Work wasn’t overly busy today.  There’s one client who gave us plenty to do, but she’s pretty easy to get along with, and she’s pretty savvy too.  There are things she can do for herself and she’s eager to learn them.

Amanda had a craving for ice cream today, despite the cold weather.  She sent me an e-mail saying as much and telling me to see what Nick and Amy Warkentien were up to tonight.  Long story short, after Amanda got off work we fed the animals then picked up some ice cream and waffle cones then went to Nick and Amy’s.

We had quite the time with the Warkentiens tonight.  First off, Amy seemed a little chippy as she was preparing dinner and after her bruschetta burned.  Amanda insisted on cutting off the burnt edges of the bread, and to her credit it was actually pretty good once she did that.  I was adventurous and ate some, even though it was loaded down pretty heavily with tomatoes.  There were a lot of other tastes in it too though, so you really couldn’t taste the tomatoes.  We also had tacos.

After we ate we watched some home videos from when Amy was little, which were actually pretty entertaining.  Her dad had some sort of affinity for using the negative filter on the camcorder.  During some birthday footage she showed herself as blunt and weary of dealing with shenanigans as she is now.  She was about to blow out her birthday candles when they finished singing Happy Birthday, but then as she was inhaling someone started up the “How o-old are you?” verse.  I don’t know if she rolled her eyes or not, but you definitely got that vibe from her.  Each time they sang the question she would flatly but loudly answer them.  It was very in keeping with her current character.

After a bit of that we played Settlers of Catan.  Amy and Amanda were very obviously going to win the game, and one time when a seven was rolled and Nick and I both had too many cards, I spotted him trying to pretend that he had fewer cards than he actually did.  That inspired me to drop a couple of my excess cards in my lap, but Amanda saw them.  Okay, to be honest, I had that thought before I saw Nick try to cheat, but it really didn’t matter- one of the girls was going to win.

We were all a bit goofy before and during dinner, but in the late stages of the game and directly after (Amy won, but if she hadn’t Amanda would likely have won on the very next roll) we got ridiculous.  I can’t even really go into what all was so funny (partly because I don’t think I could describe it well in writing and partly because some of it was indecent), but it hit a crescendo when I was trying to describe something to Nick in a roundabout way then Amanda just blurted some things out.  Nick and I were laughing so hard we were having a hard time breathing.  I was tearing up and I think both of us ended up with stomach pains and headaches, all from laughing so much.  Ahh, Gummy Worms and Catan.

So yeah, we had a really fun time with them tonight.

Zach Dotsey