Since I'm starting school in two days, I figured I'd better get a blog post or two in this week - who knows what'll happen after that! On Friday we enjoyed an evening with the Schenks, in celebration of their last few months in their fabulous house. Ron and Ben built a fire in the fire pit and we drank wine (and/or beer) and told stories and laughed all evening - it was a perfectly relaxing evening ;) Saturday was spent sleeping in, cleaning up around the house a bit, watching a movie, and then heading up to PA to hang out with some of Ben's work friends and the wives. It was the perfect crew of people, and we again had a BLAST just sitting around enjoying a few beers, bitching about work (and/or our husbands deserving raises...), telling stories and laughing. Long night though! Sunday we got up and headed down to E-burg for Lacy's 10th birthday party, which was quite the celebration! The kids (plus Ben and Chris) had a giant water balloon battle outside, we ate TONS of food (as is customary ANY time we gather at Ben's mom's), and we caught up on everyone's summer trips and vacations and goings-on.

Then it was on to the INCUBUS concert! I have to say, when we arrived I wasn't really in the mood for a concert. The crowd, the drunken teenagers, the battle to get back OUT of the parking lot, etc. We arrived late enough to miss the openers, but that meant that we were buried in the back corner of the parking lot and had to wade through crushed beer cans, weave in and out of corn hole and frisbee games, and generally duck, dive and dodge drunk a-holes, just to get to the front gate. At which point there was a line to wait in, lots of people skipping the entire line, and people already being escorted out by security because they were too wasted to function. Literally, some girl was being carried out by her boyfriend - he was behind her with his arms up under her armpits keeping her upright, and her feet were practically dragging beneath her as she attempted to put one in front of the other to move forward. Her head was completely slumped and rolling around... it was pitiful. The security guard got them out onto a bench outside the gate and left them there! Sad. So needless to say, by the time we got in and found our seats, I was a little peeved and not really feelin the whole concert vibe. We only had to wait about 20 minutes for Incubus to come on though, and once they did, I was FINE for the rest of the evening :) Apart from my knees really hurting (Ben and I kept asking each other questions like "How's your back holding up?" and "Are your knees OK?" and "Do you want me to sit down with you for a few minutes?"... we're gettin WAYYY to old for this shit!). Incubus never disappoints. They played for about 2 hours, and they played "our song" - the one we had our first dance to at our wedding. They actually did it acoustically and Brandon (lead singer) played the bongos which made it even cooler because it was an awesome version that we hadn't heard them do before. The whole thing was kick-ass, really. It's so fun to be at a concert where you know every word of every song and they're just rockin out! And at the end of it all, it only took us about 20 minutes to get our of the parking lot, so I couldn't really complain.

Yesterday wasn't all that exciting - just another trip to E-burg for my second TB test (so we visited some parents while we were there), followed by dinner with Ben's friend Aaron at our place, and then Ben and Aaron left with thier friend Gary for the O's game while I went shopping for "professional" clothes for clinic at Old Navy. Good times ;) Today was Ben's first day back to work after over a week off with me :'( and I had to get up early to take the kitties for their neutering. That all went just fine - they did very well and are almost completely back to their normal routine this evening! While they were under the knife, I hit the emissions inspection station (PASSED!), the MVA (transferred my car's title from my dad's name to mine... to the tune of $60!!!), and to my dad's for lunch and a movie. Oh, one thing I do have to mention about the vet and the surgery... I don't know if you've ever experienced anything like this, but I had to tell them whether or not I wanted them to perform CPR on my kitties in the event of an emergency during surgery, and if so, how much! My options were "none, call me first", "CPR up to $100", "CPR up to $300" and "CPR with no limit"... ?!?!?! Holy crap! How am I supposed to put a price on my kittens' lives? Plus it only made me think more about the possibility of an emergency and made me feel nervous all day :'( I really didn't want to leave them!

Anyway, school starts on Thursday! I feel completely and utterly unprepared, so that's sweet. I feel a little overwhelmed with having to learn a whole new campus, a new system, finding different offices, getting a parking permit, picking up books, etc. Thank God Tara will be there with me! I won't have to feel so alone! I'm sure I'll have plenty to blog about over the first few days of school though. So for now, I'm gonna get back to snuggling and watching Old School. AFTER my husband puts his snake back in its cage. YES I realize how suggestive that sounded, and YES I'm referring to his literal snake, the ball python that lives in my office. Ew.