Tuesday - after having stayed up very late the night before chatting with Mike NTPB about everything from law school to wedding plans to how I'm going to be the next Chuck Klosterman / Bill Simmons of pop philo writing, I got out of bed early early - I mean, around 2 in the AM, after having gone to bed at 1 - thanks to the throbbing pain in my toes. Seems I didn't tie my shoes tightly enough in Monday night's debacle of a frisbee game, so in addition to suffering the humilation of a lopsided defeat in front of my friends and families, I was suffering the particularly exquisite pain of blood blisters in the beds of my second toes. If you are an Ulty person or have ever otherwise had this misfortune befall you, you know that it's not a tolerable state - the toes just throb incessantly, so sleeping becomes impossible. The only solution is to release the fluid, either with a sterilized needle or a sterilized small cut in the nail. Being the squeamish type and fearing the needle in nailbed impact, I opted for the latter. This carries it's own crappiness, as now your nail is not as anchored and can wiggle around and hurt some more. Suffice it - no sleep that night; I ended up doing the wake up every twenty minutes thing until about 4:30 when I said screw it and got up and continued grading exams.
(Real-time interlude - I just had to chase away two little girls who were climbing our orange tree in the front "yard." Their parent (I presume) was standing in the driveway next door, not ten feet away, watching them climb a tree on someone else's property, doing / saying nothing. And she gave me crap about not letting the girls have fun. WTF people. How about *not* letting your offspring trespass and render me liable for their injuries. Dig?)
The iPFam were still houseguesting (my parents stayed in a hotel around the corner for the first few nights, as thanks to Fred taking up a bedroom, there are only two guestable suites in the Jones household these days) as they would not head for California until Wednesday morning, and they dictated the morning schedule. Their stay was actually something of a blur, because almost every day looked something like this - and actually, this is captured directly from the iPMM's itinerary:
8:00ish - Get out of bed, breakfast, coffee.
9:00ish - Look up from iPhone to notice that it's already 9:00.
9:01 - Declare "Alright, I am going to the gym. Things to do today!"
10:00 - Look up from iPhone briefly to nod to the iPJ as he declares he is "going for a walk."
10:45 - Look up from iPhone to notice that it's already 10:45.
10:46 - Redeclare, "Okay, *now* I am going to the gym."
11:00 - Go to gym.
1:00 - Get back from gym, sometimes with other people's underwear in tow.
1:01 - Declare, "I am going to take a shower so we can do X."
2:30 - Look up from iPhone to notice it's 2:30. Redeclare shower-esque intentions.
3:30 - Put down non-waterproof iPhone to facilitate shower.
4:00 - Shower finished, attack world. With iPhone in hand!
I kid, I kid. A little. But things were quite relaxed, which was great for that Tuesday - we lounged about and got ready, and Dad and Mom came over about 10:30 so Mike, Dad and I could head to a Cubs spring training game in Mesa. In the meantime, Mom, the iPMM and Beck went to Practical Art and kept them afloat in these troubled times, and the iPJ spread the word of Apple as far north as Camelback and 24th, where he ran into the Apple Store and lost track of time. The Cubs game was really, really quick, about 2 hours, so we came back and hung out about the house for a while. I am pretty sure this is the day where the news about the Texas Board of Education dropping Thomas Jefferson from the political philosophy curricula of high school text books (in favor of John Calvin, no less) came out, drawing some offhand "Texas should secede" remarks from the iPJ which in turn drew some "get a rope" commentary from the visiting Texas contingent. Remarkably, Civil War Part Deux did not break out in the Flower House, so we chilled in the living room for the afternoon and, over e-mail across the house, decided to go to Hula for dinner, where a great meal was had by all. Mike regaled us with tales of NYC, we had beers, burgers and ribs, delicious stuff.
We rushed home to catch Lost - really, it was an experiment in seeing if my parents, who had never seen an episode and knew nothing about the show, could track what the hey was happening. They could, more or less, but I don't think they were entirely sold on the show. We said adios (for the time being) to the iPFam as they headed to a Marriott before trekking to CA in the AM. And then, because we had to, we took Mike and my parents to MoJo. They were QUITE sold on that (as was Mike - we may have to start referring to Beck and her efforts to spread the good word as the MoJoJ). Headed home, and despite my best efforts to stay awake and hang with NTPB, I crashed at about 10. Pretty solid accomplishment given the 0 sleep the night before. Oh, and we also moved the Nyetfam into the guest room and got ready for what would happen when a Fred confronted a C-Pap machine (answer: nothing). A good Tuesday.
Monday morning was my first official day of spring break, so I woke up really early to grade. Sorry for the boring theme... Beck headed back to work that day after a pleasant week off hanging with the iPFam. My main mission was to successfully take everyone to lunch AND pick up Mike NTPB from the airport, not an easy task - got everyone over to the house and ready to go by 11 or so. We ate at Sacks, a sandwich place not to far from the homestead, and it was FANTASTIC. Love that place! I bugged out a little early and picked up Mike effectively in stride from the airport; didn't have to stop int he cell phone lot or anything, just pulled up right as he walked out with his bag. BAM! We headed home and hung around the pool for a bit, chatting with Mom and the iPMM about proposals, wedding plans, and trying to predict what accident would occur during this iP-NTPB interaction (nothing much - a knocked over glass of water; no bull-rides or eye infections this time). Mike and I headed to the fields at 5 to throw a bit before the start of the terrible, terrible 3BK game; there was a lot of talk of having Mike play with us, but we decided to stick to the rules. A lot of fun to hang and throw with Mike and have him and the fams at the game, even if it was a travesty of Ultimate.
We, as you will recall, played savage, and I ran my face off, leaving me exhausted after the game. This did not stop everyone from asking me where we should go to dinner - I just remember being so tired I could barely think and people staring at me. We decided on Jerry's for convenience's sake - it's a 24 hour diner close to our house and close to my parents' hotel, so it got the job done (even if I can't say it was the highest quality breakfast fare I've had, it did the salt-replenishing trick after the savagery). Beck got a milkshake that was super tasty, as I recall. We came home, Mike and I stayed up very late talking, and little did I know that my toes were swelling in my shoes all the while...
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