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I think I deserve top billing from now on.

Sooooo……. here’s how the anniversary went down.

It started wonderfully. I woke up to a surprise from Lloyd – a super-cool necklace (made from wood) and a copy of the book Wicked (since I’m always singing songs from the musical though I’ve never seen it). I was heartily impressed that he managed to surprise me! Well done, Lloyd.

I bought him nothing.

I went to work early, had a good day, and told everyone that I wasn’t staying there forever since I needed to go home to take a nap. Our traditional anniversary evening is to order Chinese take-out and watch a movie, and I was so beat I didn’t think I’d make it through the movie.

So, home by 4:30 (woo-hoo!!!), out like a light.

Around 5:30 a faint beeping woke me up. I was pretty sure it would be Lloyd asking me to call in the food order. I grumpily woke up and while listening to the voice mail, walked by this sitting on my computer stool:

At the same time I’m reading this I’m hearing Lloyd’s voice on the message saying something about the car breaking down. So confusing. I checked my phone – he had called about five times. He also called Harold who came over to leave the note, and I completely slept through that.

Oops.

Luckily Charles saved the day. He went to Lincoln to get Lloyd from his hot car on this humid day and brought him safely home. Thank you, Charles, you’re a superhero!

So, our car is in a repair shop in Lincoln with my phone charger sitting inside (rats), but after all that we got to sit down to Chinese food and watch the Netflix movie that’s been sitting on our dining room table for weeks: Stake Land. A brief synopsis:

This genre-bending thriller combines vampires, religious fanatics and post-apocalyptic horrors with a coming-of-age tale that finds drifter Mister training young Martin to survive the nightmare that has become America. I’m sure that I can stop typing now as you get the gist of the film.

Not the most romantic film. This has been a very weird anniversary.

Happy Anniversary, Lloyd. I still love you.

Warning: This post will make very little sense because I’m trying to make it fit the two crummy photos I took.

This weekend was bad for Lloyd, good for me. He had a bunch of stuff to do at school and I had some things I had to do in Lincoln, plus a good amount of goofing around, too. Win-win! (Wait, ‘Lose-win’, if we’re including Lloyd in this.)

On Sunday we didn’t go to morning church because Charles was getting installed at Concordia’s evening service. That meant I got to go shopping and get in my traditional nap in the library. I was awakened by a voice mail on my phone (at 1:20) from my director that said, “You’re going to the voter’s meeting at 2, right?”

Zoinks!!

I sped back to Seward (following that weird car you see in the banner photo), voted my little heart out, then back to Lincoln to pick up Lloyd for church.

Charles was installed just fine. He’s the new Director of Student Life at Concordia. Brent (Brad & Beth’s brother) was also installed as the Dean of Arts & Sciences. It was an Installation Jubilation Celebration (That’s Charles greeting Mr. & Mrs. Royuk. Ron looks remarkably well after just having heart surgery a week ago, huh?)

I have a coffee maker that I like quite a lot. (I gave up on cold brew coffee because I’m kinda lazy.) My parents have one just like it and I wanted to copy them. I like it because there’s no carafe – it has a holding tank instead. On the weekends I brew a pot on Saturday morning, drink half of it throughout the day, turn it off, then finish the pot on Sunday.

(Don’t call me gross, that’s not nice. Plus, Lloyd used to work with a guy who never washed his coffee mug. Ever. Save your “gross” for that guy.)

The thing I don’t like about this coffee maker is that it is unwieldy. Granted, I’m only using it once a week, but it’s once to pull it out from under the cabinets and fill it, replace it, then another time to dump the grinds. Whew. That’s too much work.

But wait! Bed, Bath and Beyond to the rescue!

I was so excited to buy something so frivolous. I didn’t even do my standard ‘walk away and see if you really want it in five minutes’ ritual. I grabbed the box and made a beeline to the checkout.

Um, it doesn’t really work for me. If I push it back against the wall (which is how I think it should be since it looks nicest), and center the coffee maker on the caddy (again, it looks nicest), it doesn’t slide out far enough to open the top.

Whatever. I decided to switch it around and use the little measuring bowls to hide the gap. (You can see it in the banner photo.) That, and the dirty plates, cups and half-eaten bag of Cheetos on the counter, should detract from it’s lessened beauty.

I just can’t abide lessened beauty.

Professor Plum, in the block area, with a tractor.

During the lazy times, I admit to relying on mac-n-cheese as the sole component of dinner occasionally. However, I dress it up with tomatoes. Pour a third-to-half a can of diced tomatoes in a bowl, sprinkle with basil and nuke for a minute or so and put on top of your serving. Viola! Fake spaghetti!

You are in two camps when in comes to this: My camp, which is full of awesomeness and has Starbursts for dessert, or Lloyd’s camp, which is stupid and closed-minded. Lloyd would rather eat macaroni out of his shoe than put tomatoes on it.

Ironically, when I was in grade school, the one side dish that I remember was macaroni and tomatoes. I don’t think there was much, if any, cheese in there, but just the thought of eating it made me want to barrrrrrrrrrfff. What has changed? In my old age will I begin to crave other things I detested?