I tried accomplishing several things with work today, mainly on the sales side, but I was kept busy for a large chunk of the day with support stuff.
The girls at work took Amanda out for lunch today at Ruby Tuesday’s. Amanda said it took about 40 minutes for most of them to get their food and another 15 for the rest of them, and Amanda was in that second group. For some reason a new girl got stuck with their party. Amanda said the manager didn’t seem to care much, although they all ate free. Of course they were late back to work, so it still ended up costing them some.
I, for lunch, decided to get out of the house and grab a new Subway pizza, which was pretty good. The service where I went was really good- there’s one girl who was there who was like a whirlwind taking people’s orders and getting their food ready.
Trish, I think, made Amanda some cookies which she’d shared around the office, but there were enough that she could still bring some home. They were thin and a little chewy and came apart in your mouth really easily.
Amanda’s aunt, Anna Frazelle, called just before Amanda got home and invited us over to their house tomorrow night. Since Elliot and Melissa weren’t coming for small group, Rob and Kristen said they had a lot they could take care of, and Adam and Meagan had a function at Camp Lejeune they had to be at right before coming to our house, we all decided to push back tomorrow night to the next week.
I took Amanda out to get a dress. She’d mentioned wanting one for Andra’s graduation and for work as well, so I figured that’d be a nice birthday gift for her. We went to Banana Republic at Mayfaire and she actually found one she liked pretty quickly. I told her we could get something else too if she wanted, but she was good with just the dress. She told me I could surprise her with something small later.
After Banana Republic we headed up towards Ogden to Smithfield Bar-B-Que. Amanda had decided yesterday that she wanted BBQ for dinner tonight. On the way up there we saw that The Dung Beetles were playing tomorrow night at a place called Joe’s Hamburgers or some such. Melissa Nicholson had said she’d never listened to The Beetles, but she’d seen The Dung Beetles, who are a Beetles cover band, several times and that she really liked them. She even said she liked them better than what she’s heard of The Beetles. Heresy, of course. Not to mention ridiculous. Sorry, Melissa, but it is!
We got home and ate and watched some TV. We watched an episode of Law Order: SVU, some Ghost Hunters and American Idol. LaKisha went home as I had predicted.
I spent most of the night agonizing over what to do for Friday. See, I’d talked to Chris Flowers about getting dinner with him and his wife, Erica, on Friday night in Charlotte. The thing is, Amanda put the in my head of picking Jackson, our nephew, up from daycare. The tough part is that Chris and Erica just bought a house on the southeastern side of Charlotte, and Gastonia is all the way across Charlotte about half an hour away from the western side of the city. So if we got Jackson we’d have to go to Gastonia, drop him off, drive about an hour back, get dinner, then drive back to Gastonia again. That or we could just do one or the other.
What made it so tough is that I kept imagining Jackson’s face when he saw me and Amanda at his daycare. Of course, there’s always the chance that Jackson wouldn’t recognize us out of place like that, but the image kept nagging me. As I kept agonizing over what to do Amanda said she wished she’d never suggested picking up Jackson. Nothing again him of course, it’s just that my indecisiveness was getting to her.
In the end I chose the dinner. Amanda and I would have to leave earlier from Wilmington to get Jackson, then we’d have to figure out what to do with him or where to take him without knowing anything about the area. Not only will we get to see Jackson the rest of the weekend anyway, but it’ll be nice to see Chris and Erica and eating with them will give Andra and Josh time to get home from work and settled in a little bit before we get to their place. So that’s what we’re doing Friday.
Zach Dotsey
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