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And…woot.

We had a nice loooong weekend. In honor of the commencement of my 30th year (for those of you who are math-dumb, this means that I have just turned 29 and am thusly awesome), I took Friday and Monday off, and we drove to Richmond to be one with our Virginian pepys.

‘Cause they smell rather iffy.

The drive down was a breeze, since I got paged for something and our 6pm ETD got pushed back to 8pm. By that time, of course, there was simply nobody on the road, aside from a bunch of trucks, and the usual idiots sitting in the left lane holding up the works. I guess that means there WERE people on the road. However, they were very few, and dammit I STAND BY MY HYPERBOLE.

We arrived late, which didn’t prevent us from shooting the shiz with Kyle and Kris, having a few drinks, making Charles stay up WAAAAAY past his bedtime, etc. In our defense, he was about as interested in sleeping as I was in getting up at the asscrack of dawn on Saturday for work (more on this later), but we finally got him down to sleep.

We awoke on Friday to the plaintive cries of our firstborn, softly murmuring for mother’s milk. Ha ha! Just kidding. He woke us up at 6:45am by sitting up in his crib and talking at us at the top of his lungs. Here is the gist of what he said:

Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba wa wa wa wooooooo ba ba ba bla bloo blaa wooo!

Translation:

What are you idiots still doing in bed? The sun’s almost up, and I’m famished! Additionally, I just dropped a deuce big enough to feed a family of five.

We gave him a bottle to gnaw on and attempted to sleep, but his constant yammering (I don’t know where he gets this from) caused me to bring him downstairs so he wouldn’t wake up everybody else. We watched Kyle’s enormous TV and chewed on various things.

That day, we mostly sat around and cogitated (and took roughly three million pictures with my new camera), but eventually we did go out that evening to celebrate my birthday, during which I drank many beers and ate a piece of prime rib the size of my head. It was excellent.

Saturday was spent preparing for the bridal shower, which mostly meant grabbing Charles and ducking for cover. In the afternoon approximately every woman in the Commonwealth of Virginia descended on the house, so the boys, sans Charles, hightailed it for lunch and bowling. We played three games; in order, my scores were: Not Good; Slightly Better; and Surprisingly Good, Considering I Had Switched To A 12 Pound Ball And Was Just Screwing Around Trying To Throw The Most Devastating Spin I Could Muster. I kinda “found the range” with my spin and was knocking down pins like cuh-RAZAY, and so have decided I need to buy an actual bowling ball and practice this further. I haven’t told Sarah of this decision yet, mostly because I just dropped nearly a grand on a camera and accessories, so any further purchases must be approved by She Who Would Clothespin My Dong To A Bicycle (As If It Were A Baseball Card) If I Didn’t Keep An Eye On It.

The gals planned to go out to dinner, so the guys had to come home and entertain Charles for a few hours, after which the girls returned and kicked us out again so they could have a Bachelorette party and watch Carmen Electra Strip Tease Workout videos. (Seriously. I couldn’t have been more thrilled when we came back and discovered them all practicing with chairs and poles and things. Most of us wept a little bit, and I took some pictures that will never see the light of Internets if I ever want to have more children.)

Sunday was my birthday, so I got up and hung out with Charles while Sarah slept in. This may not make sense to you, but it sums up our marriage dynamic rather tidily. (Just kidding, honey! Put down the pliers!) Around 11am, we were watching some NFL pre-game TV when Kyle noticed it was snowing. Neato!

Around noon, Mel and Craig (who were also down for the weekend) skedaddled north. Team Hearn needed to be in DC by around 3pm for the first birthday of another of our friends’ childrenz, so we had the car completely loaded up when Craig called to alert us that the roads north of town were icing up, full of traffic, and basically at a standstill. So, Sarah and I got into HearnHuddle^TM and decided that we would wait out the precipitation and traffic. This meant that we would have to miss the birthday party, but it also meant that I didn’t have to fight through heavy, sleety traffic on my birthday, which would have caused me great angst and possibly forced me to develop a small nuclear program.

It also meant that we were able to watch both Conference Championship football games, which was nice too. Yay for Peyton Manning finally coming up big.

We ended up getting on the road about 10:30pm, and sure enough, there wasn’t much traffic. The roads were still slick, though, particularly just north of DC where apparently no salting was being done and there was a good inch of slush on the road. This slowed all the cars down to 35mph, but seemed to have no effect on the heavy eighteen-wheelers, all of which were blowing by us at 50-plus. Coupled with the fact that you couldn’t see any lines on the road, I spent a fair amount of time praying to God to spare us and, if He had to, kill one of the other families in our stead.

I just made one stop to drain the main vein, and we made it home around 2:30am. Since I had yesterday off, I was then able to sleep until about 10am and it was SO AWESOME. Then I did some computery things and took my camera over to Old New Castle to take some pictures which I plan to edit a bit and post later this week. (Don’t worry, I don’t intend to turn this into a Photography blog, because photos aren’t especially funny (with obvious exceptions), and my purpose in life is to make you giggle until you pee and ruin your best work pants.)

AND THAT WAS MY LONG WEEKEND. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much I enjoyed doing it, except for the driving in the slush with maniacal 18-wheelers part, because I enjoyed that not at all.