We slept okay last night.  There have been better nights and there have been worse.

Amanda was craving some meat for a late lunch today.  I was going to go by Cookout finally (there are always hugely long lines and it’s in an inconvenient place, but I’ve been wanting to go there), but before I left she decided she wanted some KFC so I went there instead.  We both got popcorn chicken, but Amanda got it with BBQ sauce on it.  Yummy stuff, either way.

On the way out of the driveway I thought of myself as a hunter-gatherer of old, going out to find meat to provide for my family back home in the cave.

My family was still around today.  They’d been to the beach some the last two days, but they didn’t get out there very early either day and hadn’t been out much, so today they spent a good bit of time out there.  I could tell, because when they came by the house they were all a little burnt, even though Andra mentioned having reapplied sunscreen.

About a year ago Amanda and I were supposed to get to keep Jackson for a day.  It didn’t work out, but in that day I had planned to take him surfing, which I finally got to do on Monday, and I planned to take him to get a comic book from Fanboy Comics.  That, I did this evening.

I told Jackson when they got here that I was going to give him a surprise.  He asked if it was a video game and I told him, “No, I don’t have enough money to buy you a video game.”  He told me I needed to work more so I could have more money.  I thought that was hilarious.

Anyway, as we were pulling into the comic shop I told him what I was getting him, because when I asked he said he’d never had a comic book before.  He told me he didn’t want that to be his surprise and asked if I could get him a game instead.  I told him maybe some other time I’d get him another surprise, and if he didn’t want a comic book that was fine, but I was going to get some for myself and if he didn’t come in with me he’d have to wait in the car.

I won’t lie; I was a little disappointed over his dismay at my revelation of his surprise.  I had been thinking back to the comics I had before I actually collected comics and how I liked to pick them up and read them now and then and how I learned to draw by looking at them.  There was something special about them and I wanted my nephew to have some similar memories down the road.

So we went into the store and we start looking around.  Pretty quickly he got sucked into looking at a Justice League trade paperback (or TPB, a collection of several issues of a comic stuck into one book), one in the style of the Justice League cartoon.  He wouldn’t put it down but still insisted that he didn’t want it.  I made sure he wasn’t bending pages or anything then went to pick up a few for myself.  After I was done he still wanted to look at some more of them and went through several until I told him that we’ve got to get going.  Eventually he saw some Teen Titans trades and decided he liked those because Robin’s on the cover.  (I guess he likes Robin?)

Anyway, I picked one up for him that had Robin on the cover, even though the story seemed to be more about Beast Boy.  It worked out okay though, because on the ride home he kept telling me what Beast Boy was turning into.  Once we got home he planted himself down at the kitchen table and looked through it.  Andra and Mom were ready to go couldn’t get Jackson to go to the bathroom because he was afraid he’d lose his place, so I made an impromptu bookmark out of a piece of paper and explained how a bookmark works to him.  When he was leaving the house he was carrying the book wide open and asked why his bookmark kept falling out.  Funny the little things you never think about learning.

While I was gone Charity Lane, one of Amanda’s co-workers, stopped by and delivered some Stouffer’s lasagna to us for dinner.  Stouffer’s lasagna rocks.

So here’s something.  When I was out at the beach on Monday our new camera ran out of juice.  Not a big deal, right?  Yesterday I was trying to charge it up, and no matter where I plugged it in, the charge light wouldn’t come on.  I left it plugged in just in case the issue was that the light wasn’t working, but sure enough the charger on the camera we’ve had just over a month wasn’t working.

Amanda called someone at Panasonic about it yesterday and was told they’d call us back today.  Well, we didn’t hear from them all day so we called them back.  Then of course, go figure, they called while Amanda was on hold calling them back so we missed that.  She didn’t recognize the number and didn’t want to switch over for fear of losing our place on hold.

The fun part is that we were on hold forever yesterday and we were on hold forever today.  The first time we called our phone died while we were on hold so we had to call back and wait all over again.  We were on hold, between the three calls that we made, literally at least 45 minutes.

In the end they wanted us to send in the camera and said they’d send us a refurbished one.  We were having none of that though, because, as I said, we’ve barely had the camera a month and since we just paid for a brand new one, we didn’t want a refurb.  Eventually, after having to look back through my records and send an email with a proof of purchase, they agreed to just send us a new charger.

What a pain.  Still love the camera though.

So Mills was awake pretty much all day again today and took a late nap.  That probably means she’ll be up a bunch tonight.

In other news, we found out that someone is pregnant.  Apparently I’d replied to an email with that news already so they thought we already knew, but I must have somehow missed that part of the email.  It’s still pretty new news I think, so I’ll wait a bit until I say who it is.

Zach Dotsey