enchiladas and grief

Charlie slept at my place and then left to take Mac on car type errands. I called him in the afternoon and inquired if they wanted to go to disc golf, which we did at Endicott along with Ben. It was warm but windy, I didn’t keep score. Mac had a horrible cold and gave it to me. A nice day to be outside though. I went home and called Charlie a little while later to see if he wanted to have dinner with me, he wasn’t hungry yet and invited me to the gym with him and C. They played basketball for about 2 hours and I worked out in abundance. I invited them both to come for dinner but only Charlie showed up. I made enchiladas with stuff from cans and leftover thanksgiving turkey and they were amazingly delicious. Those are definitely going onto the recipe rotation. We hung out and played cards for a while then Charlie started talking about going back to his place to get some work done. Instead we got into an awkward conversation and stayed up half the night talking. He slept here.

 

this was not the best day ever

Woke Charlie up in the early afternoon for disc golf, we ate a lunch of leftover pizza and energy bars and went to Sioux Passage.  I didn’t keep score but I didn’t do very well, Charlie did well overall but with a few shitty holes.  He took me home because he had people coming over to watch basketball.  I went back to his place shortly after he dropped me off to reclaim my vacuum cleaner that he borrowed before thanksgiving.  Ate dinner and watched TV in the evening.  Charlie called in the late evening and asked if I wanted to go to steak n shake.  He made an awkward confession and we went to eat and then late night grocery shopping.  Came back to my place and the fight got worse.  I considered sending him home then thought better of it.  We stayed up late and he slept here.

 

the last beautiful 70 degree day…

Woke up early to deal with the last details of getting my car fixed, went back to sleep.  Cuddles with Charlie, he took a friend to the airport, I cleaned his room.  We came back to my apartment to eat the last of the meat/fruit stew for lunch and then went to Collinsville for disc golf.  I didn’t keep score because it was windy and I was cheating a lot.  Lovely day, lots of fun.  Charlie went to basketball and I moved my remaining outdoors plants inside to prepare for the coming cold, picked up my car and ran a couple errands.  He came over after basketball to shower and then we went to the Crazy Bowl on olive.  We’d never tried it before and it was a mongolian wok/pseudo asian hybrid.  Really good food, if a bit pricey.  I came home to contemplate packing for thanksgiving vacation but didn’t get very far with that.  It’s really too bad this is the end of the lovely weather, there’s talk of snow tomorrow.  I guess one can’t complain for 2/3 through November.

 

mexican banquet

Charlie had slept here and we were very lazy, not getting out of bed til 2.  We rounded up Mac and M. and headed to Endicott for some disc golf.  I didn’t keep score and it was an enjoyable round on a sunny warm day until… Mac lost his keys.  That turned into an unfortunate game of hunt the keys around the course which was amazingly unsuccessful due to all the leaves on the ground.  We went back to check M.’s place but no luck, so Charlie and I went to help Mac break into his apartment.  Fortunately, he’d left the back door unlocked by mistake so no burglary was necessary.  I was a little disappointed.  We went to Charlie’s place to play some video games before dinner, when A. appeared – having lost the keys to the home he was dogsitting at.  A day of lost keys all around.

We went to Mi Ranchito with pretty much the entire group of usual suspects who were in town instead of at LA conference.  Dinner was tasty, then Mac and Charlie and I played some more video games and went to the man house for the Lebowski challenge. No one attempted the challenge, I only drank 0.9 of a white russian (alcohol wasn’t sounding that great after thursday).  Later I played beer pong on a team with Mac and we did pretty well.  Headed home with Charlie, he was drunk, we ate leftover chimichangas in the kitchen and giggled a lot and headed to bed.

 

i don’t like indiana

So we woke up all bright and early to get going!  See the city! Do fun things!  The nicest Days Inn ever had a free breakfast buffet in the restaurant, so we went to that.  It was kind of gross, hehe.  The eggs were scrambled wet (ick) and the texture was funny.  Sausages were tasty except they’d been doused in salt.  Oatmeal was probably the worst oatmeal I’ve ever eaten, it was gluey yet watery and had no flavor.  The struedel was good and the juice was decent! That’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Fortified, we headed to a park to play disc golf.  Problem: park was in ghetto, roads didn’t connect, park was very hard to find.  Once we got there we couldn’t find where the course started.  We left in annoyance to go to the state park that’s right downtown and contains museums, zoo, etc.  Sounds like it should be good, right?  Alas, there was no signage, we couldn’t find the zoo, we didn’t want to go to the NCAA museum and there was a canal was full of seaweed that smelled really bad.  We walked along the canal anyway and found a map about half an hour later indicating where the zoo was.  But we were irritated and didn’t want to pay for the zoo and didn’t want to go to museums and honestly, most of Indianapolis smelled bad.

So we left and somewhere before Terre Haute we were almost run off the road by a semi.  Charlie and I were in a very bad car accident a couple years ago so this incident gave us the shakes.  We stopped somewhere just across the border in IL to have lunch at a pizza hut $5 lunch buffet which was quite awesome.  The pizza was fresh and tasty and they had a dessert pizza which was deliciously apple pie-esque.  Plus, only $5!  Cheapest buffet ever.  And the employees were really nice and offered us frequent buffet-eater cards which we sadly had to decline, since I doubt we will ever eat at that pizza hut again.

I drove and Charlie slept since we were both tired.  We’d managed to stay up pretty late the night before for no good reason.  We headed to the Centralia IL disc golf course, but only Charlie played.  I was too tired and just wanted to walk and take photos of the fall foliage.  He got a -2, which was damn impressive.  We headed home and had a nap at my place and when I woke up my kidneys hurt.  Bleh.  Charlie went home and I felt mopey but he called shortly thereafter and invited me over for video games and distraction from suffering.  So we hung out and watched NBA basketball and played video games and I eventually went home to sleep.

 

the month is one third over already, gah

Charlie slept here, we slept in, dragged ourselves out of bed around noon to make calls and see if anyone wanted to go to disc golf. No one was picking up their phones, so we meandered back to bed for some quality time. Finally got out of bed for good, ate some of Upstairs Neighbor’s meat for lunch and went to disc golf by ourselves. I scored a par +20 which apparently is the best I’ve ever done at Endicott. I think I’d rather call it bogeys + 2, honestly, it sounds better that way. Charlie dropped me off at home and said he was going to have a man evening but he’d call me if they went out.

I putzed around, went to marshalls to return some stuff and found new stuff to acquire instead. Of course. I bought a down jacket that is toasty warm, but I’m not sure it’s big enough. I seriously considered buying a new dressy winter coat, there were a couple that were really nice looking but I wasn’t sure I could spend $130 on a coat I won’t wear all that much. I’d rather buy a $130 down jacket that I’ll wear all the time. I bought a dressy-ish coat at target the other day but Charlie says it looks like a bathrobe (due to belt) and I agree, the belt was not the best feature (the $50 price was). So I think that one will go back. But I have to do something, I only own one coat that is remotely nice looking but it’s a size 12 and was too big even before I lost weight. It was a bad style for my body shape, in that it was small in the chest and the shoulders. So the size 10, which would have been at least a better fit overall, was too tight in the chest and the arms pulled when I reached forward. I think I have a weirdly shaped body; for any clothing items that don’t stretch I need them to be average to large in the shoulders (for the size 6/8 I wear), HUGE in the chest but small across the back and in the waist. Which almost nothing ever is. I swear, if you wear that size you’re either not supposed to have boobs bigger than a 34A or you’re not supposed to wear bras that do any sort of lifting. Additionally I’m fairly short waisted so the below the hip styles of the last year or so have been awful. Ah well.

Drove by Charlie’s on the way home and his car wasn’t there. Apparently he went out and did not call me, that bastard.

 

plants, back outside!

I had brought my plants in for a couple days due to frost but it’s 60something again in the daytime so they’re back outside.  They fare better out there since they get way more sunlight so I try to leave them out as long as possible.  Charlie was supposed to come sleep here last night but when I woke up he wasn’t here so I figured he fell asleep on the couch.  Talked to him around noon, he’d been up all night but wanted to go play disc golf anyway.  We went to Jefferson Barracks and on the way there stopped for lunch at Cafe Natasha on Grand (Persian food).  I’d been there once before and had some sort of kabob wrap and remembered it being really good.  We had falafal which was ok but nothing special.  I had a chicken koubidah kabob wrap and it was just as good as I remembered, and Charlie had a beef/lamb koubidah with seasoned rice.  He liked his meat a lot, I wasn’t terribly excited but that’s probably because I’m not a beef eater.  I liked his rice a lot, he thought it was ok.  Tasty lunch overall.

Disc golf was a travesty, it was windy and we were both horrible.  Charlie did ok on the front 9 but then things went downhill after that, and I was bad from the start.  I think I hit a tree on at least 2 of every 3 throws that weren’t putts.  I did make one crazy putt though where I threw blindly over a clump of trees and bounced the disc off a tree and into the basket from about 50 feet away.  After that we headed to the mall to get some xbox games and such for Charlie’s new xbox 360.  We came back to my place where he napped for a couple hours, then we went to his place to watch basketball (and in my case, poke around on the internet).  Played some FIFA, made a frozen pizza for a late dinner, got tired, came  back to my place to sleep.

 

wednesday, featuring music

Slept at Charlie’s, got up around noon and ran some errands.  Did not get out of PJs before errands, resulting in lunch at panera while wearing said PJs.  I’m sure I look enough like a college student that it wasn’t that awful, everyone probably figured I’d been pulling an all nighter.  We’ve concluded that the panera in the loop is of dubious quality, my sandwich was ready about 10 minutes before Charlie’s was and his had very little meat in it.  Went back to my place to get dressed for disc golf.  We started heading north before realizing we actually wanted to go to Collinsville.  Took the very roundabout way, 170 north to 70 east to a minor detour in downtown after we missed the 64 east exit to 55 to Collinsville.  Whew!  The sun was getting low in the sky so we played a very brisk round, I think it took us about 1:15.  Not bad and we were done before the sun set.  I didn’t keep score because I did fairly well but I also took quite a few do-overs.

Charlie dropped me off at home and told me to come over to his place whenever for the concert this evening.  I had some of Upstairs Neighbor’s meat for dinner, it was pretty good.  Got dressed up slightly slutty-like but I’m not sure anyone noticed.  Didn’t make it over to Charlie’s til 9:30 or so and then we headed avec carpool with the usual suspects to the Atomic Cowboy.  It’s a pretty cool place, one side is a standard bar with food available earlier in the day and the other side is live music/lounge and there’s a nice backyard with a giant firepit.  We hung out in the yard for a while but it was a bit cold even with the fire.  The band was bluesy/honkey tonk and rather enjoyable.  We were there for quite a while and then headed next door to a conveniently located diner.  The service was horrible but the food was quite good, especially the tater tot-esqe items.  Headed home with Charlie, we slept at my place.

 

daylight cravings

Slept at Charlie’s due to smoke detector situation, the fix-it guy called at 9am so I had to drag myself back over there so he could change its batteries/take it away/smash it to smithereens. The silence that followed was rather blissful, although fix-it guy then informed me I’d installed my furnace air filter facing the wrong direction. Oh, the shame. I never realized there was a right and wrong direction, since the cheap-o filters my landlady provides look exactly the same on both sides. I don’t exactly know why he was inspecting my filter in the first place, but it’s nice to know that sort of thing.

Went back to Charlie’s place and went back to bed, then went home and had lunch and showered. Charlie called a little later to see if I was coming to disc golf, so I meandered back to his place and we picked up M. and Mac and went to Endicott. Had a fun time there, I didn’t keep score and none of us did all that well, but I made some good shots. We were leaving the park at 5:15 and by the last couple holes it was almost too dark to play. Dark at 5pm kind of makes me weep, it seems like such a short time ago it was still light at 9. I could accept dark at 5something in the winter, but I do so hate those shortest days where it’s dark not long after 4. I realize I and 4 billion other people are complaining about this today.

Had dinner, moved most of my plants inside since we were due for first frost tonight or tomorrow.  Went to target to return a bunch of stuff that I didn’t really need. In exchange, bought some stuff I didn’t really need. That’s always the way with the target, it sort of conspires to suck money out of you. Talked to Charlie briefly, watched some tv, played some computer games, went to bed.

 

hardly november

Did some reading and whatnot, called Charlie to see if he wanted to get outside on a lovely sunny warm (70 degree?) day. He did and we decided to play tennis, and then amended it to racketball. Went to Tarjay to buy another racketball racket and some odds and ends and then realized we didn’t have the other racket so re-amended the plan to tennis again. Played at the park off of the FPP and Pershing (Flynn park), had a good time. Decided to go play disc golf afterwards, headed to Endicott. My prediction was right, this week did indeed feature an abundance of disc golf. I didn’t keep score, haven’t been doing so lately, but it was a pretty decent round.

We went back to Charlie’s place and ate leftover Shu Feng for dinner and found ourselves feeling very, very sleepy (MSG?). We decided a nap would be a good idea before a rock n roll show so we went to sleep for hmm, he told me later that it was 1h 45min but it didn’t seem that long. I ran home to get ready and he did likewise and we headed to C.’s show. We both got dressed up like real people, which was amusing. I wore a dress and 4 inch heels and towered, which was very amusing. Everyone thought my dress was “vintage” instead of a $16 marshalls special, which was exceedingly amusing. No doubt the compliments would have been less profuse had they known the truth. We ran into N. the touchy feely chick again and she told us all about her history of car accidents. Band #1 was pretty good, C.’s band put on a great show, and band #3 was ehhh…. so we left and went to the City Diner, where I tried to order a banana split and was informed that the bananas were bad. I settled for cheesecake, which was ok, but I was disappointed since the thought of the split was the reason I had wanted to go there in the first place.

I went to bed at Charlie’s (although he stayed up) but we headed to my place in the wee hours of the morning so I could feed the cat. Also, C. had come home with a girl so that was incentive to make ourselves scarce. At my place the smoke detector in the attic was going off without cessation despite the lack of smoke and/or fire. A nuisance to say the least, but not much we could do about it at 4am. Charlie said he slept fine but it disturbed my dreams. Despite that, a good day.