July 11

Well, another weekend has come and gone. This one went kind of quick because I worked half of it. Sometime during the day, while I was asleep, my boss called and asked if I would work a few hours on Saturday. While asleep, I tend to agree to anything. So, I started work on Friday at ten like usual. When I got there I looked at the schedule and it said that I would get off at six as usual, but then I had to be back at eight and stay until noon. So, if I went home, I would just have to turn around and go back to work. Not a great way to start the weekend, but what else was I going to do? I just stayed for those two hours and hung out in the break room reading. When noon came around, everything wasn’t done. So, I asked how much longer everyone was going to be, because normally, I wouldn’t be able to leave until it was all completed. The guys said that they had a lot more to do, and they were scheduled until three thirty. So, I called and left a message for my boss asking if I should stay. She didn’t answer, so I waited for a while. Finally, after about a half hour, I got hold of her and she said to just go. So, I didn’t get off until 12:30. On the way home, my wife called and said that she was going to have to work that evening at her job. So, instead of going to sleep, I stayed awake until she had to leave. You would think that I would have slept all night, but nope, in the middle of the night, I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep. I think I’m just too used to being up all night. Still, it throws a monkey wrench into the weekend.
We were going to take my granddaughter to the zoo on Sunday until we found out how much it was going to cost. Of late, she has been asking us about animals. She likes us to pull up pictures of them on the computer. So, sometime last week, I said that we should go to the zoo. Big mistake. Every day afterward, she asked when we were going to go. I didn’t think anything about it, and just told her on the weekend. I wouldn’t mind going to the zoo. I sounded like something fun. My daughter looked up the price, it is thirteen dollars per adult and eight dollars for my granddaughter. That’s nearly fifty bucks just to get in for me, my wife, my daughter and my granddaughter. Then, we would have to eat something and I can only imagine how much it would cost there. And, since we’re trying to save for my eldest daughter’s graduation from boot camp, I didn’t think it was a good idea to go. So, we took her to a little carnival outside the mall. It was ok. The tickets for the rides were a dollar each but all of the rides took between three to five tickets. I’m sure we would have spent quite a bit on rides if it wasn’t for the rain. It came at the best possible time. We bought twenty tickets and were about halfway through them. So, we went to target for an hour or so to walk around and wait out the rain. By the time we left, it was getting late, so we finished out the tickets and didn’t buy anymore. My daughter did treat my granddaughter to one of the games. She won a huge light blue blowup monkey. We named it Squeaky and even got a picture of it strapped to one of the rides with her. So, the day turned out pretty good.
Since Saturday was a work day, Monday came pretty quickly. I usually go visit my mom on Monday’s before taking a nap so I can make it through the night at work. My daughter went with me this time because she wanted to drive. She is getting better at driving, but she still needs some work. I don’t know how it happened, but me letting her drive out to my mom’s turned into her driving everywhere we went for the whole day. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t like being a passenger for that long. But, she needs the practice. She’s eligible for her license next month. So, we have to get a move-on in teaching her and letting her get as much practice as possible. I know that there are restrictions on her license for the first year, so I don’t think she will be able to drive out of state. But, I can already hear her begging us to let her drive on the trip to South Carolina.
The Rockies took the series from the Nationals, but we lost the last of the three games. Actually, we were shutout. That’s not the way I would have liked us to finish before the All Star Break. But, what can you do. We’ll start up again on Thursday and hopefully Carlos Gonzales will be healthy. We are officially 43-48, five games under five hundred and nine games out of first in the west. But, we’re a late in the year team, so I’m sure we’re going to use the All Star Break to get our you-know-what together and come back with a bang. Hopefully Milwaukee won’t know what hit them. Then, we have the Braves at home. They swept us all four games last week. We need some revenge for that. We’ll see what happens.
Well, I better get to work. I’m going to work on the Great Detective and Gremlin Planet tonight. I’m putting Heart, Led Zeppelin, Queen into the playlist for background music.
-Thom