Good news follows…

Friday night was a lot of fun. ross_winn and hel_ana, returning from a refreshing night of room service and late night television in a hotel room after having not seen each other in many months (all they did was watch TV, damnit…that’s the visual I’m putting in my head, and that’s the one I’m sticking with…but watching TV must be pretty brutal….they had bruises and stuff), came over for a night of dinner and theater. Ross cooked a lovely dinner that included a salad with almonds an apples, pork chops, roasted peppers and zucchini. Unfortunately, Karen doesn’t eat pork chops or peppers, so she ended up having tofu dogs. Beyond that minor hiccup, it was a great meal.

Drove up to Clearwater and picked up our friend Brandy, and then we bolted over to Tampa to see the show. It was a really interesting drive, because for most of it we got to hear the ins and outs of how difficult it is going to be for Adrienne to legally enter America so that she and Ross and get married. It would be a HELL of a lot easier for Ross to go to Canada, but because of his children this isn’t a feasible course of action.

So we went to The Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center to see The Bible : The Complete Works of God (abridged). This is the second show from the The Reduced Shakespeare Company that the trio of David Jenkins, Jason Evans and Shawn Panoessa have performed, and yet again I was blown away by their comic timing, chemistry as an ensemble, and general ability to make me laugh until my sides hurt. This was not as good of a show as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) by a long shot, but it was still brilliantly funny. Unlike Shakespearethere were some periods of this show that just didn’t seem to work, and it ended up being more of a roller coaster ride than a constant high of hilarity. I do not, however, fault the actors for this. They were amazing, and the (very obvious) personal touches they brought to the show made it all the better (the highlight of them being David doing a Gollum impression over a broken toy ark…I about pissed myself). Of course, as they know who I am I was a target for the audience participation section of the show. Brandy, Karen and Adrienne got pulled on stage as well. This was the biggest complaint that Karen had about the show, because she absolutely hates being on stage as “herself.” It really kind of brought her down for a while, but I think she would still say she enjoyed the show.

After the show we tried to go over to Hops on Fowler to see my ol friend Derrick Hudson tending bar, but Hops closes at midnight and we got there right afterwards. I called Derrick an left a message to tell him we were going to be at the Steak and Shake just down the road, and we went to go have a late night snack. Well, Brandy, Ross and Adrienne did. I only had five bucks on me, and that was money Brandy had given me for gas. I’m well aware that someone would have gotten me some food if I had asked, and Brandy even offered, but there is only so often I want my friends to spot me for meals. I’ll be able to cover myself again very soon, so in the mean time I’ll do without on occasion. No biggie. Derrick showed up, dead tired, about 45 minutes after we got there. The man is killing himself. He has been working double shifts 6 days a week and was doing so again on Saturday and Sunday. Then Sunday night he was going to drive to Washington, D.C. to work up there for a week. He had this complete glazed over look in his eyes the whole time he was sitting with us, and even started nodding off a few times.

We came home after dropping Brandy off, Ross and Adrienne went to go watch more late night television, and Karen went to bed. I decided, for some reason, to go on a binge eating fest. This hasn’t really happened in a while, and it was pretty bad. I ended up eating sausages and cookies and chips and drinking soda. It hadn’t really stopped yesterday, either. I kind of kept doing it all day long. Don’t know what has inspired it. Maybe general frustration and being tired of not being at my goal weight yet. I’ve been doing this for two years now. I’ve been around the same weight since August. I look good. I look damned good. I’m healthier. I’m happier. But I’m not there yet, and I want to be, and I’m just tired of worrying about it. I haven’t exercised regularly since…oh…August? What a coincidence. Finding the motivation to get back to that has been next to impossible.

Hey…I went, off on a tangent, didn’t I?

So I finally forced myself to go to bed on Friday night so I wouldn’t eat anymore. Got up Saturday morning to…GO EAT SOME MORE!

Adrienne has been talking about Dim Sum for about as long as I’ve known her. It’s apparently her favorite type of dining out experience, and she has always made it sound wonderful. So her goal this trip was to take us all out for Dim Sum. We met at a place in Clearwater called Forbidden City. It’s not a Dim Sum restaurant per se…They serve Dim Sum, but they also have regular menu items, so we didn’t get the whole “cart” experience where they just bring by food and you pick what you want, but it was wonderful anyway. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Dim Sum is a type of Chinese dining where you order a bunch of small dishes and everyone shares. The whole point is supposed to be that it’s a much more interactive and social dining experience. The food was awesome, including the Gogee Salmon soup that I started with. My favorite type of dining? No, I wouldn’t say that, but it’s definitely one of the better experiences I’ve had.

Did some running around with Karen after that. Went to Best Buy where she picked up Much Ado About Nothing, Metropolis, and Ghost in the Shell with a gift certificate that Brooks and Holly gave her for Christmas. It’s funny, but last night she and I were talking about when she moves out, and it’s going to be like a divorce. “No, that was MY movie!” “Is not! You gave it to me as a gift!” Should be fun.

Dinner last night was more sausage badness along with some fresh humus that Karen made, then Ross and Adrienne came over to force me to watch some silly Canadian movie called Men with Brooms. It’s a comedy about curling. And beavers. I played like I didn’t want to see it, but I was actually interested. It’s funny how Adrienne is all gung ho about these Canadian films, eh? Other than some pretty biting depictions of Americans an a REALLY off color joke about the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion (guess it’s not quite the taboo subject in Canada as it is here), I really enjoyed the movie. It was especially nice to see Leslie Neilsen doing something other than being a goofball and sleepwalking through a part.

Capped off last night with a few hours of Literati from Yahoo Games with celestialaddict and super_dave. It was nice to spend a few hours with Robin just playing games and talking. It’s the closest equivalent we have to a date with the distance. I only managed
to win one game, even using all the online resources at my disposal. Damnit. The whole time we played I scanned in a new photos to put up on the web site, and I’m going to keep working on them today. Should have a whole slew of new images up tomorrow.

And that, to date, has been my weekend so far. I’ve spent the last few hours talking to Robin while I was typing this. It’s her son Bailey’s birthday today, though, so I won’t have her for much longer. It’s all good. The Bucs are on at three.


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