Yes… yes… yes… I’m still alive.  I just haven’t had more than three seconds to sit, breathe, and post in the past week.  Little did I know when I made the pledge to myself to find time to journal my thoughts and happenings of each day that I’d be struggling to prepare for the fall semester at work, finish my last month as a CaresTeam, and move into a new place this month.  Luckily, I had a three-day weekend for the Fourth and found the time to do all three of those things.  As I mentioned yesterday, the new place is coming along, and hopefully tomorrow, I’ll get pictures up of our final Cares BBQ.  My big project at work for the month of June is almost complete (as soon as I submit my team’s report), and my July project is still being fleshed out.  So this weekend… I partied. Well, not really.  However, I did have the joy of having dinner and spending time with my BFF Sarah’s family on Friday and Saturday night.

Four years ago the Goodman family began a tradition of coming up to Flag for the Fourth and getting out of the hellish heat of Phoenix, and this year was no different.  Mom, Dad, Aaron and new gf, Uncle Rich and friend, and Grandpa made the trek north on Friday, and after 18 holes of golf, I met them at Sakura, the local sushi and teppanyaki bar.  After hellos and hugs, we were escorted inside to our reserved table.  Now, I don’t know about you, but I love teppanyaki if for no other reason than the chefs’ obsession with lighting things on fire.  Our chef Friday night did not disappoint in the pyromaniac category, however his striking resemblance to  Sling Blade’s Karl Childers coupled with the fact he repeatedly kept lighting his arm on fire while mumbling things in my direction worried me more than a tish.  Our whole party spent the entire dinner trying to figure out what exactly he was saying and keep anything that was flammable out of his four foot radius of fear.  Seriously, Billy Bob (as I like to call him) was more than a little out of control, and by then end of the mealW we were overwhelmingly relieved to have escaped with our eyebrows and lives.  Shaken and needing something cool to drink, we ended the night in their hotel room while they sipped red wine (plain ol’ pomegranate juice for me) and told stories of our times together.

After the previous night’s escapades, there was really no possible way that Saturday’s dinner could have been any worse, or so I thought.  Catering to their love of Italian food, we met at a local Italian restaraunt in town that I had never been to.  Zac had recommended it highly after dating the niece of the owner, and so I was looking forward to trying something new.  Even though I was five minutes early, I was the last one to arrive and upon being seated realized that my brother’s ex-girlfriend’s little brother was our server. Having been friends with him before the breakup, I didn’t see any issue with this until he refused to speak to me or even acknowledge me.  Oops! After he coldly took my belated drink order, the rest of the table turned to me wanting to know what was going on.  After explaining how I knew him, we continued on with non-awkward conversation and waited for our orders to be taken and our food to come.  Finally, after what seemed like forever, our order arrived and probably should have been sent back.  I hate to say this, but it was horrible.  There was no flavor, and some of it was still ice cold.  We tried to eat it, but in the end, it was just too impossible.  Of course, I was jokingly blamed for the quality of the food, and honestly, I had to wonder.  Still in typical Goodman fashion, we politely left and headed to the 24-hour truck stop nearest the hotel and treated ourselves to ice cream cones… our real dinner.  Something tells me next Fourth of July, they’ll either go to dinner without me, or we’ll have to find a new place.