In the end, I didn’t even go to the Passion Party on Friday. At the last minute, my siblings and I decided to give my dad his birthday present that night even though his birthday isn’t until mid-April. He’s turning 50 this year, and we got him an iPod Nano to use while he trains for a 25K in the spring. It’s a race he’s run many times—last year he did it with a bum knee—but he likes running with music and the walkman just wasn’t cutting it (he didn’t really have a walkman). My dad isn’t what I’d call technologically savvy though, something I’m sure I’ve alluded to many times, so a little bitty technological wonder like the iPod was a bit of a risk. But he LOVED it, and he was very surprised. Brad loaded it with music for him, and he immediately stuck the earbuds in, cranked the volume on the Rocky theme, and proceeded to tell us that THIS IS SO COOL! THIS SONG IS LIKE AN ADRENALINE RUSH! I COULD RUN MILES LIKE THIS! Glad you like it dad, but you don’t have to yell, we can hear you.

My dad is the awesomest.

Saturday night, in boredom, B and I decided to buy a board game, selecting Trivial Pursuit Totally 80s despite the $30 price tag (it ended up being 50% off when we checked out though!). We got it home and started playing around 11:00. We weren’t in bed until almost 3:30am. It’s that fun. Actually it’s that hard. That was all one game, and the last two hours were spent trying to land in the middle space and correctly answer a question. We both had all our pie pieces at 1:30, but we just couldn’t bring it home. Finally Brad won it with “The Brat Pack” which actually took a lot of thinking and reasoning to come to (Brad has never seen all the typical 80s films, something I’ve vowed to change), and I celebrated because damn, I’m old, I can’t be staying up until 3:30.

Sunday was a typical Sunday: homework, cleaning, groceries. I cleaned out our laundry room which seconds as storage and thirds as a recyling center. Only the recycling never gets moved out of there because we don’ tknow what to do with it. Recycling in Jackson was so easy and convenient, but here, we haven’t found a place to take it all. It’s a good thing we rinse and clean all our recylables before the go in the laundry room—we have a lot of crap! I took this picture two months ago, before it was organized and before another two months of stuff was added. Oh, and that doesn’t even show the many many many plastic and paper bags we have. Or all the glass.

Actually I should take a new picture just to show you how ridiculous it is. If it was in a garage or shed, maybe it would be okay. But this is our laundry room! Our big beautiful laundry room that we fell in love with, and now it’ s nothing but a trash heap. If you live in GR and have any tips on convenient recycling, please share.