This weekend was all sorts of fun — about time, right? :) Not that I’ve been having bad weekends…this one just had a bit more to it.
My parents were stopping in Seattle for the weekend on their way home after visiting Florida for my Grandma’s 90th birthday. They got into town Thursday night, so after work Friday I walked down to their hotel and spent a very pleasant evening with them. We ordered pizza from Pagliacci’s, sat in their hotel room, and talked for a few hours. My family being who we are, the conversation bounced all over the place, from catching up on how the various members of the family are doing to everything that’s going on in the world at the moment.
Apparently I have a second cousin who had a meeting scheduled in the World Trade Center on September 11th. He’d gotten to the meeting early that day, and since no-one else had shown up yet, he decided to grab something to eat, and headed back out of the building to go get breakfast, and it was while he was outside of the building that the attacks started. He had to duck a fair amount of falling masonry and other debris, but he managed to get out of the area, and is apparently doing well. Pretty freaky — I’d heard that my friend Krystal was in New York at the time of the attacks, but this is now my closest direct link that I know of between myself and the attacks. Thank goodness this is as close as I get, though.
Saturday morning I got a call from Rick — he and Tim finally made it to Seattle! The truckfull of stuff (everything they own, plus a little of my stuff [a painting, two speakers, and three computer monitors]) should be here early next week. So, if all goes well, I’ll finally have my computers up and running at the apartment soon thereafter! Now I’ll just need to figure out what I’m going to do for a ‘net connection. Anyway, Tim and Rick came by my apartment, and we all walked down to the local IHOP for breakfast. After a couple hours with them, catching up and hearing about their trip down, they went off to commence their search for living space, and I spent most of the rest of the day watching movies and doing laundry.
I’d had plans for dinner with parents that evening, and had made plans with Rick to see if we could get ahold of Chad, Casey, and Dez to go out afterwards. As it turned out, Rick showed up at my place just a bit before parents did, so he came with us to dinner at a little mediterranean diner just down the street. We’d gotten through to Chad, who was waiting for us outside my place when we came back. After parents left we tried getting ahold of Casey again — he told us he might show up, but to go on ahead. So, Rick, Chad and I walked up to the Bad Juju Lounge and spent a very nice night catching up and getting pleasantly verschnookered.
Did everyone remember to set their clocks back on Sunday?
Sunday afternoon parents came over after they checked out of their hotel, and we spent a couple hours going through the Thirteen Days DVD. Since parents hadn’t seen DVDs before, and the Thirteen Days disc contains a wealth of historical information on the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was a lot of fun to go through — especially as they were both around during the time and remember a lot about it, and dad’s military background gives him some extra insight into some of the characters. While we didn’t have time to get through everything before they had to leave to catch their plane back home, it was a lot of fun to go through all that with them.
After they left, Heather brought some Thai food over, and we kicked back and I introduced her to the Clerks: Uncensored DVD. She’d never seen the animated show before, and we had a blast watching it. “Omigod, Bear is driving — how can that be?!?!?”
So, that pretty much wraps up the weekend — family showed up, friends showed up, and it was just a lot of fun. Very, very cool. Now…back to work….