I slept in until about a quarter of ten today, which was kind of nice.  I mean, I’d been up earlier to take care of the dogs and to help Amanda  out, but then I went back to bed and stayed there for a while.  After I did get up I mowed the lawn.  Harvey was outside with me and while I was trying to rev the damn thing up he kept barking at it.  He’d sort of run at it then jump back and bark.  It was annoying at first but it was kind of funny too.  Amanda kept coming to the door and laughing until she just came and sat outside and watched for a while.  (In the long shirt and underwear that she wore to bed.  Told you she was losing inhibition.)

Phil came by with our repaired sink cabinet door.  As I mentioned before Karen broke it while she was staying here.  She was in the bathroom and heard the phone ring and scrambled to get to it, knowing Amanda couldn’t get up and get it at the time.  Anyway, he’d fixed that and he brought along some tools to take a look at a leak in our sink as well.  I had thought it was something about how the pipes joined together and for months we’ve had a bowl under the sink to catch the drips.  Phil looked at the pipe and thought it was missing a rubber washer that would seal it up, but the guy we talked to at Lowe’s said the pipe was fine and that no washer went with it.

While we were there I picked up some florescent tubes.  The ones in the upstairs closet had blown this morning.  Before we left for Lowe’s Phil busted the old ones in our dumpster.

We got back and Phil discovered that the lead was actually coming from the faucet itself.  The water was just running down the pipe, which made it look like the pipe was leaking.  We took the faucet apart and I ended up finding where the leak was, but there wasn’t much of anything we could do to fix it so we went out to look for a new faucet.  We were going to get it but Phil said he’d pick it up for us.

Amanda went with us on this trip out, which was her first excursion besides being taken to Urgent Care since she got out of the hospital.  She did fine, of course.  We went to Lowe’s first, but we couldn’t find anything in any color we wanted so we went to Home Depot and found one there.  The one we liked was actually one of the cheapest ones too.

We got home and installed the faucet and it worked fine.  Michael was there when we got there and Amy Farmer stopped by soon after.  Michael and Phil played some HORSE while I cleaned up the work area of the bathroom then stopped by the backyard to talk with Amanda and Amy.  We all went up front then and after Phil finished beating Michael at HORSE (I think Michael won once before that) I joined in.  I was winning for a while but I ended up being the first one out anyway.  Phil won that one too then he took off back home to Richlands.

Michael and I played a bit.  Amy left during that but before she did Amanda’s coworker Cyra stopped by with some KFC dinner and they also sat out front and talked for a while.  The last game Michael and I played was 21.  It was the second game of it we played and I ended up winning 21-0.  On my last shot it was 19-0 and I threw up a shot.  Michael tried to block it and raked me across the face so I sort of spun around and dropped to my butt on the ground.  The shot went in, although I didn’t think it had.

I was proud of the shot and felt a little tougher once I realized there actually was a little blood.  It didn’t come out or anything, but there was just a little in my nose.

Cyra left and the rest of us ended up going inside to eat the chicken and watch the end of the Suns vs. Spurs in their first playoff game.  The Spurs won in double overtime.  Michael left after a while, but not before we watched Whittaker Bay.  It’s a show that’s shot here in Wilmington.  I don’t know how many places it’s shown, but it’s an awful, awful show.  Terrible.  And it originally came on Saturday mornings at 11:30.  There’s sex, drugs, cheating, terrible writing, amateurish camera work, no white balancing… it’s just terrible.  Michael left shortly after the show was over.

At the end of that we got a call from Nick and Amy Warkentein.  They asked if we wanted to grab some food with them, but they didn’t know about Amanda’s surgery.  They ended up grabbing some food then coming over here.  We talked for a bit then we played a game called Settlers of Catan.  It’s basically a real time strategy game but as a board game.  I wasn’t sure if Amanda would like it but she seemed to.  I won it but we decided to play for second, which was Amy.  It took a while to get a second place person, but we had a good time playing with them and hanging out with them.

Zach Dotsey