Well, I don't know who that guy was....

And now to the better things of this weekend...

Went with Toes over to Courtney's place on Friday. Learned how to play Pinochle. Now, being interested in linguistics, I'd wondered how you got the seemingly universal pronunciation "PEE-knuckle" out of what looked like it should be along the lines of a Spanish "Pee-NOH-klay." In any case, it was quite intricate and fun. You only play with the 10's, Jacks, Queens, Kings, and Aces, but with two sets of them found in a usual 52 card deck. I'd go into detail, but it's both too much info and I've forgotten a good amount of it. We watched Alien 3 and 4 and I didn't get back to the dorms until around 4 am.

Luckily for me, I wasn't needed for painting at TC's place in Sac until around 12:30 (rather, I was getting a ride over there at 12:30). I slept in until around 11:20 then showered, ate, and headed out.

We had an absolute blast helping TC paint his living room. Those who showed up included Myself, Toes, Adrienne, Aljay and Fez. What helped speed the procedure, in addition to having 7 people there, were these neat Paint roller/resevoirs. There was a roller on one end, connected to a hollow tube (about a meter long or so) with a plunger that could be drawn in and out of it. The plunger also had a trigger that pushed it into the tube about an inch with each click. So what you would do is place this special cap on the paint can, which looked a little like a soft drink cap because of the plastic, straw-like protrudance in it, then jam this little nozzle near the roller end of the tube down on the straw-like thing. Then you'd unlock the plunger and pull it out, drawing a bunch of paint into the hollow tube. Suffice to say, you'd then squeeze small amounts of paint into the roller when needed. It was a cool toy.

We painted the anteroom and living room, the former what TC described as a "Library green" and the latter with what was called "A Cup of cocoa." Boy did the painting go fast. TC was so impressed that he was constantly complimenting with a "Wow, you guys rock." Toes and I were even able to get the upper reaches without step stools, and ended up doing most of the high edging. Adrienne commanded respect with the Roller/resevoir, yet was "playing to lose." She got the most paint on her, from being the only one to lean against a wet wall, to stepping in one of the trays and getting paint inside her shoe. It was all in good fun, and we had one hell of a time.

Alas, there was a dark spot in our time there. At one point we heard a bang that could have been a gunshot or a tire, and we didn't pay much attention to it. When TC's wife, Chris, went to grab some extra brushes from Home Depot, she discovered that someone had side-swiped their car: it had torn a gash in the tire (the bang we'd heard) took off the fender from the left side and crushed some sort of undercarriage component that was directly in front and to the right of the front-left tire. Big-ass bummer. And not only that, but we later discovered Fez's car to be hit in the same place, but with less damage. His tire was intact, but the left portion of the bumper was torn off as well. It was quite a bit of a downer, but we still managed to have some fun afterward.

After I returned, I got into a right old funk when I wasn't able to see My Lady. It was a culmination of many things that happened over the week, capped by this last thing not working out and lasted into Sunday. Fortunately for me, I was finally able to talk about it to a friend and, luckily, My Lady. As seems to be her usual custom, she stays up waaaay to late Saturday and then sleeps in until Sunday evening. Seeing my rather dejected previous post, she came to meet me and I, by then feeling considerably lighter, told her of my troubles. I was able to spend some good time with her afterward which also drastically helped my mood, and since then have been studying my Psych.

Enough. More Later.
- James