12 May 2010

First Week in May 2010

Kind of boring week, since I was alone, a lot of video game playing and computer work. That was my Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday ... nothing big to talk about.

Wednesday I grilled out for Shannon and her children. I made chicken and sausages with the usual sides. Shannon brought my favorite orange drop cookies. I let Kasee (who is four) play with the camera, and she took about 80 pictures that featured random subjects. After dinner we played a little bit of Rock Band.

(the next two paragraphs are mostly a copy/paste from what I wrote in Mass Chaos) Friday at lunch my co-worker and Melissa and I went to lunch at Culver's, she drove. As we drove down Giles, we approached the corner at 117th in LaVista, a driver in a huge gold SUV blew through the stop sign on 117th right in front of us, and by right in front of us, I mean right in front of us. Melissa slammed on the brakes, the car niftily slid one lane to the right, and we missed going home early (as in being dead) by about two feet. Small car, big SUV, 55mph equals two unhappy families.

As you might guess, a close encounter of the death with death might get a person thinking. Oddly enough, I didn't really do a whole lot of thinking. I thanked God, and I thought about all the work I still had to do before I shuffle off the mortal coil. I thought about my desire to outlive my mother (no, I didn't quite tell her about this little incident). I thought about how my being dead would affect my family and friends. Otherwise I just felt thankful over a what is in my eyes, a miraculous escape.

Later in the evening I went to the weekly dance. Not quite as crowded as last weeks 205 person attendance, but at least two thirds of that. It made me think of a few years ago when the Friday dance was down to forty to sixty for weeks in a row, and at the time I was thinking the Omaha swing scene was dying slowly. Now it's hopping again with a lot of people I don't know. It's good. Eventually, some of them will want to be involved, and learn, and teach. The new blood helps us 'older' dancers be more enthused. I don't know if it is a sign of this or not, but we had twenty or so go to Village Inn after the dance.

Saturday during the day I did some lawn work, then 'made' lunch for Ben, David, and Anna ... making lunch consisted of getting out sandwich stuff.

Later on in the evening it was game night at Kaleb's. Despite the weather being cool, we played badminton outside (duh) for at least an hour, resulting in many memorable fails and one success. Evidently, any sport I play is just an excuse for me throwing myself at the ground without much chance of improving the situation.

When we got around to playing games, we played several games of Tsuro. It's a very simple game that works best if you stay away from everyone else. Of course, everyone else is trying to stay away also, so planning is important, but really only works at the beginning of the game. We also played the obligatory game of Lupus in Tabula. After this we played the equally obligatory ping pong, and I ended up leaving fairly early and went to bed.

Sunday morning was the fifth week of Mass Chaos. We had quite the crowd, eight, and our first person we didn't know or expect, Teri. We went to an early Mass to accommodate Mother's Day, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

After Mass we went to McDonald's for breakfast, we used the logic that since it was Mother's Day, any sit down place would be crowded. I'm sure they were happy to have us leave when we were done. It's a fun group.

In the afternoon was the first Lindy in the Park of the season. A little cold, a little windy, but hey, it's Lindy in the Park!

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I've been waiting six months to get this shot.

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Is there anyway this won't end up funny?

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Several Jitterkids made their Lindy in the Park world premiers!

Of course I took plenty more pictures, including some classic Dean being Dean shots. Matt also took quite a few including some of me I don't remember, nor am I sure I want to remember. About 30 or so people were there, good turnout, let's keep it up!

Later in the afternoon I picked Troy and Merinda up from their cruise. It was nice having the house to myself for a while, but it's also nice to have people there too. I ended up going to bed pretty early in the evening, and it turns out with good reason, but that is a story for next week.

All in all I ended up feeling quite blessed by the end of the week.

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