The Weekend

Golly what a fast weekend. Whenever I feel like I got something accomplished on a weekend, it feels that way. It's probably because I keep doing things to get them out of the way with the remotest hope that I might get a nap. Alas Monday morning arrives and all is accomplished...except the nap.

Friday I got the house pretty much cleaned up. That included throwing away the tidbits of Christmas cookies and a few remaining Truffles sprinkled with Ecuadorian Cocoa dust or some such thing. Apparently my wife was pacing herself and throwing those away was not a good thing to do. Woops.

After Ike got back from mall ratting his peeps came over for the night. They were actually well-behaved and somewhat quiet. Sort of unusual. Well one of Ike's very emo/scene flaming gay looking friends (or more like a friend of a friend) got himself -permanently banned from the Niedfeldt Teen center. Joey came over and shortly after a matching emo unisex girl came over to meet him. She reminded me of the teenage girl in the movie "The Incredibles". Then Joey left. The girl he had brought to our house was still there and was trying to find a ride. Joey had decided to go to his girlfriends house for the night. Well his over-protective mother was not aware of that plan and called to find out when to get him and wasn't quite so happy that Joey was gone and was using Ike as an excuse to stay at his girlfriend's. Ike wasn't even aware that Joey had the plan because he was wondering why joey left a girl at our house. Turns out she had just come over to bring Joey his pot before he headed off to his girlfriend's. Soooo that is the end of Joey. As cool as it is to have the drug deals go down at my house I'd prefer a little less of that.

I used to feel sorry for kids like Joey. He's got an alcoholic abusive father and a controlling paranoid mother (well, with a decent amount of good reasons). He's got learning disabilities and struggles in school and at barely 15 already smokes like crazy and has had plenty of sex. His more recent descent into the freaky land of wearing girl clothes and the gayest of stuff is his form of rebellion. I think he hangs out with a herd of them at the mall. However so far all the kids we have had any sympathy for and hope that maybe just a little positive influence in their life might help...all come back and burn us. So ...I'll dispense with Joey now before I have to worry about it and Ike is too much of a follower to have someone like him around.

Saturday Karen and I went to Madison to go see the Broadway musical Sweeney Todd. I liked it but it required a lot of work to try to get the whole story out of the music. It's like telling a story in 16th notes. I think the stage work, the music, and the singing were amazing. Who'd of thought a musical would be so challenging mentally. Now I have to see the movie version. Kt had a day of rest and Ike worked.

Sunday after church, I tackled Ike's long awaited move into Zach's former room. Now that Zach is officially out of the house, his basement room was up for grabs and Ike definitely wanted it. So I cleaned out Zach's remaining stuff and boxed it up. I threw out 3 bags of garbage of old clothes stretching back to 7th grade, various collections of things and various explosives. Yeah I'd be a little nervous picking up our garbage this week. If you see a mushroom cloud over the landfill you'll know where it came from. I only wish I was kidding. there was M40's, M80's, bottle rockets, roman candles, which would only be the accellerants for the butane and acetylene canisters. Don't forget his homemade baggy of thermite. I also cleaned it thoroughly and it was very gross. Now Ike has moved in with a slimmed down amount of stuff and we will bag up all his little kid stuff that was still in his old room. Maybe next weekend I will clean that room out and prepare it for Karen's den. The next time zach returns he will have to stay on the pullout couch. Sort of a weird feeling yet I think its a good thing. It lacks that sense of permanence that I don't want Zach to feel. :-)

Random things. K had her bookclub yesterday. I think they added a person. The Jetta is in the shop today getting its issues looked at. Hopefully with that fixed we should have 3 decent working cars for awhile. We discovered the wonders of Golden Gyro's yesterday. Wow...huge gyros and massive Hamburgers. They were awesome food...and there is a constant line going through the drive-thru. A new favorite on the list. 73rd and Lincoln if you care to visit. We're probably the last people in the city to know about it though.

Have a great week!