Life As Usual, Calls from the Village Idiot, and a Win

I went with my mom earlier this week to a thrift store again. This time, she was the one that had a great thrift store find. My brother, Erik, collects anything and everything Coca-Cola. He has stuffed beanie toys, melted coke bottles, barbecue tools, ornaments, magnets, collectors bottles, a decoupage box made by our aunt, and cans and bottles from all over the world. The collection has been growing over the years and has been increasingly more difficult to display. At Paws & Claws (a local thrift store that helps animals), my mom found a Coca-Cola refrigerator with glass doors on two opposing sides. It stands about 5 ft. tall, 2 ft. deep, and 3.5 ft. across. It works (though it needs to be recharged) and looks great full of his Coke collectibles with the light on. The two of us struggled to move it into its place and get it loaded up before Erik got home. He was excited when he saw it. Daniel's first softball games were on Thursday night. Unfortunately they lost both games. They had to pick up a few players as they were short 2. One of the guys that played on the other team was incredibly cocky. When he got up to the plate to bat the first time. He was talking a big game saying "They're actually going to pitch to me...They don't know who's behind the plate here." among other things. I'm thinking "You're an overweight, 40 year-old un-athletic guy with a bad haircut playing in a crappy men's league in Portland." I was thoroughly unimpressed with his batting ability. Not once did a ball make it out of the infield much less over the fence and out of the park. As a catcher, he also missed a foul/fly that landed a foot in front of him after calling it. He also harassed our team after the game for missing some catches. What a loser. Daniel had fun regardless of the outcome and caught an out or two as an outfielder. Friday I got to work at the camera store since Daniel had to be at a manager's meeting all day. It was an incredibly boring day for sales and I sold exactly zero cameras all day. I left from there to go to the Portland State Spring Football game out in Tigard. It took almost an hour to get there. We brought the T-shirt launching air cannon that we use throughout the year at sporting events to shoot some T-shirts into the crowd. A few of us insisted on testing it after suffering through some embarrassing misfires during last football season. A joint came loose and messed up our air pressure when we were picking it up to go test it. We finally got it functioning again, but the pressure was a bit high. Nearly every shot hit one of the stadium ceiling beams and dropped in the same place. Hopefully we'll get all this perfected by football season. The after game party was at the Outback Steakhouse in Beaverton. It was a successful event and we mostly filled the restaurant and bar. Last year we were concerned about having enough people there to make it successful, so we marketed the event heavily and literally packed the place beyond comfort. We compensated this year with a bit less advertising and I think we got it just about right. Saturday morning began with an 8:15am phone call for Crystal or "some little Asian girl." Despite telling the guy that he had the wrong number, he called back an hour later. When we got out of bed, we noticed that we had a voice message from the previous night. It was from the same guy who called Sat. morning. Apparently James Dickenson met Crystal in front of a restaurant and got her number and wants to meet up with her. Crystal must have realized what an idiot this guy was and gave him a bogus number--OURS! Despite the outgoing message stating that he has reached Daniel and Erin, he left his pathetic message anyway. The callerID revealed that he called 4 times between 7pm and 10pm on Friday night (stalker material??). We got out of the house to visit the Soapman at Saturday Market and got some yummy natural soaps (Honey & Oatmeal and Lavender & Comfrey are our favorites. Up next, a few other errands and then some geocaching for a bit. We did get a cool CD from one of the geocaches. It is called "Superhero Sandwich" and was compiled by a fellow geocacher. It has themes from misc. superhero TV shows, cartoons, and movies as well as some sound bytes and regular songs (like "Kryptonite" by Three Doors Down). In all, there are 58 tracks and we enjoyed listening to them on the way home. Out to the movies for Mother's Day with Daniel's family, my mom, and Daniel's aunt and then a midnight dash to our cousins' house to visit and see their new place. Today also began with a phone call. The village idiot James called back again asking for Crystal or a little Asian girl. I told him that he still has the wrong number and he insisted that he talked to Crystal yesterday and she confirmed this number. I said "Listen--She gave you a bogus number. STOP calling here and waking us up." He kept trying to reason this out on the phone and I told him again to stop calling and then hung up. As of yet, he hasn't called again. Daniel is building the cabinet for the bathroom right now. It is kind of hard to help him without being a pain and in the way, so I'm just letting him do his thing. We also had our coed softball game tonight and took another win 15-3. It's fun winning. Our record is now 2-0-0. I couldn't bat worth a damn tonight, so I'm going to try to practice more before the next game. Mom even got to get up to bat once since one of our girls was running late. She struck out, but gave it her best effort, and was a good sport, and that's better than the automatic out we would have had to take otherwise. Unfortunately, we had to miss Milo, our god-son's (Daniel's cousins' son) 6th birthday party today, but I think we'll try to go see him sometime this week.