Catching up

We celebrated Chel’s birthday on Saturday with two parties — one at a mini-family reunion at my mom’s and dad’s house, the other with her mom and sister here in Dallas at a remodeled restaurant called Tillman’s Roadhouse. Since birthdays and seeing family are a good time for catching up, I figure it’s also a good time to write an update on what’s been happening since I last wrote.

• Although Chel and I have been together now for six-plus years, I’m always learning something new about her: Lenora at her office called to see what they should get her for her birthday. Since I was planning to get her an iPod, I said it would be great if they wanted to get her an iTunes gift card. That night, I was rethinking my gift a little bit, so rather than get Chel the wrong thing I decided to ask her what she thought. So here’s new thing I learned: The girl doesn’t want an iPod. Ever. Spa treatments, candles, manicures, and pedicures are more suitable gifts…
• Tillman’s Roadhouse is really good. It was the best $25 chicken fried steak we’ve ever had. But the best deal on chicken fried steak in the neighborhood is still at Norma’s…
• I don’t know if it’s the nice weather or what, but I have been extremely unmotivated to go to class or study lately. I am now understanding the infinite wisdom of spring break. Unfortunately I have a 20-page paper to write and a lot of other stuff to catch up on this week, but at least I don’t have to feel guilty about wanting to skip class, too…
• In April we will have been in our house for a year, and now that spring is here we’re seeing little surprises we didn’t know about — like the trees blooming in the front yard, and little yellow flowers popping up around the lamppost out front…
• I wanted to finish up a lot of our major projects at work in March, but it looks like that’s not going to happen. I guess that’s what April and May are for…
• It was great to see family we hadn’t seen in a while at mom’s and dad’s house. One of my aunts came down from South Dakota, so we probably had 50 people at the house to visit. Chel enjoyed it, too — since we could almost fit her family in the Solstice, it was cool for her to see our big family almost all assembled…

Just a few random ramblings in the spirit of catching up. Now, if anybody wants an iTunes gift card, we’ll sell it cheap…