BLOG IN YOUR FACE

This weekend I:

1) Went to a new pub in town called “No Dogs Allowed” Friday night. While in the outdoor beer garden my two buddies and I were approached my a woman who informed us of a girl checking out Buddy #1 and liking what she saw. I approached said girl bypassing the middleman (or crazy old middle aged  woman that is) and introduced both myself and Buddy #1. I’m not the fashion police, but I could have made a citizen’s arrest. This girl was wearing a tube top with some sort of “X” shaped bra sticking out the back and around her neck. She had a serious case of “tennis-balls-in-a-tube-sock” syndrome, and I quickly returned to my picnic table and rocked back and forth for a little while trying to come up with some positive words of encouragement for Buddy #1.

2) Went on a 10 mile bike ride. Jaci and I have both decided that our Quadricep muscles could use some work to take the strain off our knees from running and Saturday was a cross-training day. I rode by a sod farm that reminded me of Ireland. It was so green and healthy looking from all of this rain we are getting that I almost wanted to stop and take a bite out of it or make a casserole or something.

3) Bought Jaci’s wedding band.

DISCLAIMER! The following represents my distaste and frustration for wedding consumerism (rip-off) and should not be interpreted as saying that my incredible bride-to-be is not worth the most beautiful ring in the world and then some, but…

The cost of my wedding band? 6o dollars.
The cost of her  wedding band? 400 dollars.

Jeepers…

4) Went disc golfing. If you don’t know what disc golfing is, you can read about it here and here. I took my dog along with me failing to make the connection of it being 97 degrees outside and her being a little black dog. I brought a 32 oz. Nalgene Bottle with me that contained extremely cold and refreshing water in it, along with her water bowl so that we could take pit stops. We did fine for the first 5 holes, but after that is when the trouble began! She had already consumed about 3/4 of the water in the bottle and began acting very sluggish. I assumed - and probably assumed correctly - that it was simply to hot for her to be out tearing around outside. Then tragedy struck…in the form of a bumble bee, unleashing its fury onto (into) Annie’s paw. She stopped in mid run and hit the ground, like in the old war movies when somebody gets shot. I performed emergency surgery (with my thumbnail) to extract the stinger; then I took my shirt off and wrapped it around her hind leg to stop the bleeding until we could get her to the nearest hospital (OK, not really); then I had to clean the wound to prevent Gangrene from setting in by dipping her foot into her water bowl. And finally, I had to carry her to safety through the woods (the row of trees lining the park) to the command center (my pick-up truck) where I could get her the supplies she desperately needed (some old animal crackers lying on the floor in the back seat). I waited there until the rest of my party arrived (when they were done disc golfing) and Annie and I made it back home. She barely made it through the next hour (she had diarrhea for some reason), put she persevered and was back to herself in no time (drinking water out of the toilet and eating used Kleenexes). She truly is  a miracle dog.

5) Had an impromptu camping trip. OK, so it wasn’t actually a trip. You see, Jaci had to work until 11 P.M. on Saturday night and was really bummed out that we couldn’t go camping after all, as we had tentatively planned earlier in the week. So I decided to bring the camping to HER!!! I set up our tent in the backyard and used some old bricks to make a firepit. We had a nice little bonfire and I got 6 Keystone Lights (16 oz.) for 4 dollars and it was a swell ol’ time!

6) Was very proud of my girlfriend. At church on Sunday, Jaci got up in front of the whole congregation (she hardly EVER does things to draw attention to herself) and asked for prayers for her cousin Corey. She was pretty choked up but I was proud of her. An update for anyone interested: Corey has a fever that just won’t break, but other than that he is hanging in there pretty well.

7) RAN 4 MILES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For those of you that say “Woopity Doo” then go fluctuate yourself. For me, this is a huge milestone. I have been running ever since I quit smoking and have never ran more than a 5k (3.1 miles). For those of you that don’t know, Jaci and I are training for a half marathon and this 4 miler was really special for me. I have never ran that far in my life at one time. We even missed a turn and came to a dead end at one point and had to backtrack. So, you could technically say we ran almost 4 and a half  miles! By the end I was running hunched over so much I could almost see Jaci running behind me through my legs, but then I realized she was actually beside me smacking my butt and winking as she blew by me on the last hill as if this was the easiest thing she had ever done in her life.

8 ) Went to an Omaha Royals baseball game.They had canned food day and if you brought one perishable item you got in free. We took in the baseball game for a grand total of about 50 cents worth of creamed corn. SWEET! I applied sunscreen heavily (and by “heavily” I mean I douched my entire body with half the bottle) before we went in and it did not have enough time to soak in my skin before I started sweating profusely. Before I knew it, I was covered in white slimy stuff dripping off of me like I just ran through a wall of bird crap. I had to go out by the concessions stands and wipe myself down with napkins to the tune of appalled looks and curious faces on little kids. It had been awhile since I had been to a baseball game, though, and I really did enjoy myself!

9) Went to Hu Hot. After baking in the hot sun at the baseball game and working up an appetite, we decided to finally use a gift card from one of Jaci’s friends that was from Christmas 2007 for Hu Hot Mongolian Grill. If you aren’t familiar with this chain of restaurants, it is basically a buffet. Only, at this buffet, you are given a bowl and a HUGE  table full of raw ingredients. You walk along that table filling your bowl with meats, vegetables, noodles, tofu and sauces until it is spilling over the sides. At the end of the table you give it to a grill master who is sporting two large metal spatula looking things and he dumps your bowl of stuff on the grill and throws it around and up in the air, etc. and then transplants the whole shebang onto a plate. I ended up devouring 2 bowls of food, a bowl of fried rice, a bowl of salad and a pitcher of Coke (a-cola). It definitely appeared as if I was attempting to counteract my 4 mile run earlier that day by about 400%.

10) Got a marriage license. Surprisingly, in Nebraska the formal, official and legal process of saying you are going spend the rest of your life with somebody only takes a short form (one side of one sheet of paper) and about 15 minutes of sitting there trying to read National Geographic en Espanol while the thing gets typed up by some blond bimbo who calls herself the Register of Deeds (more like Registered D-Cups). It was pretty easy and pretty painless and only took 2 quarters (30 minutes) in the parking meter!