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, April 30

I got up pretty early, when the girlfriend was getting up to go to work. I got my laundry kind of organized, sorted, and ready to go, and went through the paper to see if there were any good jobs available. Of course there were, but I was too lazy to really call or send out resumes. Idiot. I scooped out the litter box, but didn't really do too much else with the morning. I did get caught up on e-mail, at least. Oh, and I tried to get my music keyboard set up again, but it turns out I bought the wrong size power adapter at Radio Shack, so I guess I'll have to go back and get a different one, because who knows when I'm going to manage to dig the one out of my storage unit.

My girlfriend came home for lunch, like usual, and she was in a better mood than she had been recently. She wanted to see if we could do laundry together in the evening, which was fine with me. She also asked me to empty the dishwasher and bake a loaf of the bread mix she had in the cupboard, both of which were also fine with me.

After she went back to work, I emptied the dishwasher, and got the paper recycling brought out to my car, along with the laundry. I started watching a baseball game and nearly forgot all about the bread, which I was kneading as she came home. Once she changed and I had the bread dough rising in a bowl, we headed out into the world. We had to stop at her work first, because she'd forgotten her phone there. That was no problem, and apparently she doesn't mind my driving, even though I think I don't do a really outstanding job on the roads around here. After getting her phone, we headed to the laundromat. It's a good thing that I hadn't decided to go by myself earlier, because the laundry that we'd gone to when I visited last year is closed now, and I didn't know that or where the new one she goes to is located. When we got there, the washers were pretty much all taken, so we decided to head home and try later. She asked if we could go by her bank first, and the recycle place was on the way there. So we stopped there, but it turns out that the recycling dumpster for paper is completely full, and when she called the number on it, it just rang, so the office was probably closed. But we did get to her bank and get out the money so she could pay her rent. So we really went out for two things, and we did accomplish two things, but neither of the things we accomplished were the things we'd originally set out to do. Oh well.

We came back home and I punched down the dough and put it into a loaf pan to rise. I then sat down and watched the tail end of the Canadiens losing to Philly. I remembered to put the bread in the oven after that, and then I sat and watched the Sharks managed to stay alive, just barely, by beating the Stars to force a game 5. Between the games, the girlfriend headed out into the world and paid her rent. She also picked me up the three main newspapers for the area so I can look for more job openings, despite the fact that she seems to think that I have the inside track on the job at her work. Hopefully I'll get that one, but I really do need to start sending out more resumes and such just in case I don't. Can't get work when no one even knows that you're looking, after all.

After the hockey was over, I wandered upstairs, checked my mail to find the usual stuff, nothing much of huge interest. I brought the girlfriend up a slice of bread with butter on one half and peanut butter on the other. Personally, I didn't think the sourdough bread went well with peanut butter, but she seemed to like it. I had a slice myself, but with just butter on it. I read through a few e-mails and then we watched part of the Daily Show before heading off to sleep.