Con - graduations!

Mindy & Bella Joe (the graduate) and some of his friends The famous Peter Fisher Ahh, the weekend! My first peak at Saturday was a good one. As far as I could tell the sky was blue, the sun was out, and the air warm. Beautiful! This was a Mindy weekend, so I had a house guest. We laid in bed till just after 7:30am but got up and got going since we had a rather busy day in front of us. I was eager as I am on any given weekend summer morning. My first order of business was choking down a vitamin and then making coffee. This morning I made some of the Starbuck's that Mindy gave me for Xmas. I still have about a half pound. It wasn't long before I was done exercising and outside walking Ykraps. I took the camera along since it was such a lovely morning! I was admittedly a little tired and sluggish probably the left over effects of the three drinks I had Friday evening. But I had gotten up around 4am and took some Advil to ward off any potential for a hangover. Mindy was already busy working on her graduation present for her nephew while I carried on with my morning routine. After I returned from my morning walk and before my run, we sat out on the deck taking in the splendor of the summer morning. It was perfect! Come 9:00am I readied for my run and Mindy began preparing our breakfast. My run went well. During my run, I couldn't help but notice all the many graduation parties being set-up in the sub-division. And there must have been about a dozen yard banners congratulating the grads. They used to be rare, but now they're everywhere. When I returned from my run breakfast was just beginning to take shape. Mindy was doing some serious multi-tasking so I jumped in and helped her finish up. She was tying ribbon around 100 one dollar bills after folding or rolling them into various shapes as part of her nephews gift. That was very time consuming. After we finished eating our eggs and bacon, we put the finishing touches on the gift by making three labels; one of the labels was for fun money, another for savings, and another for 'big' money. While Mindy drafted a letter to go along with the gift, I went outside to squeeze in an hours worth of yard work. I borrowed a power washer from a friend at work so I was excited about trying it out. My plan was to try it out on the nail polish that Courtney spilled on the driveway several years ago as well as the egg that someone threw at Mindy's mini-van a few weeks ago. She didn't wash it off right away and now it had somewhat hardened. Before getting started, I first had to alter an old hose with two female ends. That was easy. After prepping the hose I was ready to give it a try. Bottom line, the results were discouraging. The 1300 PSI and 1.3 gallons per minute provided barely enough power to remove the simplest of stains and dirt. I concluded that if I’m to accomplish what I needed the power washer for in the first place I’ll have to have significantly more power. Plan B included using rubbing compound to remove the hardened egg. I had some really good stuff I bought for the boat last summer. It worked great. I used it liberally along with a lot of elbow grease. Soon the egg was no more. Just as I was finishing Mindy made me aware that it was time to clean up and ready for the party. I took the next ten minutes to put everything away. Once inside, I showered, dressed, and gathered a few personal belongings in about 15 minutes. I was ready. We were about 15 minutes later than we had talked about being, but still we would be early for the official start of the party. We arrived at the Big Run Park Party House just before 1pm. It was nicely marked with a graduation banner, so there was no missing it. The Party Shelter was very adequate and really very nice. When we arrived there were few people there and set-up was almost completed. Mindy took the opportunity to present her nephew Joe with his gift. He really liked it, but then again, who wouldn’t? Soon Mindy’s children arrived delivered by their father since this is his weekend to have the kids. Mindy had to do a little party prep on the kids but that went fairly fast. The party went on for the next 4 hours with lots of people coming and going. I saw a lot of people I hadn’t seen in a number of years. Included in that category were Jim and Debbie Campbell (traveled to Florida together years ago), Eddie Moran (high school), Chucky Penwell (Valleyview), and Peter Fisher (Valleyview). There were many others too, but those are the one’s that come to mind. We left the party right at 5pm with clear objectives. We were taking the children back to Mindy’s to meet their father, then headed to my house to get the BM’er and then head to Mindy’s sister’s to look at a car. We showed up at Jody’s around 6:15pm. They live in Charleston Ridge (off Alkire and Demorest). After a quick greeting, Mindy and I walked around the corner to see a couple old friends (Dan & Mary Elswick) that live their too. They were at home and having dinner. We interrupted, but they made us feel welcome. I haven’t seen them for probably 4 years or more and before that I hadn’t seen them since I was divorced. We used to hang out and travel together in the late 80’s & 90’s. We visited with Dan & Mary for about 30 minutes then headed back to Mindy’s sister’s house. We left promising to hook again sometime in the near future. Once back at Jody’s we took the Honda for a test drive around the area. The car has been well taken care of both inside and out. All in all it seems like a really sweet deal, and from someone I can trust. We ended up making the deal. After some more visiting and food, Mindy and I left for my house. I drove the BM’er, and she drove the Honda. I had to drive the BM’er with the top up since a shower was moving though overhead. We arrived home around 9pm and simply hung out and talked the rest of the evening. I enjoyed two beers then ended up going to bed somewhere around 11pm.