It has been a long long weekend. Vaccation as it happens, getting rid of a week's worth of time that I had left for the year. Didn't have anything special to do, but that doesn't mean I didn't do tons and enjoy (almost)every minute of it.

Things started off slow with wednesday, a day dedicated thoroughly to accomplishing nothing. Nothing at all. Not totally, I got my reading done for thursday and set my alarm and even played plenty of planetside. Thoroughly harmless activities ended in a nights sleep.

On thursday, my true tasks began, with waking up, 6:45 am, cleaning up and shipping out for school. Took the quiz, then packed up after the lecture and headed downtown to deliver the EPA sample from last month. From there, I went even further to south houston, mind you, I left school at 9:20, and dropping off the EPA sample took 5 minutes to get off highway 59, drop off the sample, and get right back on to head straight for the DPS office in southwest Houston. I did not arive at my final destination until 11:00 or so. I spent a good bit of time there waiting, though not as much as I might have, it was clear I was in an easy line and the place was far from full, so I must have picked a fair day and time, and eventually came to accomplish and reap the fruits of my labors and waiting. I payed off the fine for my driver's license, and renewed it so that I am now in possesion of a valid driver's license and all the privlidges of such. Namely, I can drive and not get arrested if I pull over.

After that I headed home, stopping only for a little bit of grocery shopping.

The rest of the day was spent reading, or with planetside, with one or two calls to my dad. I think I might have hung out at IHOP with everyone.

Friday was spent mostly in lethargic waiting, waking up late, and then eating late, and then heading to my dad's house and bringing his birthday present with me. I got there around 4:20 or so, just in time to help Mary Ellen move things around and clean out the upstairs to prepare for company for the weekend. Then, when they were both gone, I watched the food network until Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Karen got here for the weekend. It was great to see them, and I really enjoyed talking to them about everything they had been up to. (Dad didn't open his bday present because we were all opening presents that day, even though his bday had been last week)

We all ate soup that Mary Ellen made for dinner when both she and dad got back home. Presents were opened, dad and Mary Ellen got tons of dishes, and cups and very nice trinkets, I got some soup, and some chipotle peppers in a glass pepper grinder and a recipey book from Aunt Karen, and I got the Star Wars Trillogy on dvd, and a couple of books that I really wanted from grandma and grandpa. Everyone got something though, I got some dishes for Aunt Karen, artichoke styled, and a kangaroo for grandma, and for dad's birthday I got him some cookies(extremely fancy) and a case of the best hot chocolate I could find. He is a chocolate nut, I personally need other flavors mixed with my chocolate to make it palpatable. Then, when everyone was good and tired, I departed, around about 11 o'clock.

I stayed up late and didn't get back till 12:30 the next day. On the way I stopped to pick up a male male hose connector to let me bypass my heater core in my car. It was leaking and letting coolant in the cab. It's really cold all the time in my car now, but better that than breathing antifreeze all the time. When I got there, it was too hot to work on, and only Mary Ellen and Grandpa were there. We talked about maybe using my recipe book to do some cooking for dinner that evening and we ended up going to the grocery store when everyone was back at the house. We ended up buying the ingredients for cooking Shrim Diablo, rosemary roasted and skewered potatoes, and corn on the cob.

It was all awesome when it was finished. I'm going to cook the shrim again this weekend I think, and I'm going to put it on a bed of pasta instead of serving corn on the cob. I might even flambay it instead of grilling it, and do some deep frying of some other small recipes in conjunction with it, adding some rum so that I can light it up in a frying pan. The potatoes were really incredible, since we had fresh rosemary from the backyard, and we used it as skewers too so that it flavored the potatoes from the inside. From now on, when I want fresh rosemary, that was the first time I'd ever had rosemary, I'm going to jump my dad's fence with a pair of scissors and steal it from his backyard. As for the corn... it was good enough that Grandma wrote down the recipe I used for it, which was really simple, butter, black pepper, garlic, and ginger wrapped up in foil and grilled till the foil was darkened and seared.

Went home around ten that night, everyone was tired early, probably cause we ate so well. My dad and I had had a bit of a disagreement about me fixing my truck just as soon as we were starting cooking. I had to do it, and it had to be done before it got dark. We talked it over and we're all better now though.

I got there early enough to have breakfast with everyone the next day, even though I went to sleep at 3 a.m. I stayed for quite a while watching documentaries about star wars with dad after everybody left to go back to Dallas. I got my sister's telephone number and then I went to hang out with Mike, Marcia, and George for the rest of the evening at IHOP, and then George came to my apartment and we watched Star Wars docs.

Monday was spent sleeping mostly, and reading for school on Tuesday. Tuesday was spent getting rejected for title transfer for the truck from my boss to me. That will finally be taken care of later on this month, after a few other things are done, and then there was more card playing with Mike, Marcia, and George, and then George and I watched Return of the Jedi.

At around 3 am last night, I went to sleep and considered my vacation officially over. I loved it. I'd do it again if I could. Work will be nice though. I spent too much money on things like driver's licenses, books, and rent. I need to save.