freedom week finale

hey gang.

sorry for the severe lack of blog entertainment. i've been out "livin' the dream!" okay, not so much really. but i have been having fun.

my past few days have been the "party days" of freedom week. opting to stay in the first half of the week, the last days can be summed up with rooftop beers, porch beers, bar beers, and every once in a while, a delicious red bull and vodka. to be honest, i am a little partied out. there's a reason the weekend is only two days long, i think.

today i drove up to fredericksburg to visit my grandma. my parents drove down and a few of my aunts were visiting as well. my mom prepared a delicious lunch and it was awesome just to spend time with everybody. unfortunately, the visit was a little weird as well. my grandma is 88 years old and she's starting to kinda slip a little mentally. we were talking about all kinds of subjects and my grandma would just interject with something totally random and she'd get confused really easily. it's so sad. it's kinda stuck with me all day. she's usually pretty sharp, but today was a bad day, and i haven't been exposed to too many of them. by the end of my visit, she seemed to go a little back to normal. my dad was giving me some financial advice and my grandma interrupted and said "phil, you listen to your dad. he doesn't have a dishonest bone in his body." i love it. my grandma is amazing.

after visiting with grandma, i drove back home to richmond. i met caitlyn and bill at costco. costco FREAKS me out for so many reasons. i think i figured out a little bit of my fundamental problem with costco. since costco deals primarily in BULK, it appeals to one of two people.. people with elaborate social plans (i.e. large numbers of guests over) or families. since i have neither, costco is a reminder that i am a single dude buying frozen meals for myself and i have no use for a 24-pack of anything. unless it's PBR or diet pepsi.

anyway, i picked up my giant cube of diet pepsis to last me through the next month or so. then i also picked up some CD-Rs. 100 of them. so ladies, if you want mix cds, get at me. i'm unstoppable.

after that, billy and i looked at HDTVs. this is a big deal. now that i've got the new job and things are looking up, i sorta promised myself i would buy something semi-ridiculous like a big HDTV to celebrate. we watch a lot of movies and stuff at our house, and it's something i've been wanting for a while, so i feel like it's a worthwhile purchase. not to mention, billy's got all the things that make an HDTV awesome - a good audio set up, the universal remote, and all the expensive cables that make everything look good. not to mention, the know-how to plug it all in correctly.

so i think we settled on this one TV. we looked at it for a long time and weighed the pros/cons. we would have walked out with it then and there, i think, if we had a vehicle large enough to take it home in. we called around to no avail, so we had to put our TV plans on hold. we'll be making a run for best buy in the AM tomorrow to buy this monstrous beast. then sunday night we'll probably have to watch some epic movie to celebrate.

i think it finally hit me today that the new job is REALLY STARTING on monday. i'm so excited and nervous and everything else. it's first day of school all over again, except now i'm almost 30. i want to be awesome. i want everyone to think i'm awesome. i want this to work out so bad.

freedom week is coming to a close. tomorrow is technically still freedom week, but i can tell you, my brain is going to be firmly planted on monday AM.