We ended up going to the 10:30 church service today because we stayed up too late watching The Man in the Iron Mask. The service was really good though today. Mike Ashcraft, the preacher, was ending a series about worshipping. The music was particularly good, and after the service I told Chris Kuhne, who was leading the music today. It just really helped set the tone, and it was very energetic.

When we were walking to the car we saw Rob Peterson and Kristen Barriner. They invited us to lunch, but a couple minutes later Kristen called back and said they forgot they were planning on just picking up lunch and going out to the beach. She asked if we wanted to go do that with them, but we had a few things on tap already. I think that was a record for the time it took them to cancel plans on us. I like them a lot, but it sure is hard to nail down plans with them.

The biggest thing we did was to pick up an elliptical trainer. Amanda and I had talked about getting one for some time, so we finally did it. The thing wasn’t cheap, but I guess it’s less expensive than two gym memberships for a year. It was also a pain in the ass to get home. The box was just a little too big to fit in the trunk of the Jetta even with the backdeats down, so we started taking thigns out of the bo and crunching it down so it would be narrow enough.

Getting it out wasn’t a big deal, but getting it inside and upstairs was a chore too. It was a little too heavy for me to carry everything at once, and too unwieldy due to its size, so we opened up the box in the driveway and took everything upstiars by part. Then came the base. Amanda almost killed me carrying that thing up the stairs. I was lugging the heavier part practically with my fingertips while precariously balancing the arms of the thing over my shoulders, and they were barely keeping them situated. Amanda was going up ahead of me, but she was laughing and had a hard time carrying it. But we finally got it all up there.

I wanted to put the elliptical trainer in the bedroom, but Amanda thought it would be in thr way and wanted it in the office. I conceded, saying I’d see how it was. Before we could put it in there though, we had to rearrange the office, which I was planning on doing anyway. That took up a nice chunk of time, and shortly after I started putting it together we got an invite to have a dinner with Ben and Jessica Lambeth at Chili’s.

So we went to dinner and talked about how they need to not move and talked about babies and how neither Amanda nor Jessica wanted to work after having one (which they’d have just a few months after us, since they did everything else; birthday, wedding, etc, after us with the exception of buying a house) and how us men could work whle they take the babies to the beach every day.

After we ate Amanda and I went back home and put the elliptical trainer together. It was a pain, but we finally finished it and it worked! Actually, the console needs batteries, but it works fine without any too. I wish it had come with a power cord though. For as much as we paid for the thing, it should have. For the record, it does fit nicely in the office.

By the way, I forgot to mention yesterday that Renee got a call from Adam while we were watching The Man in the Iron Mask.  He got to San Diego and the place they’re staying in is nicer than they expected.

Zach Dotsey
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