i didn’t want you to think i was weird or desperate or…

well, saturday morning last week i left houston for brady. i took a few days off of work, so i was out through thursday. i decided to take my motorcycle since $60 in gas roundtrip is much better than $300. the reason i went back is because we were having a family reunion on sunday. the ride both there and back was pretty uneventful. i got slightly sprinkled on for a minute or two going both ways, but mostly it was sunny and hot.
sunday i got up and went with my parents to mason. the reunion was in a library. we were the host family, so we had to get there early to help set up and such. my dad had taken a bunch of paper doilies and written important dates and events in the leifeste line up to my grandfather’s generation. this reunion is just the leifeste branch from my great-grandfather. about 55 people showed up.
after the reunion, i went with my parents down to one of our places and “helped” my dad round up four cattle he had there so he could take them to auction. he was doing this because the water pump had gone out and they were about to run out of water. mostly i sat in the pickup and my dad did everything.
monday i got up around 8am and went with my dad down to our two places and did some work. being a computer guy and office worker, i don’t do much physical labor. especially outdoors. the first thing i did was get within one to two feet of stepping on a three or four foot rattlesnake. fortunately, i didn’t tread on it. it had 10 rattles and a button. that would have been real fun. after that excitement, i then went about helping troubleshoot and attempting to fix the water pump (appeared to be the pressure switch, not the pump itself). we repaired a metal swing that one of the arms had broken on. and we cut down some big limbs from a mulberry tree. this was doubly exciting, as i both got hit in the hand by a rather large falling limb and i got to wield a gas chainsaw while standing precariously on a 10 foot stepladder and cutting a limb above me.
for lunch we drove back into mason and ate at northside cafe. i’ve mentioned this place before, but once again — any place that has neither coke nor pepsi on tap, but rc cola, cane sugar dr. pepper, and big red has got to be doing something right. their burgers are really good too. while there, a trio of what appeared to be rich-ish older white women who were “going (hill) country” for the day showed up. it was kind of funny to compare their look, demeanor, etc. to the rest of the mostly “normal” folk. even funnier, a few hours later we were driving back through mason and saw a couple of people carrying an antique couch across the street to a big white trailer on the back of a pickup. it was two of them. i’m sure they were delighted by their finds in the quaint, sleepy little hill country town. anyway, after lunch we picked up a few things in town, including a few panes of glass for windows.
we headed to art and commenced to trying to figure out how to fix and piece together some of the windows. we only got some of the work accomplished. we then headed back to work on the water pump again, but we’d forgotten the sealer so we gave up and headed home. once there, i ate supper with my parents and then spent some time with my grandmother.
tuesday i slept in (finally!), ate lunch with my parents, talked with my grandmother some more, then headed back to houston. i used wednesday as a day to recuperate from my vacation, as well as the ~6 hour each way motorcycle ride.
friday i got to go into work late. i spent most of the day at home.
this weekend i didn’t do much, other than spending a fair bit of time working with/for jack on the bohemian photography domain. i moved some stuff around, changed his email to run off of google apps, installed some blogging software a few times, did some troubleshooting on his linux server, etc.
on sunday i went by yankee candle again, but unfortunately a lot of the scents that were there the first day of the sale were gone. the only thing i got for myself was a medium sized root beer float candle. (which i left in the car a few hours and it got bubbly and melted weird. i was worried i had messed up the oils/scent in it, but i think it may be okay.) i bought a couple to give to jack for father’s day, and i bought one for sue so she’d forgive me for my previous discretion. i spent most of sunday with the potts. i ate lunch with them, helped jack do some more domain and google apps stuff, then we all went down to clear lake to the yankee candle store down there. i’d heard they had a wider selection. unfortunately, although they had scents i hadn’t seen at the other store, they really had nothing that excited me.
our trip down there did give the co-worker i went with previously a chance to turn the accusatory tables on sue. gee, i’m being fought over as a candle store shopping friend. i feel so special!
[mike calls back; the machine picks up again]
mike: 213-555-4679. that’s it. i just wanna leave my number. i didn’t want you to think i was weird or desperate, or… we should just hang out and see where it goes because it’s nice and, you know, no expectations. ok? thanks a lot. bye-bye.
[mike hangs up. he walks away from the phone… then walks back and calls again; once again, the machine picks up]
(excerpt from one of the most painful movie sequences to watch, from swingers)