Monday, February 19, 2007

Weekend Update

This past weekend was a good one. Friday Mandy and I went to eat at the amazing local Mexican restaurant "Taqueria Mercado" then headed home to watch "Born Into Brothels" which was also very good. Hot Mexican food, good microbrew beer, and an award-winning documentary comprise the very essence of rest and relaxation for me.

Saturday we went to the humane society and walked some dogs in the snow. We didn't walk or see any that stole our hearts the ways others have, but they were so hyper and happy to be out in the snow we still had fun. There was one cocker named Julie that was hilarious. She had this little frozen beard that made her look like a tiny billy goat. She would burrow under the snow and run around beneath it; a moving mound of snow (a la Bugs Bunny) was all we could see. Good times.

Saturday night we went out with some friends to go bowling. Mandy won a game and I won a game, which is amazing considering how terribly we play. Not that our friends played a comparatively poor game, quite the contrary. We all played horribly, Mandy and I just played very slightly less horribly than the others. To illustrate how poorly we played I offer this example: In one game we all barley broke 100.

After bowling we drove to a Micro Center (?) a few miles down I-275 to see if they had a Wii to purchase—we wanted to continue bowling, we just wanted to do it on our TV. This Micro Center is a Home Depot-sized store that only sells geek equipment. Imagine those large bulk bins at Meijer or CostCo that are filled with jelly beans and oatmeal, now imagine the bins filled with hard drives and you'll start to get the idea. Sadly they did not have any Wii's for sale, so we left empty-handed.

The cool part was the drive. Our friends, Dean the Machine and Erin, own a Prius. The Prius is one of those new-fangled electric/gas hybrid cars you keep seeing and wanting but never getting around to buying. It was really cool to see how the system worked, to watch the little in-dash display of the motor charging the battery, and to have it all explained by the driver. It was like a trip into Tomorrow Land at Disney World. The coolest thing about the car is how quiet it is. When we pulled into parking lots, the gas engine would literally shut off as the car switched to the electric motor and would become totally silent. It was really cool. It's a like a geek gadget you can drive.

After the Micro Center, we went to eat at a local Peruvian restaurant. We ordered fried chicken things, green potato things, and volcanically hot dipping sauce things. It was good, though overpriced considering the portion sizes. Afterwards, then all headed home to hang out and talk.

Sunday we met a couple friends for breakfast at a local Waffle house. One of them, Steven, returned my copy of World of Warcraft I gave him to try the 10-day trail declaring he had bought a retail copy and the expansion pack. Yet another example of how giving things away can be a part of a very robust business plan. Even if I don't play, I can deny that 8 million subscribers can't be wrong.

The rest of the day Mandy worked on taxes and I worked on my reel. It was productive and fun!

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