We went to our friends’ house for the Fourth of July and it turned out to be a pretty fun day! We’ve known this couple and their children for 12+ years. I worked with him for about 7 years and we’ve played tennis almost every Saturday for 10+ years. We used to hang out more often when we lived closer but now since we are about an hour away from each other, we don’t get together as much. He and I still see each other on tennis Saturdays and occasionally during the week when we make a tennis date.
He’s typically pretty busy with work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. so there’s not much weekday tennis anymore. He is a division manager for a big freight trucking company and in that business you are expected to put in the time whether you need to or not. It’s about work and then image and then family with those types of companies. Hopefully, he’ll be able to cut back and enjoy daily life instead of having to wait until the weekends.
Anyhow, their neighbors have a pool and they are out of town in Jamaica and told our friends that they could use their pool while they were gone. Not too bad of a deal. So, we went over with the kids and they swam and had a blast. They didn’t want to leave even though we stayed from like 2 p.m. until about 9:30 p.m. It was a good time but most of us had work the next day.
I was supposed to make a stop by my oldest sister’s house. She invited over the family for food, fun and fireworks down the street from her if people stayed that long. I didn’t realize how late it was and before I knew it, it was pretty much too late to stop by. We called when we left our friends’ but everyone had already gone home. My kids got to see some fireworks displays as we were driving home. I felt a little bad about them not getting to sit and watch a display but I think they enjoyed hanging out with our friends’ kids and our friends’ friends’ kids. Confused? LOL!
Anyway, I think they were quite pleased with the day and night. I stopped by my parents’ house and dropped off my brother’s computer that I was working on. It’s basically a giant paper weight. I mean it runs and all but it is snail-ass slow! I think it was a 300MHZ Intel Celeron with 64MB RAM. If that doesn’t tell you how old it is, I don’t know what would. It was frustrating me just to wait 2-5 minutes between mouse clicks. I tried to talk him into getting a new one. He said he check on it the next day. He just uses it for his son’s games (he’s 3 or 4) and to check his email and do some work things in Lotus Works. I told him I could build something for him for about $300-$400. Not over the top, but definitely way better than what he has. We’ll see if he buys one or waits for me to build it. Either way, he can only get better than he has.
I got home around 11 p.m. and I was butt-ass tired. My kids were too! I didn’t have anything to do so I checked my email and went to bed. The wife had some things to do but I don’t know exactly what. She was working on her laptop though. I was lying in my bed and I was almost out when I heard my cell phone go off. I knew it was my brother whose computer I just dropped off because I got one of those phones that you can set different ring tones for different names in your phone book. I answer it and my brother can’t get on the internet with his crap machine. He is having withdrawals because it’s been a couple of weeks. He’s on dial-up still so to me he wasn’t missing much but for him since that’s all he is used to, he was missing it. I tried to walk him through some troubleshooting over the phone but, as mentioned, his machine is crap. I wanted to reload the software back to “from the factory” status but he didn’t leave me the disk when I picked it up this past Friday when he was out of town camping. I understand his frustration. I’ve been there many times. He finally said he was thinking very hard about buying a new one but he didn’t want to spend $800 for one. I told him if he spent that he’d have a machine that would last him for another 5 yrs or so for what he uses it for. But again, I said I could build one for about $400. He said he’d think about it and let me get some sleep and call me in the morning if he was going to buy one.
Finally, I put my head back down and was probably out within thirty minutes. I was beat down. Not so much from the wonderful Texas heat but because I hadn’t gone to bed before 1 a.m. Friday, Saturday or Sunday and got up the next mornings early. Saturday, I was up at 7:30 a.m. to go play tennis until 1:30 p.m. Sunday, I got up at 8:30 a.m. to watch the men’s Wimbledon final – which sucked royal ass by the way. Monday, I got up at 9 a.m. because the kids were hungry and I had to make scrambled eggs with jelly toast for them. We were out of milk so they couldn’t make breakfast (cereal) for themselves.
To some extent, we had a very eventful weekend! I could have used another day to just rest, relax and take it easy even more than I did!
He’s typically pretty busy with work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. so there’s not much weekday tennis anymore. He is a division manager for a big freight trucking company and in that business you are expected to put in the time whether you need to or not. It’s about work and then image and then family with those types of companies. Hopefully, he’ll be able to cut back and enjoy daily life instead of having to wait until the weekends.
Anyhow, their neighbors have a pool and they are out of town in Jamaica and told our friends that they could use their pool while they were gone. Not too bad of a deal. So, we went over with the kids and they swam and had a blast. They didn’t want to leave even though we stayed from like 2 p.m. until about 9:30 p.m. It was a good time but most of us had work the next day.
I was supposed to make a stop by my oldest sister’s house. She invited over the family for food, fun and fireworks down the street from her if people stayed that long. I didn’t realize how late it was and before I knew it, it was pretty much too late to stop by. We called when we left our friends’ but everyone had already gone home. My kids got to see some fireworks displays as we were driving home. I felt a little bad about them not getting to sit and watch a display but I think they enjoyed hanging out with our friends’ kids and our friends’ friends’ kids. Confused? LOL!
Anyway, I think they were quite pleased with the day and night. I stopped by my parents’ house and dropped off my brother’s computer that I was working on. It’s basically a giant paper weight. I mean it runs and all but it is snail-ass slow! I think it was a 300MHZ Intel Celeron with 64MB RAM. If that doesn’t tell you how old it is, I don’t know what would. It was frustrating me just to wait 2-5 minutes between mouse clicks. I tried to talk him into getting a new one. He said he check on it the next day. He just uses it for his son’s games (he’s 3 or 4) and to check his email and do some work things in Lotus Works. I told him I could build something for him for about $300-$400. Not over the top, but definitely way better than what he has. We’ll see if he buys one or waits for me to build it. Either way, he can only get better than he has.
I got home around 11 p.m. and I was butt-ass tired. My kids were too! I didn’t have anything to do so I checked my email and went to bed. The wife had some things to do but I don’t know exactly what. She was working on her laptop though. I was lying in my bed and I was almost out when I heard my cell phone go off. I knew it was my brother whose computer I just dropped off because I got one of those phones that you can set different ring tones for different names in your phone book. I answer it and my brother can’t get on the internet with his crap machine. He is having withdrawals because it’s been a couple of weeks. He’s on dial-up still so to me he wasn’t missing much but for him since that’s all he is used to, he was missing it. I tried to walk him through some troubleshooting over the phone but, as mentioned, his machine is crap. I wanted to reload the software back to “from the factory” status but he didn’t leave me the disk when I picked it up this past Friday when he was out of town camping. I understand his frustration. I’ve been there many times. He finally said he was thinking very hard about buying a new one but he didn’t want to spend $800 for one. I told him if he spent that he’d have a machine that would last him for another 5 yrs or so for what he uses it for. But again, I said I could build one for about $400. He said he’d think about it and let me get some sleep and call me in the morning if he was going to buy one.
Finally, I put my head back down and was probably out within thirty minutes. I was beat down. Not so much from the wonderful Texas heat but because I hadn’t gone to bed before 1 a.m. Friday, Saturday or Sunday and got up the next mornings early. Saturday, I was up at 7:30 a.m. to go play tennis until 1:30 p.m. Sunday, I got up at 8:30 a.m. to watch the men’s Wimbledon final – which sucked royal ass by the way. Monday, I got up at 9 a.m. because the kids were hungry and I had to make scrambled eggs with jelly toast for them. We were out of milk so they couldn’t make breakfast (cereal) for themselves.
To some extent, we had a very eventful weekend! I could have used another day to just rest, relax and take it easy even more than I did!
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