I wonder if anyone here actually writes for FIFTEEN MINUTES. I'm willing to bet the answer is no.

Once again, I am writing for yesterday.

I woke up around 10:30AM and hung around for a little bit, talked to some people on the interwebs, etc. I talked to Matt and we decided today was the day to build the couch, so I went over to his place around 12:30 or so. We went to get some wood at Home Depot so he could build his loft at school - and also the nuts and bolts and spray paint you need to cover it with - and also the wooden plank to put onto the bottom of the couch. Then we dropped that off at his house and went to Goodwill to get a couch, which was only $20, which is a STEAL if you ask me! We lifted it up and started walking out of the store with it (we were going to pay first of course), and they told us to put it down and go pay and that someone would take it to the back and we had to load it there. So we did that. It was a very high loading dock and actually made things significantly harder.

Anyway, we went back and sawed off the legs of the couch after talking to his mom about strategies for a while. We also broke out a battery-charging radio and listened to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me while we worked. After the legs were chopped off, we screwed the tops of the underbed storage bins to the wooden plank that we had screwed on to the bottom of the couch, and then hot glued their tops to them. It was pretty ridiculous. It was also very hot and sweaty and Matt's sister threw water balloons at us and we talked to his family inside for a while and I drank a Gatorade and it was nice. We called it a day, since his family went to dinner at a neighbor's house and I wanted to go see Lauren.

That ended up not working out so much, she got in a big fight with her mom over a broken window. Viv called though, so I went to see her. I saw Lauren and her dad talking by the river on the way out of the neighborhood.

I brought my brownies to Viv's house, and we sat outside and talked, and her cats walked around us. They're cute. That one is so fat. She told me about the engaged man who ended his engagement in a small part because of Viv, but also because his wife was crazy, and that she broke up with her boyfriend Jon that I had met before (he had a MYSPACE), and that she was sort of in love with a guy named Gordon who lives somewhere in the southwest, I forget exactly where. He's flying to Philly to see her sometime soon. She also loves men far away.

We went to pick up Stasi and Chloe, and got Erik on the way. His dogs could jump over the fence, and did, and Viv almost knocked over a table, but Erik fixed it before he got his rice cake. Nicki also came over. We planned to have a bonfire but ended up just staying inside because Viv started showing us pictures from Quest and we were just like, okay sure this works.

I talked to Erik and Nicki about college and specifically Arabic for a while since they both take the language (eat your heart out, Tarik!). We also talked about how Erik hadn't done anything all summer and how he wished people would stop telling him he was "lucky" because of that, and that he was going back to school early, and that Viv felt totally out of touch with the world and so we went over the major news stories from the summer. They also told stories of Middle Eastern men who always want to have sex with blonde girls and ones who brag about the prostitutes in Bahrain.

Matt and Krissy and Tracy and I were going bowling that night, so I had to leave. Stasi and Erik and Chloe needed a ride back too, so I had to give them one, which I didn't account for in my timing, so Erik did a tuck and roll and I left the other two in a parking lot. The first part is not true. Then I went to get my bowling ball and shoes, and then I picked up Krissy, and then I picked up Tracy, and then we met Matt at the alley, who had been waiting for nearly half an hour, and I felt awful. Tracy and Krissy's parents were both somewhat hesitant to let them out, so I was very glad they could come. It was Tracy's birthday so I paid for her bowling, which wasn't as much as it should have been, because APPARENTLY Matt had flirted the pants off the girl at the counter and so we paid half price for bowling and got free shoes. ??? Awesome. Conversation was really nice when we were bowling; we talked about their roommates and babies. Krissy's roommate is extremely rich. Tracy's didn't know what a Swiffer was, and has a boyfriend at Duke. She was supposed to have another roommate in the triple, but she left late and went to Stanford, so now they have a triple-turned-double.

We were told bowling ended at 1AM, and then at 12AM, but it ended at 12:30AM, so we went to a diner. The one that Matt saw earlier was closed, so we went to the IHOP on 202, and that was closed too. On the way, Tracy said I should put on some music and I happened to have Fallout Boy on, and also coincidentally it was "I Don't Care," and they both got really excited and so we sang at the top of our lungs, and then also sang to "The Disloyal Order of Water Buffalo." After IHOP was closed, we went to Charcoal Pit, which was also closed (1AM at this point), and then we just drove sideways and parked at the Dunkin Donuts and went to the Golden Castle Diner where there were four cop cars parked. Our waitress was possibly half-Asian and had an American accent which did not imply a SEPA/DelMarVa childhood. We were curious but never asked. Krissy had ice cream and I had pancakes, as did Matt, but I had chocolate milk, too. We talked too loud, but that was okay, I think. The bill was only $14.

Tracy is leaving for college on Tuesday and so she probably won't see any of us again, and so we all hugged each other, and I said that she didn't give Krissy a real hug, and they made fun of me and pretended to hug "for real." Matt drove her home, and I listened to Lullabye with Krissy on the way home, which she thought was beautiful. I also made an illegal left turn out of the diner and drove over the median, which I didn't see, because it was dark, and downward sloping, and low, and well-hidden. I thought one of the four cop cars pulled out behind me, but it was just Matt, thank god. He also ran over the median. I'm such a bad role model.

I dropped Krissy off, then came home, and talked to Emily and Kerry online for a while, and went to sleep around 3am.

Peace out.

posted by Singing Farewell 6:59 PM on Sunday, August 8, 2010