When You Are Engulfed In Flames

Shannon and I had a four day weekend to celebrate the nation's 232nd birthday.

On Thursday I got up bright and early to head down to the DMV and renew my drivers license that expired a few weeks back. I then came home and picked up Shannon and headed to Hacienda where we planned to spend hours upon hours at the theater, taking in 4 movies. Well we got through Wall-E (super good) and Iron Man (also really good) before Shannon had had enough of the big screen. Instead of buying tickets to our next planned move, The Hulk, we headed over to Barnes & Noble to pick up some books and budgeting and starting a bar/restaurant (that's a whole other blog post, but yes, I have a few bars I would like to open). We then headed home and relaxed for a few hours before heading off to dinner with Charlie and my pops. The Elephant Bar in Dublin is now open, and we had to wait about a half hour before getting a seat. But thats ok, the food was good and the E-Teas were quite refreshing. After dinner we all went back to the apartment to watch Dan in Real Life (not really what I expected, but good).

Friday morning was spent cleaning the house and shopping. My dad was coming back out to BBQ and celebrate the 4th. We got the place all cleaned up and headed to the store to buy the food: a combination of steak, chicken and hot smoked sausage worked out quite well. In addition to my dad, Charlie & Pletcher showed up, as well as Jake, Melissa and little Adelaide. We had a great time just sitting, eating good food, drinking good beer, and chatting. We also watched Drillbit Taylor (dumb). With BBQ & Beer left over, we decided to host a poker night the next day to help move through the food and drink, as well as to see some other friends.

We spent Saturday morning cleaning again and setting up the house for two tables of poker along with enough sitting room for those not playing. We had a pretty good turn out with 10 players: Charlie, Pletcher, Tyler, Jake, John May, Ron, Cate, Lori, Karen and myself. We also had a number of people rooting us on: Adelaide, Melissa, Allison, Sarah, Laura and Shannon. We had a blast - Ron ended up taking the tournament, with Charlie in second place and me taking third.

Sunday will be spent relaxing and reading the latest David Sedaris book, When You Are Engulfed In Flames. I'm a huge fan of Sedaris, and I can't wait to dig into this book. He mostly writes about growing and how insane his family is. I definitely recommend checking out his stuff.