From the Desk 6/2/2008

This morning I woke up and ready for church. I had to wait briefly while Amy finished getting ready and during that time I managed to take a good "still" picture of Samus. She was itching to jump up on me, but somehow remembered Amy's instructions to refrain from doing so. On the way to church Amy and I stopped off at Krystal to procure a gift card since the location I stopped by yesterday was out. I think I might have to come up with alternate gift ideas for G-mom and Papa as whenever I go to purchase them a gift card for a restaurant the establishment is almost always out. I worked the booth for both the 9:30 and 10:45 services and then drove out to McAlister's on Schadd Rd. to meet everyone for lunch.

I had the Fiesta Chicken Salad, which was delicious and potentially a new favorite there. We ate and talked and then made plans for who was to go pick up the ice cream so we could continue the birthday celebrations of Dad and G-mom. I returned to the Tuckers and changed clothes. Once everyone arrived we proceeded to open gifts once Samus had been moderately subdued. After the gift openings we ate some penguin cake and ice cream. The cake is actually easier to make than it appears, as it is comprised of shaped cupcakes in a divided pan that you push together and add icing to give it the authentic animal appearance. It was delicious as was expected. Jon, Amy, and I then gave a demonstration of Guitar Hero III to pass the time and prolong the party. While watching Jon play, Amy discovered that an entire million-ant march was taking place under her bay window. She only mildly freaked out, and Dad and I went to work with the spray and vacuum cleaner in a futile attempt to kill/cease the attack by the ant army. I left soon after the fight began as I needed to hit the road and, due to my past apartment experiences with insect invasions, I wanted to avoid re-living nightmares.

I filled up on gas again before hopping on I-40 towards home. I will surely miss the $3.78 gas prices I have enjoyed while visiting Knoxville. The roads were very crowded as I made my way back down to Georgia. Along the way I did encounter a traveling group of Corvettes driving all in a line. I don't know if the picture does it justice, but it was a truly beautiful sight to see all the varieties of these legendary cars. I got home to find that I had received 13 emails over the past 2 days and I decided to try and sort through some of them before tomorrow morning at work. I also worked on laundry, and pulling over video footage from the School Box summer training tapes. I updated my blog from Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and also did some looking on REI.com to see what type of daypacks they carry (since that is what I will use the rest of my gift card to purchase. After all was said and done I managed to do very little (sadly) of what I needed to do before it was time to go to sleep for the night.

Meditation for the day: Proverbs 15:1 “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”