This past weekend was a great weekend.  My numbers were, well.  They were numbers at least.  I held my own.  I discovered that getting out of Villanova for a while and just relaxing is the best.  Nova reminds me of school (duh) and makes me miss the people that aren’t here for the summer.  It often makes things go down the drain, and makes me act like I’m six.  Getting out of here, however… out of sight, out of mind.  Sure, I missed people.  But I missed the right people.  I missed the people that don’t make me hate night time.  I missed the people that make me smile and don’t cause me grief.

I bought an Xbox 360 the other day.  Purchased two games with it, one roleplaying game (Lost Odyssey) and one semi-tactical shooter (Gears of War).  After Gears flat out did not work in my machine, I returned it and bought a legit tactical shooter (Rainbow Six: Vegas 2).  I went home Thursday night after work, and walked into a house of chaos.  My family from Texas visited for the fourth, and of course the kids came along too.  Let’s just say that having a five year old, a six year old, and a fifteen year old added into the mix was pretty interesting.  The Xbox kept the kids entertained for the most part, but the pool surely helped too.  Ended up starting the campaign in RS:V2 on Thursday night and completing it on Sunday afternoon.  It was somewhat difficult to find time to play since it is rated mature due to language (not to mention the fact that you do a lot of killing people….).  We tried to shield the youngins as much as possible, and ended up renting an offroad racing game to play while they were present in the room.  Turns out that I flatout suck at dirt bike games.

Had the best wine I’ve had in ages (hahaha ages….  let’s say a while, at least) on Thursday night as well.  Homemade wine is definitely the way to go.  It was Raspberry, which would normally turn me off, but this stuff was pretty good.  The alcohol content was absurdly high, so it was more like taking a flavored shot (drinking out of dixie cups — classy.)  No one else that was there really liked it, my sister couldn’t even stand the smell of it (which is very good, since she was the dd and I wouldn’t have wanted to make her miss out on something she wanted).  The night was going well until I thought it was a good idea to start sending texts to a certain someone…  and then the night got pretty quiet.  After that, though, it was completely out of sight and mind.  Which made for an awesome night.  =P

The actual fourth was spent wishing the rain would stop, and then sitting in the chilly pool making sure no children drowned, and then making sure no children ended up getting beaten to death by their brother.  Can you say aggressive?  Never seen a kid who takes a swing that fast and then thinks he did nothing wrong.  Excuse me, no.  If I can lift you out of the pool with one hand, you better not be throwing punches at me.  It doesn’t take much more effort to throw you over the fence and forget about you for a while. ;-p  The food was great, fireworks were loud, unsure if they were cool lookin; never made it there.  Saturday was pretty chill though.  Hung out with a friend, midnight swim, watched a movie, really fun night.  All in all, the weekend away from Nova was the best I’ve had in a really long time.

Anyways.  I’m reading Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes right now.  The further I read, the more I want to go to Europe and simply enjoy life.  Everything here seems so ‘do this, do that, do this faster, make this bigger, play that louder, get more of that’.  The concept of just relaxing and enjoying life seems to foreign to me, and I can’t figure out why.  I’m not stressed (much), I’m not really worried about much of anything (anymore, short of grades and graduation and pleasing others, I guess), so I don’t get why it seems like such a crazy idea to just slow down and enjoy it all.  The thought of sitting on a balcony in the German countryside, particularly, enjoying some fine locally brewed German beer in the evening…  it seems like such a dream.  But ah… it’s such a good dream. haha  Expensive, but… mmm.

Alright, I have work at 7.30 tomorrow morning. Time for some bedtime reading.  Be safe.

Peace,
Tom.