Monday, April 23 - not exactly the best start to the week ever. I awoke to find that Giles had taken it upon himself to chew up the pillow we’d tried our best to prevent him from chewing up. While I was occupied getting stuffing off the floor he peed all over the place – out of nerves, I think – as well. So that was fun.

Work wasn’t much better. Paul was in the OR that morning and so wasn’t available. The previous week he’d off-handedly mentioned to me how, in addition to our new student, I might have to help out one other student. Like, no big deal. Turns out that student worked in a lab where the PI was out for the week and where the lab manager didn’t get in until damn near lunch time, and so she had no contacts for several hours, save for me. Oh, and she hadn’t yet begun her certification process. The one, you might recall, that takes on average a week and a half to complete. Of course, while our student had done much of hers ahead of time, she was hardly finished with it. Plus, through no fault of her own, the VA’s laughably out-of-date system had decided to banish all record of her doing one of the more cumbersome trainings. So all of that was stuff I had to take care of that morning. With both our computers being used in the lab and one of the two of them hitting upon another snag almost as if on queue, I had very little time to sit down and relax for the rest of the morning. I had a headache by lunch time. But at least the worst of it was over.

I had planned on doing a rat anesthesia experiment that morning. Clearly that didn’t happen. I had time to do one in the afternoon, though, which allowed me some time to relax. That done, I took a 3-day blood sample from one I did on the previous Friday, then I took the 2-hour bleed from the rat I’d given anesthesia that day. I spun down the blood, then I returned to the lab to sit down to finish work on the trip planner for Day 4 of our up-coming Southwest road trip. I worked on the Day 5 planner some after that, then I read until it was time to head out to pick up Becky at 20 of 5 and to head on home.

It was pleasantly (unseasonably) cool out that afternoon, so I was able to run a solid 4.4 miles, the farthest I’d gone in some time. When I got home and cleaned up I had some of the ham from Harry and David that my mom had sent us for Easter. Becky had cooked it up along with some potatoes au gratin. We ate while watching the final Frozen Planet: the one actually narrated by David Attenborough, on sea ice loss. I don’t need to tell you it was by far the best hour of that series, at least from what we saw. We followed it up with some of the new HBO comedy Veep – the one starring Julia Louis Dreyfus. Meh. Lots of f-bombs, not a lot of humor. Since it seemed like it was to Washington what 30 Rock is to New York we gave it a shot, but it just didn’t do it for us. Ohw ell.

We turned it off in favor of Jeopardy!, followed by a Future is Wild, featuring weird baboon-iforms:

The future sure is ugly. We put on some old Twilight Zone after that, then we read for a bit and headed on to bed for the night.

Tuesday, April 24 - a busy Tuesday, since I’d have to do two rat experiments in order to make up for only having done one the previous day. I walked Giles and got into work as usual, then I got straight down to business. While it was going and I walked back to the lab to spin down the blood sample from induction that I’d taken, I received some more oxygen tanks I’d ordered: just in time. The rest of the experiment went fairly well and I emerged the rat and took the two-hour blood sample just in time to finish spinning it down right at lunch time. In the afternoon I repeated the process on another rat – the fourth and final one for the study. This all went fairly according to plan, except that it emerged a bit sooner than I’d expected. Not a huge deal: it just gave me some time to read. It wasn’t the only one in the study to emerge quickly, so maybe the blood sampling was causing them to wake up sooner. That, or maybe, as Krtko demonstrates, it’s just the season for rodents to be lively:

Moscow Mouse sure is happy to see Krtko!

I spun down the remaining blood samples, then I wrote out a draft of the trip pack for Day 6 of our journey. That done, I printed out the Day 3 pack, shared the Day 4 trip pack with Becky so she could edit it that evening, then headed on out to meet Becky. I wasn’t feeling up to a run and she was pretty tired, too, so I let her rest while I took Giles for a 2.4-mile run-walk. It’s a lot more exhausting than just going for a jog since he’s prone to dogging all over the place, but it accomplished the tasks of giving me and him both exercise at the same time.

I settled in to have some leftover ham and potatoes for dinner, which I enjoyed while watching the previous night’s Daily Show and Colbert. By that point it was about 7:15 and so time for us to head on out to Tijuana Garage for Trivia Night. We had a good time despite coming in third place. When we got back around 10 of 10 we discovered Giles had torn up some plastic bags. It was a fairly Bad Dog thing to do but not his worst, so we only lightly chided him while cleaning it up. That all done, we headed on to bed for the night.

Wednesday, April 25 - the new student was gone for the rest of the week and so I had (what would turn out to be among the last for some time) three days of quiet solitude in which to do my own thing. I read for a bit, then I wrote out an entry and posted it. After reading some more and getting lunch I banged out another entry, saving it to be posted the next day. I then switched gears to trip panning, finishing the Day 5 trip pack, working on the one for Day 6, and making up a rough draft for Day 7. I printed the finalized version of Day 4′s planner and then I sent out that copy of Day 5 to be edited by Becky. I read for a bit to wind down the afternoon, then I headed on out to pick up Becky at the normal time en route to the gym.

At home Becky and I combined our efforts to make some damned fantastic bacon-apple-and cheese sandwiches for dinner. I cooked the bacon while she walked Giles, then she made the rest of the sandwiches. We ate them while watching the Daily Show and Jeopardy!, then I took another whack at cleaning the dishes. I mention this particularly because that damned ham dish still wasn’t clean. The caramelized sugars burnt onto it took for-freaking-ever to come off. So maybe we’ll use some foil or something next time we make a ham roast.

I settled back in after giving up on battling with the Pyrex dish for another evening to watch Jeopardy! with Becky, followed by a Metalocalypse, then the new Mad Men from the previous Sunday. When that ended we retired for the evening.

Thursday, April 26 - after walking Giles and getting to work I called Stone Mountain Toyota to make an appointment to get the Prius serviced for 120k the following Tuesday, in anticipation of our trip. I read my overnight Internets after that, then I got to work on the trip packs, finishing the one for Day 6 and working some on Day 7 until it was time for lunch. After eating I decided to make myself useful and so I took the 3-day blood sample from the rat anesthetized on Monday. After I spun that down and put it in the freezer I returned to trip planning, making a draft of Day 8, printing out Day 5, then sending the pack for Day 6 to Becky for approval. After a break to read for a while I finished out Day 7′s trip pack, then I read a bit more until Becky called to be picked up at 4:30.

We skipped going to the gym and instead headed on home to make some more bacon-apple-cheese sandwiches, along with the leftover KFC we had from the previous Sunday. After eating I headed out to CVS to get Becky some Claritin for a minor poison ivy outbreak she had on her arm. While I was gone she tried to use some Fair and Handsome she’d picked up at the Indian goods store:

See how handsome it’ll make you?

It’s even got a helpful Fastometer, right on the box!

Other cultures are funny.

We settled in and watched the Daily Show and Colbert, then a show called Fearless Planet that, contrary to its name, was actually pretty good and not pseudoscientific: it was all about the geological history of the Earth. Not bad. We tried to watch some Adventure Time after that, but the DVR had screwed up and so we only got a few minutes in. Duke of Nuts to that! We put on Jeopardy! instead, then we read and relaxed for a while. After that we watched the new Mythbusters from Sunday, then some Mr. Ed off of the Wii Netflix stream before going on to bed for the night.

Friday, April 27 - a straightforward day. I got into work as usual to read my blogs for a bit, then I took the 3-day blood sample from the rat I’d anesthetized Tuesday morning. That done, I worked on the trip pack for Day 8 up until lunch time. When I returned to the lab after eating I received the intralipid solvent we’d ordered as a negative control for our propofol studies, then I went back into the animal facility to draw the 3-day blood sample from the fourth and final rat. While that spun down I ordered some extra-small gloves for Brittany, then I worked on a draft of the Day 9 planner. I returned to the animal facility to wean out a fresh batch of pups after that, then I had just enough time to print out the Day 6 trip pack and to share Day 7 with Becky before I left to go meet her and to head on home.

I picked us up some Fellini’s for dinner, along with some booze in anticipation of the party we’d have for her birthday 8 days from then. We ate while watching the Daily Show and Colbert, followed by a PBS Nature special on jungles. We put on Jeopardy! after that, then some Mr. Ed while I looked (without positive results, I might add) for a mariachi band for us to see in Albuquerque the night we’d be there. We put on some House after that, followed by some properly-recorded Adventure Time. When that ended we headed on to bed to get a jump-start on the weekend.

Monday, April 16 - a pretty easy start to the week. I gave Giles his morning walk and then got into work to read a bit over coffee. I finished off the Day 1 trip planner for our Southwest trip coming up in May, then I worked some more on the planner for Day 2. After that I prepared to write a journal entry, ate lunch, then started work on that entry. At about 1 I took a break to actually be productive by helping the tech in the lab across the way where that BDNF ELISA was run the previous week to dissect some brains. Because I’m good at that sort of thing. That done, I finished up and posted that entry, then I read for a while more, then I got going on a draft of Day 3 for our trip. I finished that in time to receive some slides of tissue I’d submitted to be processed by the histology core the previous week justg before heading out to pick up Becky at about 20 of 5 en route to the gym.

We had some leftover Chinese for dinner, which we ate while watching the final episode of Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives, about kings. We tried to watch some of a show also hosted by the speech-impeded Python about Roman Gladiators that was tacked on as a bonus feature on the disc, but it just didn’t hold our interest and so we turned it off in favor of Jeopardy! and the rest of Dinner for Schmucks, which we’d only gotten about halfway through over the weekend. After that we watched a decent Frozen Planet on human settlements in the Arctic and Antarctic, then we put on an Adventure Time before heading on to bed for the night.

Tuesday, April 17 - as we left to go into work we noticed a wren’s nest perched on top of our (inoperable) garage door opener. I don’t have a picture of it, but Krtko thinks it looks like this:

Apparently the bird requires his instruction to make her own nest. I think Krtko is a bit of a micro-manager.

Anyway, overall it was a good and quiet Tuesday. After reading for a bit I wrote out and posted a journal entry about the previous weekend, then I prepared our lab for yet another inspection walkthrough, number – what – 12 or so of the past 6 months. They sure do like to inspect things around here. I wasn’t around when they came through but I haven’t heard any bad news and so I’m assuming we checked out.

I read my blogs some more after that, then I went upstairs to eat my lunch. I decided that I’d best do something productive with my life in the afternoon, so I did a single rat experiment using our newer protocol. A good thing I only planned on doing one, as it took a long time to wake, even with all of our new measures. I still had just enough time after it fully recovered to finish out the Day 2 planner for our trip and to give a quick once-over of the Internet before leaving to pick up Becky, though.

After going to the gym again we came home to have some spaghetti for dinner, which we ate while watching the Daily Show and Colbert from the previous night. After that we watched the full, restored version of “The Cage” – the unaired pilot episode of the original Star Trek, so as to complete our run-through of the series before starting the movies. We followed that with that week’s Mad Men off of the DVR, and then some more Adventure Time before retiring for the night.

Wednesday, April 18 - I walked Giles in light rain (that we very much needed) and then headed on into work to meet with Paul in the morning. I quickly separated out a batch of weanlings and adjusted our census, then I started up an emergence experiment with Paul’s help. Much like the previous day, it took about 2 hours, taking me up to lunch time to finish it. I decided to forego doing another experiment that afternoon after discussing the results with Paul and coming up with a plan for another, smaller study. Instead, I read for a bit, then talked with Cari about ordering a new prothrombin ELISA kit for us in exchange for her charging some microscope time to our account. That done, I worked on the trip planner for Day 3, I watched some Vlogbrothers/Crash Course videos (if it came down to Twilight-like picking sides, I’d guess I’m on Team Hank, for what it’s worth), then I made a rough draft of a planner for Day 4. I printed out the finalized planer for Day 1, shared the copy of Day 2 with Becky over Google Docs for her approval, and then read until Becky was ready to be picked up.

I wasn’t quite feeling up to running that day and so I decided to be lazy and made myself some spaghetti for dinner without undergoing all that troublesome exercise. Becky and I watched the Daily Show and Colbert while eating as usual, then we put on some of a 3-part show about historic Jesus that we’d recorded on the DVR. We turned that off in time to put on Jeopardy!, which we followed with some Adventure Time. We relaxed for a while after that, then we put on the new Mythbusters from the previous Sunday. When that ended we read some and then went on to bed.

Thursday, April 19 - I got up, walked Giles, and got into work as usual to start the day by reading with my morning coffee. After that I spent the remainder of the morning painstakingly going through my lab notebook to make a 22-column master spreadsheet of notes and data from all of our propofol-based rat emergence studies to date. Mind numbing, but necessary, unfortunately. After eating my lunch I read for a bit more, then I finished out the trip planner for Day 3 of the Southwest trip. I worked on the planner for Day 4 some more after that, then I started work on one for Day 5, but I was interrupted by Paul coming up off of his shift in the OR to come sit down to meet with me to discuss the data so far and to plan the rest of the month. That all took right up until it was time for me to head out, so I wouldn’t be able to finish the rough draft of Day 5 until later.

At home I ran a decent 3.2 miles, then I heated up some leftover pizza for Becky and me to snack on to stave off hunger, as we’d be eating dinner later that night. We watched the Daily Show and Jeopardy!, then we headed on down to Avondale Estates for the last-ever Trivia Night at the Restaurant Formerly Known as James Joyce, where we also got our dinner. Our team won, but we had to give away the winnings as they were only redeemable at that soon-to-be-closed location. Oh well.

We got back home at about 10:30 (I will not miss how freaking long it takes that guy to go through the questions) to discover that Giles had done something… odd. He’d taken out bags of chips from the pantry (single-serving ones I put in my lunches), but hadn’t eaten any of them. And not one or two, but SIX bags. As if he knew he did something wrong, but then forgot and did it again… five more times. “OH NO I SCREWED UP ILL PUT IT BACK OH NO I DID IT AGAIN OH NO WHY DO I KEEP DOING THIS OH NO.”

Oh, Dog. We watched an old-timey Superman cartoon with him off of Netflix streaming to let him calm down some, then we went on to bed.

Friday, April 20 - after walking Giles I got into work and heeded the reminder I’d left for myself to order some fresh oxygen tanks and some of the lipid vehicle used in the clinical emulsification of our propofol. After getting that out of the way I briefly met with Paul, then I started up on a rat emergence experiment, right at around 9:15. This one wouldn’t be for regular data, though, as I was collecting blood for serum for that prothrombin ELISA. One upon the rat reaching anesthesia, and one two hours later, upon which the rat emerged (no surprise there). I spun down the blood and got the perfusion cart ready to go for the afternoon, then I ran upstairs to shove my sandwich down my throat so as to not waste time in getting going for my 12-2 PM slot reserved in the necropsy room. I perfused the two rats on which I’d done successful experiments earlier in the week, and I collected some brain tissue for histology. That all finished up right around 2 PM as planned, so I had some time after that to finish out the draft of the planner for Day 5 and to read for a while before picking up Becky at 4 o’clock as we headed on up to Costco.

The Costco run was thankfully uneventful, and after getting back home and putting everything away I went back out to get us some Fellini’s for dinner. We ate while watching the Daily Show and Colbert, followed by an Adventure Time (running low on episodes we haven’t seen!) until Jeopardy! came on. At that point I decided to serve myself a not-too-large slice of that sizeable cheesecake from Harry and David my mom had sent us. I still felt ill afterward, though, and so I’ve since been trying to take it in tiny slivers. If I can make it halfway through I’ll call it good enough and I’ll let Becky take the rest to work with her.

As I groaned and held my stomach we watched some more historical Jesus show, then we put on one of Becky’s favorite shows, the fantastically-hokey Future is Wild: a fictional prognostication of what life will look like 5, 100, and 200 million years from now. It’s really entertaining, if not terribly feasible. When we had seen enough of it for one night, we turned it off and headed on to bed. Becky read me some Jorge el Curioso and we watched some Futurama off of my laptop before going to sleep.

Monday, April 9 - I got up and walked Giles as usual, but since Becky was taking the day off to have some time to herself, she dropped me off and so I didn’t have to park. When I got in I saw some tubes taped to the lab door. I checked my email to get a note saying that the tubes were for the newly-arrived bead blender homogenizer I’d be using to process the brain tissue for the ELISA I was running with someone in another lab on the other side of the floor that day. It was good news that the blender system arrived, as it would mean less work for me to homogenize the tissue, but it did mean that I’d have to set aside all of the tubes I’d labeled on Friday and start all over again with these. That didn’t take all that long, though, and so after I got that done I set up to dissect out the brain tissue: six pieces each, based on anatomical regions, eight brains, for a total of 48 tissue samples. All of which had to be weighed first. It was tedious but nothing I’m not used to and so I chugged through it all and was ready to go by around 10:30. I brought the tissue on down the hall, then I tried to help as much as I could by loading tiny, 0.5-mm glass beads into each tube, estimating the mass of each load to be equivalent to that of the tissue. Tricky, especially considering the beads wanted to go everywhere, but not impossible. When I got it done the woman I was working with added T-PER and then let the bead blender run. It didn’t completely homogenize the tissue after one run and so she had to add more volume, then add more beads, and try again on some of the samples, as she and I both tried to figure out how best to use the machine. I grabbed my lunch very quickly during one such secondary run, but after returning a few times it was becoming clear that I was more in the way than helping by that point, so around 12:30 I gave up trying to be of any more assistance and left her to figure it out without me standing over her shoulder the whole time. I think that was best for both of us.

I read for a bit, then I booked a hotel for Becky’s mom and sister for when they’ll be here the second weekend in May. This turned out to be easier said than done as the second weekend in May is also Emory’s commencement and, consequently, there are zero rooms left at the Emory Inn and Emory Conference Center. Not that we’d want them to stay in a jam-packed-full hotel, anyway. After some hemming and hawing about it and a quick call to Becky I resolved to book them a room at the Days Inn downtown, where Becky and I stayed nearly 2 years ago on our Southeast Road Trip. It was clean and in a good area, so we agreed it would do the trick.

That done, I wrote and then posted an entry (still in the process of getting caught back up), then I booked the hotels for Days 4-6 of our upcoming road trip: in Dallas, Roswell, and Albuquerque. I finished that just in time to pick up Becky on the early side, at around 4, and to head on home from there.

Upon arriving home we noticed that Giles had used his Big Blue Monkey toy to re-create a rather macabre scene:

Clearly observing the 18th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death.

I ran a decent 2.7 miles, then I settled in to have some creole chicken and pasta for dinner. Becky and I watched a Frontline off of the DVR that was about schizophrenic prisoners in Ohio while we ate. Interesting, but a bit heavy for dinner television, I think. We followed it with some of a show about historic Jesus, then Jeopardy!, then the new Mythbusters from the previous night. After that we put on a LOST from Netflix. When that ended we retired to bed and watched some old Mr. Wizard videos off of YouTube for a solid 45 minutes until we were tired enough to go to sleep.

Tuesday, April 10 - I walked Giles and got into work right on time, only to discover that the parking deck was nearly full already. Not a good sign. Fortunately it hasn’t happened again yet, but it was still troubling to think that we might have to start getting in even earlier to get a parking space. Oh well, at least it’s free.

I spent the morning writing an entry and then reading. Not exciting but it needed doing. After lunch I wrote another entry and saved it to be posted later, then I researched some hotels for the final three nights of our upcoming road trip. I read some more after that, then I watched an engaging video David Dobbs posted of a 2006 BBC special in which Stephen Fry uses his own history to discuss bipolar disorder. Not the lightest of topics but worth an hour of one’s time, I think. It ended in time for me to head out at 4:30 and to get Becky en route to the gym.

At home we had some more creole chicken and pasta for dinner. We ate while watching the Daily Show and Jeopardy!, then we gave the 10 Things You Didn’t Know series another shot with the episode about FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. It was less-horrible than the Lincoln one but I still would hesitate to describe it as “good.” Oh well. Only a half-hour. When it ended we put on Jeopardy!, then we relaxed a while and eventually put on an Adventure Time, then the last LOST episode on the disc we had from Netflix. When that ended we headed on to bed for the night.

Wednesday, April 11 - I got up to walk Giles and I got into work, whereupon I realized that we were nearly out of medical oxygen for our rat experiments. So, I placed an order for a pair more first thing, then I posted that entry I’d written the previous day. I read for just a bit after that, then I got set up to do a rat experiment with the new batch of a half-dozen we had that had reached the appropriate size. The first one took longer than it should have to wake up, but not by a super-long margin. Still, it wasn’t an optimal result. Paul and I discussed it over lunch and, so as to figure out if time of day had any influence, decided to wait until later in the afternoon to do another. In the mean time I wrote out and saved another entry.

Sarah came by to say hello and to check in after having met with Paul. When she headed back out I dropped off the tissue I’d harvested the previous week for embedding and sectioning, I received the T-PER I’d ordered, and then I headed back into the animal facility to do another rat experiment. The course of anesthesia for this one was sort of odd, and he did come up in less time than the morning one, but he still took longer than we’d have liked. Not much longer, but enough to make us feel like we just haven’t nailed it down yet. That’s science for you, I suppose. It emerged with just enough time left for me to quickly bang through my blogs before I headed out at the normal time to pick up Becky and to head to the gym.

We had these things called “bronco burgers” for dinner. It’s a hideously stupid name for a delicous piece of meat. I only mention the name so that Becky can go back to search it if we decide to have them again and forget what they were called. Bronco burgers. I’ll stop saying that now.

We ate while watching the Daily Show and Jeopardy!, then we finished out that historic Jesus show. After that we put on the new Mad Men from Sunday night (fortunately I try to stay in a media blackout surrounding the show, which is good as a certain catchphrase riffing off of Chappelle’s Show sort of went viral), then we headed on to bed to read for a while before sleep.

Thursday, April 12 - a relatively easy morning as I walked Giles, got into work to read over coffee, posted an entry, and then got going on a rat experiment. This one, for a paradoxical change of pace, woke up too early. Ugh. At least it left me the rest of the morning to work on outlining Day 1 of our trip. After a brief break for lunch I finished it up, then I banged out the final entry needed for me to be caught all of the way up on my journal and saved it to be posted the next day. I read some Internets after that until 3 o’clock, when I met with Paul and we drove over to the School of Medicine on Emory’s main campus to go to this poster session, at which Sarah was presenting the same poster I presented at that seminar at Emory Midtown Hospital a couple of weeks earlier. A good number of VA people came to it, actually, and there were a few other posters that had some interesting research, so I’m glad I went. I left after about an hour and hoofed it back to the VA, making it back just in time to meet with Becky and to head on home.

When we got home we noticed a rather sizeable box placed in the garage. It turns out that it was a gift basket from Harry and David that my mom had sent us:

Yes, that is, among other things, a two-pound ham. In the mail. “Hamogram” is my new favorite non-word.

I was not at all feeling up to going running. Becky was feeling downright under the weather, too. So, I decided we could both use a break and I walked Giles while she took a rest. When I got back we made more burgers, then we sat down to eat while watching the Daily Show and Colbert as usual. We followed that with an Adventure Time, then we headed on down to the Brewhouse Pub Avondale – formerly Avondale Arms formerly Avondale Sports Bar formerly James Joyce – for the first Trivia Night there since the three-fold name-change. While there we found out it’s closing for good in two weeks. Yeesh. What a mess. Still, it was a good time and even though it ran late as usual we managed to win first prize. Now we have to come back right away to be able to spend the winnings.

Unfortunately, when we got home we discovered that Giles had not been a Good Dog and instead had chewed up a couple of items he knew were Not for Dogs. We put him in the Corner of Shame for a couple of minutes:

He does not like the corner of shame.

After cleaning up the mess he made we told him we still love him, then we went on to bed for the night.

Friday, April 13 - Giles managed to make it through the night without being more of a Bad Dog, and so we felt good leaving him be as we headed on off to work. Unfortunately, that didn’t guarantee a good morning for me as I arrived to check my email and discovered one from an acccount manager at our gas cylinder supplier saying that we had unpaid invoices and that our account was locked until they were paid. Of course, had I known about these invoices I would have paid them. And of course our account being locked meant I would not get those medical oxygen tanks I’d ordered two days earlier. I was not a happy monkey.

I read for a bit to try to cool off, then I tried to call the guy to explain what was going on. He didn’t pick up, though, and so I thought better of telling him off right away. Instead I spent nearly the rest of the morning manually entering the 14 months worth of back-invoices into Emory’s payment system. Then I sent him an email telling him off. Professional!

I booked the hotels for the last three days of our trip – in Oklahoma City, Kansas City and Memphis – and then I read until it was time for lunch. After eating I worked on the trip planner for Day 1 some more, fleshing it out with specific directions and times. That done, I examined the list of attractions Becky had come up with for our day in New Orleans and from it came up with a general game-plan for Day 2 of the trip. Becky had taken the car to head home during the day, then she came back to park at Yerkes. At 3:25 she was done with her work and so, in a change of roles, I walked over to meet her instead and she drove us on home.

Since we were back home on the early side we had some time to play out in the back yard. Wait… what’s that thing in the high brush, amongst the ivy?

Surprise! It’s the Dog!

The dog next door was, as always, fat and unamused:

Oh well. Can’t please everyone, I suppose.

Becky still wasn’t feeling very well and so I watched a Metalocalypse and then gave Giles his walk as she took a nap. When she felt like getting up again we headed on out to Mellow Mushroom to get some dinner. Surprisingly not full of little kids, actually. To top that off, due to our pizza getting over-cooked and having to be re-made (they determined this, not us; we never even saw it), they took off both of the beers I had from the bill. More than enough compensation for having us wait 10 more minutes. I left a hefty tip to let them know that everything was just fine.

When we got back home we put on the Daily Show and Colbert, then a show from 2010 about the Westboro Baptist Church, in which they appear to be far more wary of outsiders than in the original show from 2006 that we saw a few years back (or at least before we moved to Atlanta). We followed that with Jeopardy!, then an episode of Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives about knights (or, if you will, kknnnnnniggts!) from Netflix. After that we put on a documentary off Netflix streaming about infomercial pitch men called As Seen on TV, that must have been filmed just weeks or months before Billy Mays died, as it featured him prominently but made no reference to his sudden death. When it ended we wound down the evening with a Fat Albert, then we headed on to bed. Not a huge morning ahead of us, but we had a thing or two to look forward to on the horizon that weekend.