This weekend was packed with fun and excitement. On Friday Dave, Sam, Jim and I went to lunch (our new tradition) at an asian place off of MacGuilvery (maybe I should have said off of 164th, i can spell that).  It was pretty good food.  My one complaint is that they didn’t have Natto.  I wanted to buy a plate for Dave and he agreed to eat it but they didn’t stock it there, oh well

Friday evening I went bowling with some of the HP interns. It was pretty fun except that my finger had a sore and when I tried to put a lefty spin on a throw it burst into a shower of blood.  Other than that, lots of fun and silliness took place including one girl sliding on the bowling lane and many other assorted shenanigans.

Woke up early (9:05am) Saturday morning and drove down to Salem with Dave to meet the interns for a paint balling adventure.  It was pretty bad ass.  The first round was marked by bad paint in my gun which effectively turned my tippman into a Super Soaker.  After that round I had the range master guy replace my paint which he did without any trouble.  Unfortunately, the bad paint wasn’t the only contributing factor to my general suckage.  To add to the boiling pot of idiocy, I “bravely” wore only shorts and a t-shirt.  It isn’t so bad getting hit with a paint ball, even a direct hit, as long as the person shooting you is more than eight feet away.  In the second to last round that criterion was not met and I now have a third nipple about 2 inches lower than my innate left nipple.  Aside from that now purple injury, i escaped with only a few paintball marks and nothing too serious.

Dave escaped the field mostly unscaved except for the fact that his hair was full of paint his camo sodden with bright, multi-colored liquid.  We went to Applebees for happy hour on the way home from Salem and had delicious chicken quesadias.  For the sake of my manhood, I won’t mention what we had to drink.  After Appleby’s I went home and passed out for 3 hours, which ruined our plans to go swimming in Sam’s pool (without ever officially making plans with Sam).  I woke up to Sam calling and trying to get computer help so I headed over to his house with several blank CD’s and helped him get XP installed on his new PC which is now happily computing along.

Sunday started with my Mom waking me up and inviting me to come to Saturday market (Ironic that it is called Saturday market and is open on Sundays?).  I obliged and took a shower and then we headed to Esther Shore park and absorbed the sights and smells.  Fruit, flowers and vegetables for us and plants and other dog’s butts for our Snickers.  We left with some cheese, pies and three flats of fruit which my Mom converted to freezer jam (bug me and maybe I can make her share with you).

[note: the next paragraph is a long and boring description of the bad service we got at dinner on Sunday night, read only if extremely interested or extremely bored]
After we got back from the market I watched a few episodes of House and then was invited by my Mom and Sharlene to go to dinner.  We went to a place on the waterfront in Washougal called the Puffin Cafe.  It took them about 10 minutes to seat us (not bad).  Then it took them about 10 minutes to get our drink order (I had a Jolly Roger to make up for my lack of manliness at Appleby’s: spiced rum, ammeretto and coke and it was super stiff).  When we ordered our drinks we told our waiter we were ready to order but, instead of taking our order he said, “I’ll be right back for that.”  We waited for another 10 minutes and he came to us and said “Are you ready to order?” to which my Mom replied, “We were ready to order 10 minutes ago.”  We ordered and then the waiter, Dustin, disappeared.  While we were waiting on our food, Bart ordered another berry lemonade and my Mom asked for the water she had ordered and never received.  We continued to wait and after what seemed like an eternity he arrived with our food.  He got my order wrong but, I didn’t say anything, and after he set our food down and turned around to live, I chipped in, “Do we get silverware?”  I nodded and apologized and within 10 minutes we had silverware to eat our ever-cooling food.  When he came back with the silverware we reminded him that we hadn’t recieved the berry lemonade and the water so he apologized and left the room.  After 10 minutes he came back and asked (are you ready for this?), “How is everything going with your meal this evening?”  We all kind of looked at him and then kindly reminded him that we still hadn’t had our drinks refilled and now we were all in need of fresh beverages.  He apologized, left again and we finished up eating.  A few minutes later he popped his head in to the room we were in, saw us and then quickly turned around and came back a few minutes later with lemonade (not berry lemonade) and the water for my Mom.  We all laughed and my Mom filled him in as to why (because he didn’t seem to get it) and then we finished up and asked for the check.  Needless to say it took him about 10 minutes to get us the check and then about 10 minutes to pick it up from us which gave us plenty of time to think about what kind of tip to give him.  The check was over $60 for the four of us.  Sharlene paid the check on her card and we all gave her cash.  My Mom fronted $3.00 for the tip and I found $0.83 in my pocket so we decided to make it fun for him and spread the cash and change all around the table and under various plates and cups (nothing messy, just obviously not in one place).  We tipped about 5% which was lucky for him because he didn’t deserve anything.  Overall it wasn’t a bad experience, the environment is nice down on the water and the food was good but, don’t go to the Puffin Cafe if you have some place to be because you will most definitely end up being late.
[note: I realize the above paragraph should actually be several paragraphs, but in the above note I said that that following paragraph would be long, not paragraph(s) so I decided honesty was more important than line breaks and tabs]

After dinner I came home and watched more House which catches me up through Season 2 episode 13-halfway done with season 2 which means halfway done with the series thus far.  Now I need to go to bed because it is after 1am and I gotta get up for work tomorrow.