The garage door is supposed to be arriving this morning and will be installed this afternoon.  Of course, it’s a few minutes shy of noon and it hasn’t been delivered yet, so we’re starting to get a little anxious.  Drew is working nights and has to leave in a few hours.   Looks like I might be signing for the delivery if it’s late.

One exam down and one left to complete.  I’m a little disappointed in my Enviro Chem exam.  I knew the answers and was fairly confident in what I was doing – I just ran out of time at the end and only completed about 50% of the final question (worth 20%).  Keep your fingers crossed.  I have to pass the exam in order to pass the course.  If I squeak past the exam, I’ll have a B (or something like it) for a final grade.  Not great, but certainly could be worse.  I could fail and need to re-take the course *shudder*

I’m off to study and complete practice quizzes for my Psych exam now…

Despite doing absolutely nothing of interest, the weekend flew by.  The garage door still hasn’t been delivered to the company that puts garage packages together.  This translates to no door for us to install over the weekend.  Drew puttered around installing switches, plugs, and all other electrical sundries that a garage might need.  I did my best to study – although I’m the last one who can claim to have stayed focused this weekend.

R, our neighbour, took some awesome black and white photos of the demolition phase of our garage build and I’ve got concrete finishing and building pics to add.  I know, I’ve been promising them for weeks.  Since I’m writing exams this week and will likely need a break or twelve in my study periods, I’ll likely get those photos up soon.

We are apparently throwing a potluck backyard BBQ on Friday.  We supply the meat; everyone else brings something yummy to share.  Drew has promised to complete many more manual labour activities as my birthday present – gets him out of having to shop and guarantees I’ll be happy with the results (if the promised work actually materializes).  Since his promotion he’s changed crews and no longer holds a day job.  He’s back on working shift work and is on nights this week (except for Friday, then he’s on a dayshift).  This theoretically means that he’s home during the day to finish digging out the hedge, clean up the backyard so we can find the deck again, make my home sparkle, etc.

It’s 11am and he’s just crawling out of bed.  I’ve been up for hours and have been practicing not being an annoying wife.  I’m letting him sleep in and all that jazz.

I have a feeling my backyard will still look like a tornado went through it when the BBQ is scheduled to go off.  I don’t suppose I can call off the whole thing on a moment’s notice if Drew doesn’t come through with his “present”?  Perhaps the BBQ will go off and I’ll just go for a drive out to the mountains while Drew entertains.  Groups of people are draining.

We’ll figure something out.  For now, I’m doing my best not to nag.  Terribly hard thing to do.  Instead, I’m studying.  Can you tell.  See, this is me soaking in masses of knowledge to spew out on paper in 3 hour doses on Wednesday and Friday.  *poof*

Memphis has always been one of my favourite US cities to spend time in.  It has history and character.  Poverty.  Joy.  Life.  Laughter.  It was stinkin’ hot in summer (it’s the humidity that kills you) and (by Canadian standards) warm in winter.  A trip to Memphis always put a smile on my face.

Back in the day (1998-2001), I used to travel to Collierville to work out of the FedEx Tech Centre a few times a year. I always stayed in Memphis.  It was a short drive to get to work and a few times I brought Drew down to vacation while I worked.  We’d wander Beale Street, visit the Belle, view amazing Russian and Asian art exhibits, wander the Pink Palace, and always stop in to see the Peabody ducks.  We’d feed the beer drinking goats and I’d collect more beers at the Flying Saucer.  Nights would be spent visiting BB King’s and listening to Ruby.  When we were lucky, BB King himself would be seated on a stool at the door welcoming everyone to his bar.  On occassion, we’d stop in at Isaac Hayes restaurant for a meal.

On one of the trips Drew went to Isaac Hayes’ restaurant for lunch.  The restaurant was nearly empty and part way through the meal Mr. Hayes himself came out to talk to all of the guests.  He traveled from table to table, sitting down and spending a few minutes talking to everyone.  Then, he wandered on stage and performed for a few minutes before heading back (to the kitchen?).  He was the epitome of a gentleman and made the time spent in his restaurant special in a number of ways.

With Isaac Hayes passing the city shall seem a little darker on our next visit.  I am thrilled we’ll always have the memories.  He will be sorely missed.

I had this great fantasy planned for this week wherein I was going to post pictures of the garage building process and offer witty commentary.  It’s been so busy at work that I haven’t had a chance to pull the photos off my computer yet.  I’ll get around to it as soon as I start procrastinating during my exam study sessions.

Of course, since I was writing papers this past weekend, the bits of construction I saw are nearly entirely limited to the short breaks I took so I could take pictures of the guys working.  Rather than being witty, I’ll just make stuff up.

It works for my Enviro Chem class.

I wrote a nice big caveat on my last few papers explaining how I ended up just making stuff up based on how I “imagine” things would work and my limited understanding of the process.  Apparently, a semester of caveats works out to a 4.0 grade.  Too bad I have to drag my mark down by writing exams…

Mark wise, I’m better off going into my Enviro Chem exam than I am for my Psych class. I have 4.0’s in both, but there’s more wiggle room (percentage wise) in the EC course.

It’s also my older sis’ 36th birthday today.  Happy Birthday Roseanne (not that she reads my blog).  Unlike past years where I got her card in the mail bright and early, I was late sending it this year.  I’m not a complete cretin.  I did give her advance notice that it was going to be late.  Hey, it beats sending happy 30th birthday wishes to someone on their 29th birthday (yeah, I sent that card to my sis years ago).

I do my best to keep a good collection of Joss/Serenifly/Felicia Day type links on my blog.  Just doing my share to advance the world domination of excellent writing. Besides, if Browncoats can contribute (mightily) to charities and someday (we hope) manage to change the world for the better, imagine what we could do to promote new and exciting Web delivered TV.

I’ve been raving about The Guild for months and happily introduced others to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog (flan site link). Ok. So I nagged them until they gave in and watched the episodes online.  We can be gracious and forgive their previous ignorance for they have found the holy grail of Web TV and have hopped on board the flan-dom with a vengeance.

Today’s my chance to rave about The Legend of Neil.  According to the blurb on the site:

The Legend of Neil is a webseries produced by Effinfunny.com, Atom.com, and Comedy Central. Written by Sandeep Parikh & Tony Janning, this series follows the reluctant adventures of Neil- a gas station attendant from Jersey who gets sucked into ‘The Legend of Zelda’ and has to fight his way out.

It’s a hoot. Don’t take my word for it though. Hop on over and check it out for yourselves. Savvy Guild watchers will notice a few familiar faces in the episodes. The Guild‘s Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh) is one of the sets of brains behind the Legend of Neil and Felicia Day makes an appearance as a fairy in episode 3. Suffer through the commercials at the beginning of each episode – it’s worth it!  Childhood memories take on an adult feel in this spoof of the Legend of Zelda.  The old man is a hoot and the series is well worth following.

One caveat: Legend of Neil is NOT safe for work…