Summing Up

Let me 'splain.
[pause]
No, there is too much. Let me sum up.--Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

That's kinda the way I feel about it. It's been a fairly busy two weeks even outside of the Great and Glorious Battle for Health. (And I must still register my amazement that literally half of the admin/moderating team at CardsClubhouse--all of whom are within at least 5 years of my 32--have not ever seen The Princess Bride. I thought it was one of those movies that everyone saw and loved. I mean, "Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles..." Do we get these people out from under rocks? :) )

So, "let me sum up."

• I missed poker last night, but two weeks ago, it was a roller-coaster type of game. I don't know how Bobby and I matched up against each other so often, but he was very much ready to take me out behind the shed and kick whatever he could out of me. The worst of the bunch was when he got me all-in and flipped over pocket aces. I had pocket sevens, but couldn't contain my excitement when another seven came out on the flop. I busted him twice in a row that put him out and I'm not sure he's still forgiven me.
• So I was doing OK, sticking around, before I doubled up by knocking Ben out. I've got an above-average stack and the night is getting late. But without doing anything entirely stupid, I blew it quickly. My undoing was forcing Matt all-in holding A-9. He had Q-10 and I looked extremely good when an ace came out on the flop. However, next was a queen, then a ten and the slide had begun. It ended when my pocket sevens weren't enough to beat Charles's A-8 with an 8 on the board.
• Meron and I had our Valentine's Day dinner early as the Saturday before, my parents came and watched the kids while we went out to Ruby Tuesday's.
• Last Saturday, before he broke out in his fever, Benjamin and I met my parents at the Arkansas Tech women's basketball game. Benjamin wouldn't go with my parents by himself--he had before, but he said it was "too loud"--but was up for it if Daddy went as well. We stayed the whole game, got a hot dog, popcorn and drink (Coke for me, Gatorade for him) and had a pretty good time.
• Wednesday, in the midst of us feeling pretty bad (but the kids having their health about them), we took them to a local photographer for professional pictures. Meron wanted this for her birthday and we'd scheduled the appointment a week or so ago. We almost canceled it, but figured we didn't know when the kids would be healthy again. Steve's family goes to our church and he's done some work for us down there before. Meron had dealt with him with some of that and she thought he had said that he tended to shoot kids with the parents out of the way. That wasn't the case, as Meron had to keep a hold of Sarah and work some with Benjamin and I had to get Sarah's attention so she'd look up. We did a lot more work in that shoot than we expected, especially for our condition! I hope to put some of the finished products up when we get them, though.
• Thursday was Benjamin's first parent-teacher conference. As I said, I didn't move much off of soft horizontal surfaces, so Meron went without me. We can only hope all of them will be that good. The teachers were highly complimentary of him, calling him "inquisitive", a good learner, helpful and one of the few not to be in time-out at all during the year, as far as they could remember. He's a heck of a kid, there's no doubt.
• Meron's birthday is today and we were going to go spend the afternoon in Conway then use the Christmas present my uncle and aunt gave us, which was a gift card to Meron's favorite restaurant for us to use while they watched the kids. (Basically, it was an excuse for them to have Benjamin and Sarah for a while, but we weren't going to argue!) Obviously, since we were dealing with our illnesses, we didn't make it, but should be able to go next week. I did reload Meron's Starbucks card, though, so she's in fine shape.
• Things are picking up at work, baseball season is getting closer (very, very good) and Lost is baffling me on a weekly basis. That show will be the death of me before it's all said and done!

That'll just about do it, I guess. I'll try not to let two weeks slip by again!