Well, it's done. This has been a very busy and involved weekend. However, it's over. Whew!

Mom graduated and now is a Doctor! Woohoo. We're all very happy and excited and proud and stuff.

The week has been rather full, actually. First and foremost, of course, is the price of fuel. Heh. 4.56 a gallon for the cheap stuff. Yes, you saw that right.

Living here at the ocean has a couple negatives. Extremely high food and fuel prices and gray sky ten months out of the year.

We do have the Doggy Olympics, though. That was this weekend. And the Garlic Festival started this weekend.

Anyway. During this week did a lot of cooking, a little baking, very little napping, a lot of reading, a tremendous amount of thinking and quite a bit of prayer and Bible study.

Over this last week, or maybe ten days, I've made chicken soup - the good kind that starts with water and a whole chicken - Chicken Papprekache with Spatzle, beef Stroganoff, lasagna, eggs with beef sausage and toast, enchiladas, ravioli, tortellini, cookies, garlic bread and probably some other stuff I can't remember right now.

I did two loads of laundry. I know, no big deal, but it's something to add to the list.

I rewrote my resume and ran off a few copies, got photo paper for mom's computer and printed the pictures in her final Doctoral Thesis for the official "Copy to keep on record" thing.

Organized the worship team, selected the songs we'd sing, managed practice, opened and locked up the church while the Pastor was in Mexico with the missions team... twice, actually, cause he was gone last week and wasn't singing with us this week. I didn't have to lock up this week, though.

Uhm... What else...

Well, for this weekend specifically... it was very busy and I'm a very, very tired puppy.

For this weekend I went with Mom to Vancouver (Washington, not BC) to observe her graduation ceremony and have dinner with the WonderFink & Co. We left here Saturday afternoon around 1:30p and drove the two and a half hours to Vancouver (I drove from Longview to Vancouver), sat in the oppressive heat until they opened the building and then waited until 6p for the service/ceremony to start. I sat through the service/ceremony with Mom being the last one to receive her diploma (WOOHOO!!! YOU ROCK, MOM!), and took pictures. Sorta.

Then Mom and I went out to dinner with the WonderFink and his wife (not quite married yet but committed) and kids (her kids, not his) and Mom got to fawn all over the "grandkidlets". She had a blast, too. Not only has the WonderFink now decided that we aren't the evil aliens he's claimed we were for the past decade and a half, but he's actually being loving.

Shock. Gasp.

Anyway, had dinner with them and then I drove back to the beach. Mom and I got home around 11pm or so.

I spent about half an hour trying to unwind a bit, then went to bed, because I had to get up and sing with the worship team this morning. And I had to be nice! That's a big stretch.

Got up at 6:30am, took my daily shower, relaxed a bit (playing Cradle of Rome. I'm GOING to beat that damned game!!!), then got dressed and headed out to the church. Opened it up and turned on the sound equipment and went through practice and all that good stuff.

Messed up a few times, laughed it off and just, in general, had fun. I love worship practice. I really enjoy singing with the team and all. For some odd reason, I enjoy it more when we mess up than when we do everything perfectly. It just... I don't know... when we mess up, it seems more real, I guess.

Anyway, listened to the report from the Mexico Team (the folks that got back from their mission trip Sat night/Sun morn at midnight) and got the full report with pictures and stuff.

it was pretty cool. One of the things that they did for the orphanage was put on a marrionette show. Now, since this is Mexico it requires that some folks speak Spanish. Go figure. So they had a recording for the little play/skit thingie that they did with the puppets.

--- by the way, this is about as unfiltered as they come. I'm exhausted and just letting my fingers do the talking ---

So anyway, the point. The marrionette show script thingie was about Balam's donkey. Since Baldo (our worship team percusionist and a man fluent in Spanish) made tapes of the script so that the "gringos" didn't screw up the Spanish pronounciation, there were many places in the script where he had to bray like a donkey.

It was very, very funny to be listening to this story in a language I DEFINITELY don't understand and hear "ee-aw" every few minutes. Quite humorous.

Regardless, church ended and I got back home around 1p, took a brief nap, only about an hour, and then backed Mom's car toward the garage and unloaded the boxes of books, shelving unit and other interesting little tidbits that were in the trunk.

THEN, I cleaned out the microwave that used to be in my room (it's only been six months since the door itself has been open... it REALLY needed to be cleaned out) and hefted that sucker into the trunk of the car.

Drove to the graduation party across the river... BBQ'd ribs, potato salad.... everything you could imagine and probably a few things you couldn't.

Anyway, the BBQ went from about 4 to nearly 8... rather, we left around 8. The BBQ was still going strong.

And now, I'm exhausted, staring at the screen of this computer and unaware of what I'm about to say until I see it appear. My fingers are smart like that.

Mom's going up to the North tomorrow to spend half a week with Dad. So it's gonna be Joey and me until Thursday.

I think I'm going to sleep a lot.

My feet hurt. My back hurts. My head hurts. My eyelashes hurt.

And damn it! I'm gonna beat that stupid Cradle of Rome game before Mom gets home!!! I gotta!

Plans for tomorrow? Gonna sleep a lot. Gonna take the books back to the library. Gonna see if I can get the next two Margaret Weis / Tracy Hickman Dragonlance novels. I'm reading the War of the Souls series currently. Need the next two (which means I've read the first one). Gonna sleep more, maybe. Gonna put twenty bucks worth of fuel in my truck... woohoo, there's four gallons. Yippie.

Mostly, I think I'm gonna sleep. At least, I'm gonna try to. Heh.

Now, go away. I'm going to crawl into my cave and hide for a while.