Not so much an ambulance-chaser, but a fire-truck chaser.

This is the dirty-feet picture I told you about before-- the dust on our feet was a result of the spray-paint we used to paint the lockers. No picture of the finished lockers yet. I'll get that done sometime soon.

We've had quite a weekend! Friday night we had two friends over-- Kubby, who is in the worship band with Brad, and his girlfriend Karina. (Kubby's girlfriend, not Brad's. Sorry about that misplaced modifier.)

Anyway, we had them over for dinner, and inspired by T.G.I.Friday's commercial, we had chicken with sauce. The commercial features Friday's new entrees with which you choose a sauce to go with your meat. We served chicken skewers, grilled, with six sauce choices. I'm so sorry I didn't take a picture of out cute table-- I really wish I had! It was really fun. We had teriyaki, soy, peanut, barbecue, honey mustard, buffalo, and sweet-and-sour sauces. I served them in juice glasses with a spoon and had them all on a big plate. We also had grilled peppers and onions and pineapple on the side. Afterward we played our new favorite game, thanks to Allen and Sandi, called Crested Butte Craps. It's a fun dice game that I always lose. It was a really fun night! I think it was our first time having people over for dinner who aren't related.

Saturday we dropped off the Mercedes at Germain Arena to try to sell it. The Arena was having a huge used car sale, so we thought we'd leave the Mercedes in the parking lot to catch someone's eye. No luck so far. Afterward we went down to Naples for lunch at Shing Long, a pretty good Chinese place, and then went up to Ralph and Chris's for a brief visit. Ralph went over our taxes and found some errors (in our favor! yay!) and Chris had finished a few projects around the house we got to admire (curtain panels in three rooms! busy lady!). We then went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to get ourselves a new vacuum. We got a Roomba!!! It's just the neatest thing! We brought it home and charged it up, and late last night we got to try it out. You should have seen us-- you would think we just got a new pet! We watched it "learn" the floorplan, bumping into walls and furniture, getting stuck under chairs, etc. We let it run for about 10 minutes, just for fun. When we went to empty the dirt tray we were astounded! It picked up a ton of dust and dirt in those ten minutes! (Doesn't speak highly of my cleaning skills... but the floor looked pretty clean before!) We're going to run it again today to finish the job-- I'm thrilled with it!

We took naps in the afternoon on Saturday and then went down to the Arena to pick up the car. On the way home we spotted a huge fire across the highway. Being the naturally curious people we are, we decided to hunt for it. We ended up in a little neighborhood in San Carlos Park, where there was a brush fire! We parked our car a block away and then walked over to the street where there were about 25 people gathered, watching the fire. Behind the row of houses was a large forest area, and since it has been terribly dry here, the brush fire risk has been high. They don't know what caused the fire, but it was eating up trees like no tomorrow. These trees must have been 50 feet high old pines and it took no time to consume them. Firefighters were up on houses' roofs with garden hoses, wetting down the yards and roofs, and extinguishing embers as they fell on to houses. The fire kept getting closer to the houses until it was one row of trees away from backyards-- it was really something to behold. After a while the firefighters asked us to move down the street. While we were walking down there we passed by a woman with her large dog--looked like a boxer-doberman mix. Brad walked behind her uneventfully, but as I walked in front of her the dog lunged at me and barked a LOT! And then I reacted. Do you ever have reactions that just make you wonder what's going on with you? I shrieked and burst into tears and ran to bury my head in Brad's chest. It was so weird, and not a little embarrassing. I shook for a while after-- keep in mind the dog never touched me, and I'm not usually freaked like that. So weird. I think that the weight of everything going on in my life came out right then-- the sorrow of Uncle Kenny's illness, the busy-ness of working a lot, relational issues with mean people in our small group (which we're leaving)... afterward I just felt really fragile. Damn dog.

They got the fire mostly contained, so we decided to leave. We went to get a movie and a pizza to veg for the night. At Blockbuster my dearest husband told me to get whatever I wanted to, so I picked up a movie that had won awards and looked calm, soothing, and funny. Knowing he might cringe at the title, I sheepishly asked if it was ok, and he agreed to it. I have to say that I think I have a new favorite movie scene. The movie was "Real Women Have Curves", about a hispanic family whose mother and two daughters work in a dressmaking shop as an underpaid supplier for Bloomingdales. The youngest daughter is repeatedly told she is fat, she won't find a husband, etc. She gets sick and tired of it and during one really hot day when she is steaming dresses, she just strips down to her underwear. Don't get me wrong-- it's not a porno kind of scene-- it's a wonderful, liberating, women-affirming moment. She cranks up the radio and is steaming the dresses and just dancing with her fun self. The other women in the little factory look at her disdainfully, and then begin to envy her freedom. One skinny woman declares herself a fat cow, to which all the fat women roll their eyes and begin comparing stretch marks and taking off their hot clothes. I'm not doing the scene justice, but it is just something to behold. There's something inspiring to me about women being fine with who they are, eclectic, full of personality, and not a cookie-cutter from a magazine. More on that some other day. All in all, the movie was mildly entertaining to Brad (I think) and thoroughly therapeutic for me. A good night. (Except for the Papa Johns-- ugh in the tummy.)

Ok- Brad just got some replies on a car he's pursuing. I need to go check that out.

Love to you all. Thanks for reading.