The daily rundown, May 2

We slept in a little late this morning because the girlfriend was working the late shift and didn't have to leave until almost eleven. When I finally did get up, I fed the little bratling before checking the mail and such. I got replies back from the dance rock band guy and from the other guitarist I'd written to. The band is going to get together Saturday at 6, which should be an interesting drive if nothing else, as they're in the east part of Dallas, an area that even the girlfriend isn't all that familiar with. I need to call the guitarist and see where he's at and when would be a good time to get together. Haven't heard back from Bryan, the other guitarist, for a week or so, so I'm not sure what's up with him. He did say he was on call for a week, but I think that should be over by now. I'll have to send him off a message and find out what's up.

I tried calling the IRS office in Dallas to find out about my bonus payment thing, which they'll probably try to direct deposit but won't be able to because I closed that account. Unfortunately, the local office doesn't have anything over the phone but a recording, and I didn't want to waste all of my minutes waiting on hold with the 800 number, which I think is national. I guess I'll either get it when they mail it or else I won't get it at all. Damn it. I should run down to the Farmer's Branch IRS office, but I've been having a hard enough time getting myself motivated to do anything at all, let alone drive there just to ask a stupid question that they probably won't be able to answer for me anyway.

I spent most of the remainder of the morning and early afternoon alternately reading e-mails and doing a few other very minor little things around the place. But I definitely should have gone out and at least got the laundry done. The girlfriend says she has almost nothing to wear, and I'm getting pretty close to that same situation myself. Unfortunately, I was too lazy to do so, damn it.

The girlfriend called from work and asked if I could go to the theater and pick up four tickets for the last showing of Iron Man. I told her I would, but by the time I was getting ready to leave, Cory came home. I told him that I needed to go do that, but that I wasn't sure where the theater was exactly, so he offered to drive and get the tickets for himself and Danielle, leaving me to just pay for mine and the girlfriend's, which was nice. We drove up to the theater, which isn't very far away, and bought our four tickets for the 10 PM show. Tickets were only $5.00 a pop, which is pretty nice.

After we'd purchased the tickets, Cory said that he was pretty hungry, so we headed down to Sweetwater for some lunch, or dinner, or whatever you'd call it. I guess Friday is corned beef and cabbage night there, so he had that and I had the blackened cheeseburger and fries. We talked about fishing and the fact that there are no tall buildings in Medford and a few other oddball things while we ate. The service today was much better than it was when the girlfriend and I went there, and apparently it was worlds better than the last time she and some other friends went. She described the waitress that time as generating Doppler effect as she flew by. We had the same waitress a different time and she seemed to do all right, but I'm happy that we had a different waiter and he was quite prompt and efficient this time around.

During our meal, Cory got a call which was evidently from his sister, Ashley, and she was going to be able to join us for the movie, so we had to go back up to the theater and get another ticket for her. That done, we headed back to home. Cory went back into his room to do whatever he does there, and I plunked my butt down in front of the tube and started watching a baseball game. When the girlfriend got home from work, that was pretty much what I was still doing. She did the late shift, so we had to pretty much head on out the door pretty shortly after she got home. Danielle got here a little while before we left, and we all bundled into Danielle's car for the ride to the theater. Ashley was going to meet us there, since she had to drive in from out of town. I'm not sure where she lives exactly, but it can't be all that terribly far away for her to come up here to take in a movie, but evidently it's at least a couple hours' drive.

She did get there before the show actually started, and we actually managed to get seats that were all adjacent, which was kind of nice. Some of the people standing outside expected that we'd have a hard time finding four seats in a row, but we got there and got seated early enough that it wasn't even an issue. There were a lot of different places we could have planted ourselves, but we took a spot about two-thirds of the way back in the theater and on the right hand side. Cory had mentioned before that he didn't really like the sound system at that theater, but it sounded just fine to me. Of course, I also am pretty easygoing when it comes to details like that, so who's to say... The seats at the theater have a nice little bar shelf in front of them, and they have waitstaff wander through before the movie starts, taking orders for a nice variety of dishes and drinks. Of course, because they can't serve hard liquor, the drinks are a little different than they would be at a bar. I ordered something called the Blue Thing, which was their combination of tequila and blue curacao, maybe with something else added, I don't recall. Sort of a blue margarita type thing, served in a margarita glass with salt on the rim and all of that good stuff. Fortunately also served with a straw, because I really don't like putting my mouth around a rimful of salt. The girlfriend warned me that the blue thing was usually pretty sour, but I didn't find it to be too bad. Definitely a bit of a citrus bite to it, but at this point, having had nothing else at the Movie Tavern, that will be my drink of choice. Later, I'll try some other stuff, but so far it's the front-runner.

The movie itself was pretty entertaining. I'm not usually a big one for movies based on comic books and such, and I'm not incredibly familiar with that particular story, but it kept me amused for the couple of hours that I was there. The company was also pretty fun, which helped a lot. It's going to be nice being able to go to movies with other people now, instead of going by myself like I did in Oregon, which meant that I rarely went at all. I have the feeling that I'll probably be attending at least one, probably two or three, movies per month now that I'm down here. I'm not going to go into a big review of the movie, because it's already been done all over the web. Suffice to say it was worth the cost of the ticket, and I can't really ask for too much more than that.

After the movie was over, we returned to the house and sat around and had a few more drinks and talked about various things. Just general party chit-chat for the most part, plus talking about the movie and the fact that there will probably be a sequel, judging from the little ending part that we waited around to see. Danielle went home after a while, probably at about one in the morning, but Ashley stayed the night on the couch downstairs. The girlfriend and I crashed out fairly late, but that was all right because we didn't have too much that we needed to do in the morning, and she didn't have to go to work until the late shift...

The daily rundown, May 1

I got up fairly early again. I fed the little bratling and then browsed through some of the e-mail backlog. I wrote back to the guy from the dance band, telling him I might be out of the area tomorrow, but would be back for the weekend. I also wrote to another guy who I'd contacted before leaving Oregon. He is a drummer who was seeking musicians. Unfortunately, he replied and said that he was really mostly looking for a band which needed a drummer, not to start a new band, so I told him that I'd keep his address and if I got into a band situation and we needed a drummer, I'd drop him a line. I also sent off a note to another one of the earlier musicians I'd talked to, a guitarist seeking others to jam with, but I haven't heard back from him yet. He probably has a job or something.

I checked through some of the papers for jobs, but, once again, I haven't applied to any of them yet. Most of the morning was e-mailing the musicians and looking through the papers. I went downstairs and watched a baseball game around noon or so. The girlfriend came home for lunch, but she wasn't in a really great mood and went upstairs to have some alone time while I sat and watched more of the game. Unfortunately, the rest of the afternoon and the evening were very uneventful and I didn't really get very much of anything done. Watched some hockey, got a little more caught up on my e-mail, but that's just about the extent of things. I was going to go do the laundry, again, but wound up just being pretty much lazy for most of the day and didn't really accomplish anything useful that I was supposed to do. The girlfriend, Cory (the roommate), and I decided to go watch Iron Man at the theater they have here in town on Friday evening. It's called the Move Tavern, and they evidently serve beer and such there. No hard liquor, but they apparently do have some flavored alcohols that taste something like real booze. Hopefully it will be a decent movie and we'll all have a fun time. Danielle (the friend who came to the Jazz Festival with us) is probably going to be there, too, and I might even get the chance to meet Ashley, who is Cory's sister and a friend of the girlfriend.

After the hockey and a few drinks on my part, the girlfriend and I wandered off to bed, trying to make it at least something of an early night...