Well, I’ve had a busy weekend so far. Friday I went shopping with my mom, Blaine and Cody. The boys wanted to buy some new clothes for school. They managed to blow all of their money pretty quickly. I didn’t see too much, but I did buy Tori’s gift.

My brother is a hoot. He loves to do impressions of people. He was doing them of Bart and my uncle. Crazy kid. Along the way he and Cody spotted some used Harleys for sale along the road and babbled about that. Then my brother was trying to convince my mom to buy him an Eclipse from some guy that was selling them somewhere. I really didn’t get the details. I usually just sort of shut off after a while. I think I’m getting the hang of this selective hearing thing. We dropped Blaine and Cody off to meet their girlfriends at the park, and I hung out at my mom’s house most of the day.

Tori was with Mitch, and Allyson was supposed to pick her up at his house while she was in town. She had to go straightened out some stuff with the financial aid office at school, and she was going to get her afterwards, but Mitch decided to change plans and said he’d bring her into town later. He was supposed to drop her off between four and five, and Allyson called when she didn’t hear from him, and he’d made some more plans and said it wouldn’t be until later, so, naturally, she was upset. Then he called back a couple of hours later to say he was on his way into town. It should have taken him thirty minutes to go to the house. He didn’t show up for another hour and a half. So Bart had a few words with him. I won’t get into the details, but I think Allyson and Mitch had talked through things enough to be civil and have a tentative schedule for seeing Tori.

Then today we had Tori’s birthday party out at the park. She had a strawberry cake with chocolate chips in it that my mom made for her. She seemed to enjoy opening her presents and she played in the park with Dennis’ (Allyson’s new boyfriend) niece.

Tomorrow I have the last of the family reunions to attend. I’m anticipating a lot of food and a lot of people, as there is every year.

I went to a family reunion on Sunday, and the highlight of the event was watching Allyson and Trey basically beat the crap out of each other. It was ridiculous and childish, yet hilarious none the less. My sister managed to knee herself in the eye while Trey had her in a headlock and wound up giving herself a black eye. Definitely laugh worthy if you ask me. I kept telling Allyson to be careful. Trey is about as accident prone as Bella Swan. Of course, his mom rushes him to the ER for the smallest of things. It’s beyond me how they can afford to make a weekly visit to the emergency room and still manage to sail off into the sunset on Caribbean cruises just about every year. What do I know, though?

My brother cut his hair, which is just bizarre now. I didn’t even recognize him at first on Sunday because so used to his long ‘do. It looks better though. You can at least tell he has eyes now, which is always nice.

I’ve been busy this week working on a label. I’m just about finished with it. I have a few things left to do, but I needed to take a break from looking at it to regather my thoughts. I really had when that happens. It’s like I have all of the pieces there, but when it comes down the last part, I can’t seem to fit them together. Usually taking a break helps, so, hopefully, I’ll finish it either tonight before I go to bed or tomorrow after I wake up. Oddly enough, I woke up this morning with the logo design in my head. I wound up deviating from what I have in mind, but I think this worked out better. I guess I won’t actually know until I send it off.

Tori’s birthday is in a couple of days, and I’ve yet to buy her anything. The kid has just about everything, so I’m not really sure what to get her. I mean, she’s going to be four, so she’s pretty much pleased with anything, but even so, it’s still hard to choose. I guess I’ll have to hit the store before Saturday. Allyson’s having a party for her that day at the park, so I still have a few days to think on it.

Oh my gosh. I am so tired. I couldn’t get to sleep early last night like I was hoping, and I had to go to a family reunion today. It was pretty small, but the food was good. I actually had a really good time. The funny thing about family reunions is that I always go and end up talking to my immediate family, like I never see them. Well, I guess I don’t see them a whole lot, or at least usually not long enough to just hang out and talk to, so I guess that makes the difference. I have another one to go to next week. It’s a bigger one, with an abundance of food and not enough seating, but it’s my favorite one regardless.

I watched Tori on Thursday, and then I got to see her for a little bit on Friday before her dad came to get her. On Thursday, I made her lunch - chicken noodle soup - and we watched Peter Pan. Well, I watched and she wound up playing in her toy kitchen most of the time. It felt weird watching a movie on the TV because I usually watch movies here at my computer just because someone else is usually watching one of the televisions.

I’ve been seeing those commercials about needing some sort of box for your TV if you don’t have cable or satellite or whatever it is. I imagine eventually everyone will end up going to a LCD HDTV before too long. Luckily, we have satellite, but my grandpa did buy one of those boxes even though we didn’t need it. It actually wound up being more of a nuisance than anything because we couldn’t get the DVD/VCR to work right and spent forever trying to fix it. Eventually, he just took it out of the living room, and I’m not totally sure what he did with it. But I hate stuff like that. I don’t know why they can’t just let things be. Of course, it’s all about money. Darn money hungry people!

So the 4H Fair is in full swing. I know this because it’s pretty much all I’ve heard about from my grandparents. Why? Because my grandpa volunteered to be in charge of the Historical Society’s booth, much to my grandma’s chagrin. He always does this even though he knows the Crail family reunion falls on the same Sunday as the 4H Fair, and my grandma is in charge of it.

I have my doubts about the success of the 4H Fair this year, though. Why? Because there are no rides. No, not joking. I’m serious. It’s hard to believe and completely ridiculous. I thought it was common knowledge that the rides were pretty much the only real motivation for teenagers to go to the 4H Fair. Now, they’ve been reduced to popcorn machines and caged bunnies. It’s lame. Really. I don’t know what kind of turn out they were expecting, but I can bet it’s going to be sorely lacking once people find out about the absence of rides.