Weekend

Friday was also technically Marc's day off, but he had to go in for a few hours. Still, he left work before noon. Since he managed to get off work early, he was able to stop by one of the local Gamestops to pick up a Wii for my parents - I had called around to 6 different stores before finding one that actually had them in stock.

Anyways, I got home and promptly took out my contacts and swapped them for my glasses. I had a LASIK appointment this morning, and they wanted me to keep my contacts off for as many days possible prior. I hate wearing glasses.

We stopped by the supermarket and fish store to buy a bunch of fish food supplies, as I had run out of my homemade stuff. I bought some fresh shrimp, clams, scallops and oysters at the store. We also bought some steaks for ourselves. Then we swung by Blockbuster and rented Waitress.

I spent a while shucking the clams, which I'd never done before. It really is the most un-fun thing to do. I felt kinda bad killing live clams. Then I gathered all my fish food ingredients (I should've taken a picture), split them into two batches, and threw them into the blender. I got through the first batch just fine, but on the second batch, the blender broke! So then I had to open up our food processor, which we've never used before, and use that to finish chopping up the food. It's the most disgusting stuff you've ever seen or smelled. I spooned it into freezer baggies, pressed them flat, and then threw them in the freezer.

Marc grilled up the steaks, and then after dinner we watched the movie. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it yet. Marc thought it would be a "chick flick," but it really isn't much of one. It's pretty hilarious and sweet.

After the movie, we played Call of Duty 4 online for a while, then went to bed.

Saturday morning we went out for breakfast/lunch, and ran a few errands. The regal angel, unfortunately, suddenly didn't look very good - it was lethargic and its belly was all bloated. The other fish were starting to pick on it, so I moved it to the refugium, but it died later that day. Seems like maybe it got a bacterial infection or something. I'm really bummed about it.

In the evening, I drove up to the city to meet Leslie and Elaine for dinner at Choquette's. We had some drinks, had a nice meal, and chatted (loudly) for a while. Best of all, parking was a breeze.

Then Marc and I stayed up really late setting up the surround sound in the family room, which we had put off since moving into the house. We ended up getting a wireless unit that made it so that we wouldn't have to run wires from the front of the room to the back. Being that we're not hardcore audiophiles, we didn't figure we'd notice the sound degradation. And in actuality, the unit seems to work really well - there's no interference so far, and it sounds good enough to us.

Sunday morning I took Bandit herding. After the lesson was done, Jan, another student, and I took all our border collies out to the creek on the farm to let the dogs play. Five BC's running around is quite the sight. One of Jan's dogs just stood in the middle of the stream, barking at and attacking some phantom under the water. Bandit was busy chasing Jan's other dog around, and another dog was chasing Bandit in one big circle, in and out of the stream. In the meantime, Jan's other border collie was bringing sticks and dropping them at my feet hoping that I would throw one. I ended up with a pile of progressively bigger sticks at my feet. It was hilarious in all its chaoticness and neuroticness.

Bandit at one point was trotting down the stream when the floor dropped from under him and his whole body dunked in the water. He got soaked, but at least it washed off all the mud. At the end, we had 5 dogs that were happily panting and wet.

We had lunch with Steve and Erin and the kids, and then spent the rest of the day running errands and doing chores.