No softball for me!

Sometimes the weekend doesn't turn out as you expect. This weekend for example I was supposed to play in a softball tournament up in Waukegan, IL, a little more than an hour away. For this particular tournament, I was subbing in for a third baseman who was injured.  Not JUST injured though. He had slid into second or third during a tournament, ripped up his leg, didn't take care of it and then had to have emergency surgery to clean out the infection. Apparently he was just a few days away from losing a good part of his leg. How crazy is that??

Anyway, that's what I was supposed to do, but it was a rainy weekend and the tournament director cancelled the tournament early on Saturday. So my weekend was free! No it wasn't. Well, it was AND it wasn't. We had a house guest, Pam, who is LL's friend from Carbondale and who has just moved to Chicago to take LL's old job. Pam is great and you couldn't have a better house guest. She even brought us gifts! Friday we went out for sushi to our favorite sushi restaurant and introduced Pam to Minnie and Eric at Rollapalooza. The food and service was great as usual. For the first time since they opened, there were reserved signs on many of the tables, which is great to see! I joked with them as we were leaving that pretty soon I wouldn't be able to go there anymore because they were so busy. Minnie said we'd ALWAYS have a table there. Very nice!

The eating fest was just beginning though as Saturday we went out for Indian food up on Devon at Hema's Kitchen.  For the first time ever, the service was pretty bad.  The food was good, but the service was bad.They didn't get our appetizer order entered and then tried to charge us for two of them and we had to ask repeatedly for rice and for water refills. Not sure if it was because it was Saturday or what the deal was, but it better change. They get one more shot because they've been good for so long.

During the day on Saturday I was able to clean up my work desk at home. It's going to sound crazy, but ever since last Christmas, I've had TWO computers on my desk: a new one that was a gift from LL and the old one that I need to copy and erase data from.  With all the rain this weekend, it was a good time to get that done and I did. It's crazy how much room is on my desk now!

On Sunday LL took Pam out to buy a bed and they really wanted me to go. I really wanted to stay home out of the rain and watch football, but went along for moral support, to drive and to possibly negotiate stuff. Did I mention that Pam and LL are SUPER nice and might not be the most effective negotiators because of it? It's true, but I wouldn't change anything about them. I'm fine being the heavy. After a while in the first store I ushered them out of the store and told the salesman that we were going to another store to compare products and prices. At the second store, Pam found a bed she was pretty happy with so we decided to make a purchase. The salesman had already made a big deal about throwing in a bed frame for free (seriously?), but that wasn't going to cut it. We had another store on the list and I made sure the salesman heard me calling them. When Pam was set on her choice, the three of us huddled and I said I can negotiate, but you have to be ready to walk. She was ok with it and we ended up knocking down the price $100, to less than the bed in the other store that she didn't like as much. Good stuff!

Finally we stopped at our storage unit and got some bar stools, dishes, pots and pans for Pam furnish her new apartment. Felt good to help someone out and clean out the storage unit at the same time.

We finished off the day with some good Thai food from Star of Siam on Illinois which is not far from Pam's new apartment. A very busy weekend, but much different than I was expecting.