i felt it was time to post again, so here it is. it has been a pretty busy week, considering i had planned on doing as little as possible during it. monday i went to fort myers with amanda to visit the Edison and Ford winter residences. those were pretty neat, though i would really like to take a few days to actually go explore the area more and much more of the state. unfortunately, with gas prices being as high as they are, and the truck getting such crappy mileage, i probably won't be exploring much. anyways, on the way home, just as we were getting back into hillsborough county, we hit traffic. at first we thought it was just rush hour traffic, but it seemed to start a little bit south of where rush hour traffic should be, and was really going the wrong direction. it turned out that they had closed down the interstate north of where we were due to brush fires, and they were routing traffic a different direction. that was a pain in the neck, and added about 3 hours to our trip. anyways, once we finally got back into town, i went over to the parents' house for the night. they were to have a new garage door installed on tuesday, and nobody was supposed to be home for that, so they asked me to be there. as it turned out, dad pulled a muscle in his back on sunday so he had stayed home on monday, and was planning to stay home on tuesday, so i was going to get to sleep in. unfortunately, his back was feeling much worse on tuesday morning, so they decided to go into the emergency room. i ended up having to wake up at 7:30 that morning to wait for the garage door installer to show up, which he eventually did. unfortunately for me, he needed an area about 6 feet wide and 16 feet deep cleared in the garage, and we had thought it was supposed to be 6 feet deep and 16 feet wide, so he was unable to do the installation due to the space restrictions, and the fact that it was rainy outside and we couldn't move stuff from the garage outside. after that happened, i talked to the parents and they were going to reschedule the installation. mom had to go to work, so she asked me to wait for dad to call to go pick him up. i figured that was alright and i decided to lay down and try to get a little more sleep. well, as luck would have it, the weather cleared up, and the installer called and asked if i could get the garage cleared out by noon, which i figured i could, then did. he got there and started installing the door, though i had hoped that dad would've called by the time he got there, but he didn't. the installer had been working for about 2 hours before dad called, so i had to lock up the rest of the house, and hope that the guy was trustworthy enough to leave alone in the garage...i figured he was, so i went to pick up dad, who was hungry, so we went and got some fast food. after that, we got back to the house, and i told him to lay down and that i'd pick up his prescriptions when the installer was done. he finished up fairly soon afterwards, and i evenntually made it to the drug store. after that, when my stepmom got home, we had to take the dog to bethie's apartment. poor tasha, didn't know what was going on, but we got her over there and got some taco bell to eat for dinner. the reason we took her there was because the parents left for their alaskan cruise today, which they've been wanting to take for years. we took tasha over there a few days earlier so she wouldn't be in the way packing, and to make sure she wasn't having too many anxiety problems about being away from home for a few weeks. after we got back from taking her over, i watched a little tv, then i headed back to gainesville. the trip had fairly light traffic most of the way, but for the first time in years, i got pulled over. though i knew i wasn't speeding, and i had my seat belt on, i couldn't figure out why he would pull me over. thought he might try saying i was speeding or something, but to my surprise, it wasn't anything like that. the lights that are supposed to shine on my license plate were out, and i think he just wanted to make sure i was belted in and such. he didn't give me a ticket or anyting, just told me to fix the lights. so, yesterday i went to advance auto parts and got some new bulbs, but they didn't work at all. i ended up getting under the back of the truck once it stopped raining and dried up and found that the cable going to the lights had broken, so i fixed that up, and now they work. the reason that i didn't get to it on wednesday was because i had another extremely busy day. i did get to sleep in, but when i awoke, i decided to go to the lab to check things out. i figured i'd be there 15-20 minutes, then head home and fix the lights in the truck. well, i ended up doing some stuff there and stayed for over two hours. just as i was about to head out for the day, i got a phone call. my friends david and katrina needed some help moving some furniture. i figured thats what i have a truck for so i decided to help them out. they had quite a bit of furniture, but fortunately were only moving it about 3/4 of a mile away. the only drawback was that most of it was on the second floor of the apartment, and they were moving it to the third floor of the other apartment. at first it wasn't so bad, but after a while, it got really tiring. i did get some good exercise out of it, and drank a lot of water that day, which spawned me to want to start drinking more water once again. thats a good thing, as is the exercise. they took me out to dinner fo helping them, which i really appreciated, especially since there was free refills on beverages. got home from that, showered, and did nothing for the rest of the night. then yesterday, i went into the lab for a bit, we started running a new experiment, which will take a while to see how it goes, but should be interesting to see. i don't really remember if i did anything much after that. i know that i went to publix, and eventually watched star wars episode 3, but i don't remember doing anything else. i suppose i spent the rest of the time trying to sleep, or playing pysol and listening to music. but anyways, i went to bed after star wars, and slept pretty well. got up this morning, was going to go get my paycheck and deposit it, then get some gas then go to best buy cuz they have movies 3 for $20 this week. though i eventually ended up doing just that, i got a call from david again today, and they needed a little more help moving some stuff, so i did that first. after best buy, i came home and decided to start watching my new movies. i got batman begins, star trek: first contact, and charlie and the chocolate factory. i watched the first two, then i cut my hair and showered. now i am in the middle of chocolate factory. i was getting a bit hungry, and wanted some chocolate. i thought the only chocolate i had was the mint m&ms i've been saving, so i opened them up and ate some. but just as i was typing one of the previous sentences, i recalled that i have a bag of semi-sweet chocolate morsels in the pantry that i really should've opened, they would've been good. anywho, this weekend will likely be pretty busy too. i told erin t. that i would help her move some of her stuff, so i will probably do that tomorrow or sunday, and then david and katrina said they might be doing something fun and would call me if they did. monday starts back classes, and i only have one class on mondays, so it should be a nice way to ease back into things. tuesday i have that class, and another one, but hte second one should have plenty of people i know in it, maybe even catherine, so i am looking forward to that. after that, i am going to be meeting with the other research people from the lab, and also inka from the other lab. i'll probably be taking over a lot of her work in the coming weeks and months, so i really need to get caught up on that. so thats my life in a nutshell right now.