I stayed up so late last night watching Robocop movies. Yeah, I said Robocop. I stayed up until like 4AM. And having already had like no sleep the night before, that wore me out. I slept until 11AM. I got up and took a shower and cleaned up my room. I really didn't have much to do today.

After eating some lunch, I left the house and drove to the apartment one last time. My mom did a great job of cleaning the place (I didn't even know she was going to do that for us) but there were a few places that I needed to finish cleaning. So, I got to the apartment around 1pm and worked for about an hour on cleaning.


Here's the once-famous Cooking with the Boys set.

I had do some cleaning on the cabinets in both bathrooms, and then I spent the rest of the time cleaning the stove in the kitchen.


I could not get them any cleaner than this. I tried with all of the tools in my arsenal, which mainly consisted of used and fresh paper towels, Lysol multi-purpose spray, and what I hope was a sink/dish brush and not a toilet brush.

There was also a stain on the carpet in the living room that I could not get up, no matter what I used. Not even a Rainbow vacuum would lift this stain.


If you're wondering what the stain was, it's fruit punch. This one time, I tipped my Moe's cup over on the floor when I fell asleep on the couch, and it sat like that all night. And I never could get it up. I put a floor speaker there to avoid embarassment at my social parties. I thought about making a metaphor about that stain and covering it up to sin in our lives and covering it up, but I don't really think anyone would try to cover up their own sin with a sound-system speaker. Maybe I messed up my own metaphor. I'm not sure.

When I finished cleaning everything (including wiping down all of the cabinets and doors in the apartment), I drove up to the office and turned in my keys. Shannon turned her head and closed her eyes and held out her hand to take them. They really did not want to see us go. But hey, you can't pass up house-living to stay in apartment, especially when you feel trapped in your level of auditory expression by the neighbors living above you.

We talked for a minute while Shannon looked through my file and then we went back to the apartment to do a walk-through inspection. I didn't really care to participate in the inspection, but she invited me to come along, so I figured I might as well. Shannon noticed the red punch stain. Everything else passed on the inspection. Hopefully they'll have other ways to get that stain out (I suggested painting it white... but that didn't go over well), otherwise I'll probably have to pay to replace the carpet. Or, at a minimum, I won't get my deposit back. Sigh.

I headed back to the house after the inspection was done. I sat around for a few minutes and headed out just before 3pm to go to Rodrigo Rodriguez's house. Rodrigo was the guest guitarist who came and played at Southside Fellowship back on February 8th, and I am helping him get some of his performances put onto YouTube to expand his audience reach. As I was driving to his house, he called me and asked if we could reschedule since he just got back in town from a gig in Florida. So, we rescheduled for Thursday and I turned back around and went home. I thought about driving around downtown Simpsonville and taking some photos, but then decided it'd be more fun to go home, lay on the couch, and eat pop-tarts. Yep.

Tim came home around 4:30pm from work. I spent about an hour trying to stream a movie off of Hulu but it just wouldn't buffer. I don't get it. It's 2009. If people really want to leverage video on the Internet, we shouldn't have issues like that. It's frustrating.

A litle bit after 6pm, Tim and I left the house to go meet some of my family for dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. Tim's birthday (and mine too) is tomorrow, my mom's is Wednesday, and my uncle David's is Wednesday. It's a big birthday week in our family.


As soon as I came in, I did my usual "take photos and ignore social interaction". It helps me adjust. Don't judge.


We all got cards from people in the family. I like getting cards. I'd never admit it publicly, but it makes my day (perhaps even my week or month) when I get a handwritten note in the mail. Hint hint.

I tried to get the employees at Ruby Tuesday's to come sing to me but they wouldn't do it. Instead, they brought us free sundaes.


I asked our waitress to take a group photo (well, really, I just made it blindingly obvious that I wanted a group photo taken and she offered). I had to crop it so it'd be framed right, but I appreciated the effort.


Dinner was great. Look at that photo. I'm probably the only guy I know who willingly wears a tie when he feels like it, for no real reason. I tell people it's "because I look so good in them", which I don't even think is true. I just like wearing them.

Tim and I left and drove back to the house in Simpsonville after dinner. When we got home, I pretty much made Tim clean part of the house while I worked on putting things away in the kitchen. He didn't want to and I kept coming back and making sure he was on task. I figured since I had taken care of finalizing all of the apartment details, that he could at least chip in and clean the house. Tim and I differ on the word "clean" too, I think. And that's ok. As long as his definition of clean only applies to his room and space, and he applies my definition to the rest of the house. I'm definitely not a perfectionist either, but I have my moments where I want things to be spotless.

I played some Halo tonight with a few friends. That was fun. I also spent some time organizing my iPhoto library and picking out some good photos that I've taken over the past year or so that I want to get printed up and framed to hang around the house. I thought it'd be funny to have a collage of pictures of me doing different faces but wasn't sure if that'd be weird looking. You know, to have a bunch of pictures of just me all over the place.

Tomorrow is going to be a great day. It's my birthday and I'm getting a bunch of people together to come to Oriental House with me for my birthday. It's also International Pancake Day at IHOP. Let's be honest, they're probably doing that just for me. I think I'm going to go there for dinner with Dan and Rachel. Oh yeah, and it's a regular Tuesday so we have a lot of stage setup to do along with meetings and probably some video-taping in there somewhere.

Later,

Joe