We woke up this morning and had blueberry waffles. After that we mostly sat around with Ben and Jessica- in the backyard during and after breakfast and on the front porch for a while later on.

Mooo! chased a squirrel while we were eating breakfast and jumped over the privacy fence to continue her pursuit. As Mooo! tends to stay in either our yard or Mr. Henry’s next door, we figured we could grab her later. I couldn’t find her when I went to look for her though, so we organized a group (the four of us) to go look for her. Ben went to the end of the road, Jessica and I took the first turn (since that took us in front of Mr. Henry’s house, and therefore was the most likely place to find her) and Amanda continued on down the main road. I asked some people if they’d seen a little black and white cat before Jessica and I got to the end of the cul de sac and turned around.

We all met up at Bonnie and Dave Narron’s across the street from our own house and talked to to Bonnie for a minute. We walked back over and one of the people I’d asked about seeing Mooo! called over the us. She was on the way back up from the end of the road, walking with her baby stroller, and asked if the cat she saw was Mooo!, pointing to Shannon’s side yard. Sure enough, Mooo! was stalking through a bush at Shannon’s house. I got her, dumped her off inside and the day was saved.

Ben and Jessica Lambeth left around 2:00. After that Amanda and I worked on getting the hammock properly set up. The hammock has been a trial. I’ve struggled finding the right combination of trees to attach it to so t hat it’s not too high off the ground and not too close together so that it sags when sat in.

I had it set up in a good spot for a bit, but part of it rubbed against a tree, and that was going to cause some damage to it in probably the not-too-distant future. We bought a post and some cement, but the ground, being mostly sand, wouldn’t hold it very well so that didn’t work either.

Today we tried tying the post to the fence behind it, but the fence sagged every time we sat in the hammock. Finally, Amanda suggested another set of trees. I don’t know if I just hadn’t had the right heights before or if I hadn’t tried the combination, but with a little adjustment to some hoels I’d already drilled for this very purpose I had a good spacing, a decent height, and no trees scraping the ropes of my hammock (although in some number of years a nearby tree may start giving me trouble). So I took a nap while Amanda and Michael went to Lowes.

On Friday Amanda had finished setting a brick border at the back of our yard, but her design left room for a couple more plants. She wanted to get some more lantana, all of which we’ve previously planted having done quite well so far. However, all the lantana apparently looked bad at Lowes, so she got a couple other little flowers. Michael picked up some applications to Port City Java.

I’d finished my nap before they got back. Amanda planted her new flowers and I played some Guitar Hero II. Even though we’ve passed the medium difficulty, I want to go back and get five stars on all the songs. It’ll be tough, much tougher than doing it on easy, but I figure it’ll make me better, because hard is, as may be surmised, hard. Plus it’ll unlock an achievement.

While I played a few songs on Guitar Hero Amanda and Michael had some of the leftover steak from Saturday. I got some myself, but the piece I got, the last piece left, had to have been 80% fat, so I didn’t eat but a couple bites. I ate some baked beans then, not quite satisfied, had a bowl of cereal.

I just read, by the way, that Sony has developed a paper-thin TV screen. I read a book a few years ago about future technologies, and that was one of them. Cool stuff.

Amanda was flipping around on the television and I told her to check out what was coming on HBO. United 93 was, and I’d wanted to watch that, so we did. Six years later and I’m still always moved when I watch things about September 11.

After that we watched an episode of On the Lot. Tonight they were screening a bunch of one minute comedies. A few of them were quite good. Some of them weren’t so funny, but were really well-produced anyway. I don’t know if we’ll watch every episode, but we’ll certainly check in on the show from time to time at least I think. It’d be much more enjoyable if the show would pick up the pace. Too many commercials and too much talking between films.

We put on the new sheets tonight. Amanda said they’re not as soft as our other 1000 thread count sheets, but they haven’t been washed yet, and I pointed out that our other sheets have been softened by three years of almost constant wear.

One unexpected thing about the sheet set was that they came with pillow cases as well. We thought for some reason that they didn’t include the pillow cases, and we’d bought those a while ago. Hopefully we’ll be able to return them.

I played some Halo 3 Beta with Michael and did pretty well on one game, but overall didn’t do too hot.

Zach Dotsey
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