A good Friday

This week, by sheer luck of the draw, my floating day off fell on Friday.

Well, maybe it wasn't luck of the draw. For the past four weeks it had been on Thursday, and a girl who works in the cubicle next to mine had had Friday. She's a good looking girl, and somebody has to make these schedules, for all that we were all told, when we signed up for the four 10 hour day schedules, that our extra day off would be randomly assigned every week. A month of Thursdays, while Ashley had a month of Fridays, didn't strike me as very random, so I mentioned it to our supervisor, and she mentioned it to whoever it was that handles the scheduling (whom I'd be willing to bet is a deeply heterosexual male) and it turns out, this week I ended up with Friday off.

Either way, it turned out to be a very good Friday.

See, SuperGirlfriend works 9 hour shifts four days a week herself. She and the other people who work at her office do this so they can leave on Fridays at 11:30. So on the infrequent occasions I get a Friday off, well, it gives us a little extra time together. Which is always nice.

This Friday is payday for both of us, so we had a little extra cash to throw around... not a lot, life has been fairly expensive for both of us recently due to this and that... but a little bit. And the day started out very well for both of us, as we'd been having trouble with our direct deposit, but this morning both of us found our checks safely deposited to our checking accounts.

So I offered to take her out to lunch, and we planned to do some shopping, and to put a large package full of my manuscripts in the mail to an interested publisher.

I also had a few personal plans for the day. SuperGirlfriend has established a tradition of giving small gifts in her kids' Easter baskets, which I heartily approve of, because, you know, you can't ever get enough excuses to give nice stuff to people you love. But in all the years SuperGirlfriend has been creating wonderful Easter baskets for her kids, nobody has ever made one for her, and my plan was to fix that this year. So I had to run out this morning and do some Easter shopping, and I did, and that was nice, too. (If SuperGirlfriend didn't read this blog I'd tell y'all what I got her, but as it is, you'll just have to wait.) I enjoy getting stuff for SG, even though she always gives me a hard time about it.

So I did that, and finished up a clix game I had set up in the basement (an extended Fantastic Four beat up on an extended Superman Family), and then SG came home and after [sex scene deleted] we went out. First stop was the Great Escape, where I used a 20% 'private sale' coupon they'd sent me as a thank you for putting myself on their mailing list to pick up an already discounted Collateral Damage clix brick (12 boosters plastic wrapped together into one unit) as well as three singles -- the OMAC LE, the Icons Brainiac, and the Nova Unique. Then we went out to Rafferty's, where SG got a chicken salad she really loves (apparently, Rafferty's does a really excellent vinagrette salad dressing, something I will never know first hand because I find salad to be noxious and salad dressing to be vile) and I got their ribs. Their ribs aren't bad, but I should probably have gotten the bacon cheeseburger, which I've had before and which stands as the best bacon cheeseburger I've ever had, or maybe the catfish sandwich, which SG recommended and which I actually meant to order, but it took so long for us to get someone to come take our order that I'd forgotten by the time it happened and I just defaulted to the barbecue.

So, we had a good meal, then went over to UPS and shipped out 15 and a half pounds of paper to a publisher that has expressed some slight interest in my work, after which we went to Wal-mart to do some grocery shopping (the SuperKids come back after a week at their dad's tomorrow, and we needed provisions) and to buy ourselves an anniversary gift (our anniversary is next weekend) which we'd decided would be a printer, since we haven't had one in working condition for a while. (We wound up with a very nice all in one combination fax/copier/printer/scanner for around $65.) I also picked up a bunch of cheap DVDs -- Shrek, The Gift, Thelma & Louise, Bring It On, Nobody's Fool, and Cocoon. I topped off the trip to the electronics department with an extra X-Box controller, so me and one of the SuperKids will be able to smack each other around at Soul-Calibre II from now on. Then we bought a lot of groceries and went home.

After putting the groceries away, I opened my clix brick. Out of the 10 Veterans I was still looking for, I got five out of the brick -- Fire, Green Lantern, Manhunter, Clayface, and Red Tornado, leaving only Ice, Geo-Force, Mary Marvel, Superman, and Monsieur Mallah & The Brain. I also got an Experienced Superman, Experienced Vixen, the Brain (the Experienced level of the Monsieur Mallah/The Brain REV) and another compete REV of OMAC, to go with the REV SuperGirlfriend gave me a few days back, and the OMAC LE I bought out of the singles bin today. A pretty good set of boosters, made even better by the fact that now, one of the SuperKids will be able to send away for a Krypto using the coupon from the brick.

As to Uniques, I got four -- Crimson Avenger, Eclipso, Adam Strange, and Kalibak. I already have all four (I have, to date, pulled no fewer than three Eclipsos from various boosters, which is just wasted on me as I detest the character thoroughly). I've pulled at least three Crimson Avengers, too, which is similarly wasted. I already have an Adam Strange and a Kalibak. I gave all my extras except for the Kalibak to the girls; the Kalibak may be tradeworthy online, so I'm holding on to it for now. If nobody wants it, I'll give it to the girls, as well.

With the brick opened and dispensed with, I installed the new printer module, which turned out to be much easier than I expected. Then SG and I loafed around a little bit, watching some NYPD BLUE I have on videotape (I started showing her my Season 1 DVDs a while ago and now she's hooked), before heading out again to buy a few more things for the kids' Easter baskets. While we were out getting gift cards and Derby pins, we noticed that THANK YOU FOR SMOKING was playing at the local cineplex, so we watched that, then came home and watched THE GIFT on DVD. Currently, SuperGirlfriend is slumbering peacefully on the couch while I type this. As soon as I get it posted I'll help her down the hall to bed and we'll both conk out.

Tomorrow we get the girls back again. That should be a good day, too.

That's a good note to close on, but let me take a moment to note my gratitude and continuing appreciation to those of you who take the time to provide me with feedback on the scurrilous nonsense I type here. Without you guys, I most likely wouldn't even bother with a blog, or at least, I wouldn't bother with it as often. So, thanks for that.