But on Friday the 6th, we went over to Wes' church for his open house. We hung out in the church, Wes got a chinese meat cleaver from his Aunt for a present. He played his new electric guitar w/pedal upstairs in the actual church area for us. William got there. We wrote on his little board thing ont he wall. I wrote that he should come over here to play LAN games more. :P I think Keith was working. Several of us played a lot of ping pong, then we played 500 outside with a little dodgeball I had brought. It ended at 8PM, but we stayed untila bout 8:40, then everyone dispersed.
I came back here to see if Mom and Dad were home, but they weren't so I left again and went to Wes' and got there around 9:30 I think. Wes had flares to play with, and we had a small bonfire. We had fun running up the side of Wes' "barn" for a bit, and laughed at anyone who didn't make it up the side and ontot he top. :P Then I talked everyone into playing Ultimate Frisbee... one end-zone was the road. :D But I don't think any of us are is very good shape right now, and before long, none of us felt like running much more. :P My team was William, Chris, Wes, and myself. THe other team was Karl, Keith, Jason, and Ben. The outcome of the game is questionable, and resulted in the frisbee being broken into several pieces. :D
After that William left for a party elsewhere. We loaded up Wes' computer. Karl already had his in his car. Keith already had his here at our house. Ben left to go to his house to get a computer and took Jason along so Jason could show him the way back to our house. Then everyone met here at our house so we could play LAN games. It took forever to get AQ2 installed on everyone's computers, and Chris and Jason ended up leaving. The rest of us played a bunch of AQ2 on the LAN here. Eventually Mom made us quit playing and send people home. I took Wes home. Keith just stayed the night, and him, Nate, and I played more AQ2, and Diablo 2 until I went to bed around 5AM, then Nate and Keith still played. Keith just stayed up all night, and got me back up I think around 9:30AM. :D
Had breakfast, played some more AQ2 with Keith, then he left to go home and change before Tony's Open House. Went over to Tony's and goofed off for a while. Mom and Dad drove, and we took Wes along with us. Talked to everyone that had been at our house the night before. :P Jenni threw mints at people. Keith messed with the xbox. Felpaush called Tony and asked if he wanted to work... during his open house. :P Kicked some balls around. Eventually, we left to head to Battle Creek for William's Open House.
Mom and Dad argued all the way there about birthdays and such. It was annoying. Got to William's relatives' house... or I thinkt hey were his relatives, he'd never been there before himself. Watched him play cards with his sister. Walked around and looked at stuff. I was full from Tony's so I didn't eat anything. Didn't really know anyone there, so we left after not too long, poor William didn't really know any of the guests either, just his Mom, Step-Dad, and half-brother. :P Drove back home, with more M&D arguing, which extended to me being told we weren't celebrating my birthday this year. After we dropped Wes back off at home, came home ourselves. I cleaned out our little barn rather than be inside and listen to it still going on, and then I cleaned out most of the garage too in preparation of Nate's Open House. I don't remember if I did anything else that night. Several nights we went into Charlotte to bug Keith at BK and get free food. :P
The next day was Beth's open house, so we to her grandma's for that. Lots of good food there. But now that I think about it, I really liked Wes' food too. :P Anyway, Beth showed us her horse, and I ate a bunch. Eventually, we left there, and M&D and I left for Meijer's to do some shopping. Looked for presents for Nicole's birthday. Got some random stuff. Then went to Wal-Mart for the same reasons. It started downpouring when we were still at Meijer's. Then we went to Blockbuster, and rented a movie in bro's name without any ID or verfication that we were who we said we were... way to go Blockbuster! I wonder how many people just permanently steal movies and games that way. Movie was Imposter with Gary Sinise... was decent I thought. Not sure what else we did that night.
No idea what happened on the 9th or 10th. Probably played games with Keith, did more work for bro's open house, etc.
On the night of the 10th, we went to bug Keith at BK again, Jason and Jenni were there already, so Nate, Wes, and I hung out in the close dining room with them for a bit. Then we left to go shopping for sis' birthday. Nate and I got her a 64M SD Memory card for her camera that mom and dad got her. It was well past 11 by then and Keith had left BK, and was gonna be at Wes' house so we ran back there. Keith and Nate had flares so we took a walk in the woods. Then just played with the flares up near the house (see pictures), and smoke bombs and other such things. Wes made some little pizzas he bought at Wal-Mart and we each got a quarter of each one. Then we decided to ride bikes, so around 12:50AM on the 11th, we rode into town on Wes' various bikes at his house. Olivet is extremely dead at 1:05AM... actually, it's dead anytime after 10PM generally... but especially at 1AM. So we rode around town, tried to see if Sara was up but couldn't tell. So we rode out the other side of town to Ben's house to make him get his bike out. His had flat tires though and it started raining so we gave that up and went inside. His parents must be very deep sleepers or very lenient. :P Nate and Keith played X-Box while Wes, Ben, and I messed around on his computer. Looked at a ton of sites, rated pictures on buddypic.com, etc. Eventually, we packed up and started biking back to Wes'. I think it was about 2:45AM by then because I left and got home before 3AM Like Mom had wanted. Then realized i'd left my digital camera on Wes' porch when we left to ride bikes, and that it had been out when it rained... oops. SO I ran back over, grabbed it, found out it was fine, and went home again.
Not sure on these other days, probably played mroe games with Keith. I think on the evening of THursday the 12th, Mom, Dad, and I went into Marshall for dinner. Ate at the Stagecoach Inn which was a nice little place downtown. Mmm, chicken finger, waffle fries, etc. :D Talked about corporate hackers when mom and dad brought it up. :P After dinner, we went down to K-Mart and got various supplies for Nate's open house. Our cashier girl, Shan, was nice and pretty cute. I was told to go back there and ask her out. :P She wished me a belated happy birthday. *pause*
On the 9th I remember what I did... I mowed the lawn all by myself for 2.5 hours while singing under my breath, "Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday Dear Rick, You Missed a Spot Over There..." repeatedly. And after that was done, I got the priviledge of running to the dump with the truck to get rid of the trash. It was a a grand birthday. At 5:46PM I went out on the front porch and talked to mom. Told her to look at her watch and she tells me "It's quarter to 6", so I told her to look again and she says "I know your show is on, but I don't remember the name of it." , so then I gave up and said "Happy Birthday to Rick" and then she figured out what I was talking about. So then I left, and she followed me and told me to come back and wished me a happy birthday, and that was the first one of the day I got! Whoo!
Kira sent me birthday goodies though, and a card. I got Carmina Burana on CD, a cool picture frame with a picture of Kira and I last year at her parents for the bbq she had., an origami set, two lateral thinking puzzle books, a hard as hell rolling ball puzzle thing, Dalai Llama's Little Book of Wisdom, and a dinosaur shirt (see pictures ont he 11th of me squirting kerosene intot he fire, I'm wearing it and it can be seen in the second picture. :P). Thank you Kira! :)
On Realms of Despair Selina did a MUD-wide shout for me, and I got a bunch of Happy Birthdays. And Selina made cake for me to hand out to people. Later, Aeriel made me more cake to give people. Then I had a Symposium meeting which I could only half pay attention to due to my grandparents being here to give me a card.
*unpause* Got Nicole a Tweety Bird picture frame at K-Mart for her birthday also. I'm not sure what I did the rest of Thursday night.
Friday the 13th! Which I didn't even notice... Mom and Dad stayed home fromw ork so we could work on the house and getting things setup. We all were gotten up at 9:30AM or so. Did lots of work. Mom and Nicole left int he car to get various stuff like the cake and such, while Dad, Nate, and I tookt he truck to get the canopy, chairs, and such. Got back, setup the canopy, and the tables we already had in the garage. Don't remember late afternoon very well.
Something is screwy here in my memory... because I worked on juke box labels the night before we went to dinner. And finished perfecting them the day we went to dinner because I took them with me to work on. So I guess on Wednesday evening Dad sorted 45's to put in the juke box in the garage, and I helped, and wrote down what artists and songs in what spots so I could make new labels for everything. Keith came over and we goofed off with Age of Empires 2 I think. I spent quite a bit of time working out the optimal size, and layout of juke box labels in MS Word after that. Thursday afternoon I perfected the labels and took them with me to work on at dinner. So they were done Friday night I think. They turned out really nice.
Oh, I remember Friday now... celebrated mine and sis' birthdays. Sis got me a booklight, M&D got me the 80G hard drive I asked for, bro got me .hack//SIGN Vol. 1 DVD, and everyone kind of gave me a new good quality frisbee... mmm. Sis got her camera, memory for it, picture frame, etc. Then bro and I loaded up guns, monitors, a TV, etc into vehicles, and off to Tony's! I took 3 monitors, Nate took a TV, a monitor, and a one-peieve compaq 486 computer... and there we about 4 other monitors there already and such. Then we lined up the firing squad. Nate with his 4-10, me with Dad's semi-automatic .22, Karl with his semi-automatic .22, Tony with his 20 gauge... and we blew the hell out of all of them. :P Sara videod it, one of the monitors was Amanda's. Jason and Krystal just watcvhed I think, as well as been, Wes' friend Kale, etc. Keith beat on the monitors and such with an aluminum aseball bat several times. Then we took rounds shooting again. It didn't take long until there wasn't anything left besides piles of plastic and glass. :P Then we played frisbee and kicked and threw balls around Tony's yard. Had hotdogs. Sara, Amanda, and Krystal nailed all of us with silly string. :P Set up GameCube and two X-Box's networked. Played network games of Halo while Sara and Amanda played SUper Monkey Ball on the GC. It got dark, Tony lit the huge bonfire he had setup made of wooden pallets. :P Played with fireworks. Goofed off. Kicked the balls around some more. Played more Halo. Around 3:15AM I left... by that time, Wes, Kale, Karl, Sara, Amanda, Jason, and Krystal had all left. Nate, Keith, and Ben left a bit later. I got here about 3:30AM, Nate got here about 4:30AM. Whee! Tony's post about it is here.
Saturday... got up, and got ready fro bro's open house. Cleaned my room extensively. People started getting here early (Wes and Kale, my dad's Uncle Roy and Aunt Jo, Eric and Heidi - family friends from Germany), so I took a shower quickly. Then went down to enjoy the day. Ate a bunch of food. Everyone usually loved the sliced spicy pork loin we make. We only made four this time though rather than six so we didn't have any left. :| Sadness. Keith passed out on the couch int he living roomf or a bit. :P Not enough sleep recently. :P I brought down my broadsword and other swords and knives for people to play with. :P Keith and I started playing frisbee, and pretty soon we had Wes, Kale, Karl, Tony, Ben, and Jason all playing. Eventually Ben left, Tony left to go to MIS (see his journal), and Jason left. We goofed off until 6PM when we were allowed to play computer games inside so we did. :P I guess it was Karl, Keith, and I playing Age of Empires 2. Karl ended up leaving and Keith and I played again. Not sure if I did anything else that night.
Sunday was like a cool off day... I slept basically all day off and on. It was warm, with a slight breeze... so I just laid on my bed by the window and dozed all day. Late in the day we celebrated Father's Day. I think we had hamburgers on the grill for dinner.
Sometime in the last few weeks Wes and I ran into Lansing one day and got applications for Best Buy, Circuit City, and B&N. Visited mom at work of course. Sometime in there also, during the first week of June I think, bro and I scoped out computers. And the next day, he bought an eMachines T2200+... 1.8GHz Athlon XP, 512M DDR, 100G HDD, CD-RW, DVD, modem, built-in sound, video, NIC, etc. $500. He was happy. Last week or so, he bought a 17" Samsung LCD to go with it... so he's kicking ass in the computer department. Him and I stopped to visit mom the day we went to get that too. Probably some other things in there I'm forgetting.
This week has been a blur mainly. I don't think I've gone anywhere. Done various random stuff here. Played AQ2 and AoE2 with Keith on at least one occaision. Going to write him a simple guestbook program for his open house which is tomorrow.
In unrelated news, my left eye has been twitching randomly for weeks now. It's annoying. I suggested maybe I had a stroke. Several people think it might be attributed to caffiene intake.
Probably lots I missed, but I can add more later.