Weekend Update

Crud, the weekend is over.
I hate it when the weekend ends.

Don’t you hate it as well?

I mean, I would prefer that it go on for a while longer, like a vacation only longer. I would really love to be able to not have to work anymore. Unless I win the lottery, that will not happen.

Douguary Events
The DUB Car Show is being held next Saturday so Doug could go to it after all. I guess that I had confused the dates. He and I talked about that very idea on Friday afternoon. He didn’t say that he would go or not; just that he would think about it.

I am fairly certain that I will go to the event.

Doug has a legitimate Douguary conflict that weekend.

His mother is taking him out for lunch or dinner to Roscoe’s House of Waffles and Chicken [it is a Southern California thing]. Roscoe’s has a well deserved reputation for good cooking and simple foods. Of course, it does help if you like chicken and waffles though. He hasn’t firmed up a time yet so there may be a chance for us to catch the car show.

Doug and I went to the Fatburger, home of the last honest hamburger, in Aliso Viejo for lunch today. We worked up an appetite by assembling four DVD storage racks. It was a wonderful experience; we ate outside because it was a nice, warm, and sunny day. It was about 76F25C with a light breeze while we were eating our Kingburgers with lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, mustard and mayonnaise and fat French fries. We washed the meal down with medium drinks.

The atmosphere here was a little more upscale than the local Fatburger we used to go to all of the time when Doug came over to my place for the weekends. It is not as seedy looking plus there are lots of parking spaces. That being said, the crews at this Fatburger seem to have their acts together and provide a consistently high level of service and quality food product.

After we had lunch, we walked over the Cingular cell phone store that was at the same mall. Doug wanted to check out a new cell phone for his birthday. His current Motorola is almost 18 months old.

We walked into the store and were ignored by two sales clerks who seemed preoccupied with conversations on their cell phones. When we walked over and stood in front of one, he acknowledged us, finally.

Crummy, inattentive service sucks. Anyway, back to the cell phone search.

Doug wanted to get a black Motorola SLVR cell phone, primarily because you can play iTunes on it. Of course, you can only store and play 100 songs. [Dad points out at this point that Doug has a 40 GB iPod that works very nicely and stores a whole lot more than 100 songs. Dad can see no reason to pick up a cell phone that will play songs; cell phones are for communications.]

The clerk said, “We’re all out of the black SLVRs. I can take your name and call you when we get some more SLVRs. We should get some more by the end of the week.”

Doug gave the salesclerk his phone number and we walked back to his car. We were on the way back to his mother’s house when he asked if we wanted to try the Cingular store in Foothill Ranch. I said lets go for it.

We made it to Foothill Ranch and walked into the store. We asked about the black SLVR phone. One of the clerks said someone was on their way in to pick up the last one in stock. At least these clerks were attentive even if they did not have the answer we were looking for.

We went back to his house and then I headed home.

Mindy Mallard
Mindy Mallard is the name of a screenplay that Doug is writing for his Screen Writing class. He had turned in a treatment of the screenplay for his professor to review and approve for the class.

When Doug and I talked on Friday, he said the professor liked the treatment a lot and suggested some ideas where Doug could liven things up more. Doug was happy because his professor seems to understand his sense of humor. Doug is pleased that he won’t have to write to please a professor and that he can write to please himself.

This made Doug very happy. I was happy as well since it will produce fewer stress sessions during the semester.

Saturday
I did some cleaning around my place on Saturday. That was productive and necessary for me.

I had planned to switch cars and go back to driving the Prelude. I drove the Pathfinder for the last week so its battery would stay charged. For some reason, the Prelude would not turn over and it would not start. The battery is still relatively new and should not have failed from sitting for a week.

I called the auto service company for a start so I could drive the Prelude. They said they would be there in a half an hour. After waiting for forty minutes, I called to see where the driver was and was told that I needed to wait another twenty minutes at least. Not the answer I was looking for again.

I cancelled the service call and continued to drive the Pathfinder as I ran some minor errands.

I figured out how to transfer images from my digital camera to the laptop and then on to a burnt CD. That was nifty; I made up some CDs from Christmas. I printed out a photo of the Princess; it was another great one of her.

Since it was warm on Saturday afternoon, I went out on the balcony and smoked a cigar for about ninety minutes while I read. It was a very nice way to spend part of the afternoon.

That was my weekend gentle readers; not very exciting but restful weekends have their place in my life as well.

Be well and stay happy.