I headed home to shower out the millions of tiny pieces of hair sitting all over my head, ears, forehead, eyebrows, down the back of my shirt, etc. Once things were cleaned up I drove back to Kalispell to meet Cailey at CityBrew for some coffee and good ol’ fashioned computer fixing. Accomplishing that, we thought it would be fun to see a movie. One small problem: It was not 9:20, like her laptop suggested. It was 10:20 which means the theater had no more showings for the night. Time for plan B.
We drove over to Cailey’s old roommate’s place where I met a few interesting folks. Now, I say interesting, when what I really mean is crazy. The good kind. For the next 6 hours, we all playfully harassed each other, ruthlessly at times, until one by one we all succumbed to the insidious force known as being too f’ing tired. Driving back along highway 2 at 4:something in the morning was an uneventful yet predictably harrowing experience. I wasn’t exactly sleepy, but tired enough to the point where I had tunnel vision and zoned out for miles at a time. Upon arriving home I was forced to make an executive decision based on the fact that I knew I had to be back in Kalispell at 7AM to help someone move. If I went to bed now, at around 4:45, I’d be hitting the deep sleep cycle right around the time I needed to wake up. No good. So instead, I chowed down on some just-now-thawed shrimp cocktail, checked my email, and forced myself to stay awake just a bit longer. At 6AM I gave in and fell asleep just long enough to call it a cat nap.
Feeling surprisingly refreshed, I hopped in the car and sped to IHOP to meet Nick for breakfast. Talk about a letdown. Unaware of the cruel joke the chef was about to play on me, I gleefully ordered the Big Steak Omelette. What arrived at my table was more like the Big Fake Omelette. Four little pieces of steak sitting on top of the omelette, another two or three tucked inside. Lame. Too hungry to make a big deal out of it, I wolfed it down and accompanied Nick to Starbucks to pick up coffee for himself and our third member of the moving party, Sabriand. Sabriand arrived with a cup of coffee in hand, but no matter. The more caffeine for these two, the better. Abstaining from the chemical concoction, I spent the next 6 hours helping move Tim Goff into his new house. He has no relation to me that I’m aware of, and just moved up here from Texas. He also works at Semitool as I do. Weird. A 26′ U-Haul truck load and a half later, we finished up and I drove home in a total daze. At one point I caught my eyes crossing and forced myself to snap out of it. An attempt at a nap and a little food later, I caught up with Cailey again at the theater to finish Plan A from the night before. We chose to see Ghost Town which was a really great movie, and a breath of fresh air in terms of its message. Go see it. Realizing afterward that I’d basically only eaten some shrimp cocktail, an omelette and a slice of rice bread in the last whole day, I gave in to storming Finnegan’s with cohort Cailey and put away some seriously greasy food. Sometimes grease is good. By this point it was around 1AM and I couldn’t fight off the need for sleep any longer, and drove back home for the third time in 24 hours. This time I went straight to bed. Waking up feeling somehow more tired than before, I kicked myself in the rear end and went to church, knowing I was on the schedule for the 2nd service’s video ministry team. (I would’ve gone anyway, but extra motivation doesn’t hurt :-P .)
After the service, which shamefully was mostly a blur due to my semi-concious state, a large group of us began preparing to go to Mackenzie River Pizza Company for Sabriand’s birthday. A quick rendezvous at Rosauer’s netted us a nice birthday cake with some personalized frosty-writing on it, plus enough candles to make him feel old. Oh wait, that’s his real age. Mission accomplished. Sabriand had predicted a likely attendance of 12 or more at his birthday gathering, but the final tally by my count was 28. One can imagine the possible pitfalls of such a large party at a moderately sized restaurant, and we were no exception. For the first hour, nothing came. No drinks, no appetizers, no setups or even napkins. Sensing the mood beginning to sour, Sabriand came to the rescue and had some polite but evidently effective choice words with the wait staff. Within minutes, appetizers and drinks were streaming out of the kitchen and onto our tables. Soon enough all the orders had been filled and the only sounds to be heard were mmm’s and remarks of the food’s quality which, I have to admit, was very good. At the 3 hour mark, the last of us got into our cars and scattered.
Erroneously thinking that the current downpour of rain would discourage outings, I went to Costo to do my bulk grocery shopping for the month. Costco was, for Montana standards, totally packed. I didn’t let that get in my way, however. Weaving in and out of aisles and around slowpokes with their infernal carts is something of a hobby of mine. In fact, it’s one of the shortest Costco trips I’ve ever had, so I guess at some level the rain logic was sound. On the way home I had a conversation with an old friend from California and caught up for awhile. Turns out that her computer was acting up and I’m just the person to fix it, right? Right. The evening was spent with me remotely connected to the computer removing trojans/spyware, doing general cleanup, and conversing further with its owner.
All told, it was a great weekend. Next time, though, I’ll try to pay a little more attention to sleep.
Seeing as I’ve tried my fair share of alternative ice cream products such as Rice Dream, So Delicious, its arch-nemesis Soy Delicious, and other wannabes with mostly negative results, I figured I’d snatch their “Mint Galactica” flavor (essentially Mint Chocolate Chip which is basically my favorite ice cream flavor, after all) and give it a whirl. Onward to the review:
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