Sun Jul 31 - Do you know how tempting it was to call today "Another Manic Sunday"? I refrained, of course. *grin*

I got in to Dayle's a little late after a little nap on my driving—the traffic was really bad over one of the passes, which made me sleepy with frustration. But I got in safely in one piece, and had a lovely rest. Bless her, she had the guest bed not only pulled out and with the linens on, but the window open so there was a lovely cool breeze all night. Yippee!

Ken and I met Jeff out at the site and confirmed that, wow, it is indeed a large grassy space at the beach and we'll have no problems at all putting together the big Kingdom event September. Jeff is actually making the mapped out reservations for all the large pavilions, but since he can't be there the day of the event, I'll be out the night before and early the morning of, to mark off and help direct people for setup. All is going well.

Afterwards Ken and Dayle and I had a little adventure trying to find lunch—who closes the Greek deli chain restaurant for Sundays? And who in America has menus that don't kick in until noon? *shrug* Our sit-down meal was okay but took *waaaAAAAAy* too long to actually serve us food, even if the waiter seemed to be doing some kind of weird magnetic-lean-in-towards-me flirting thing (from behind me, without any eye contact). I said it was weird! *grin*

The drive over the theatre was also uneventful (yippee!)... just the horrible necessity of enduring 90-100+ degree weather after enjoying 70-80 most of the time. The show itself was *wonderful* and my nieces did a fantastic job. My eldest niece was even cast in a young adult dance role (at the age of 13!) and was astonishingly great to watch. Everyone is just so impressed with what a lovely young woman she's turning into. One of my cousins was there for the show, and she, her boyfriend, me, Mom, Mom's husband, my sister, and her eldest daughter all went out for supper at a SouPlantation together after the show.

On my way home, it dawned on me that I should swing by and pick up Lilya for my little "kidnapping plan" to have her stay over, help me clean and organize, and just socialize together for several days. But she's come down with an infection and needs to be on meds and rest for a while. So I'm just going to proceed as if she can't come over at all, and if she does get well, then it will just be an unexpected surprise.

But I did go hang out with her and her roomie Nathan for the evening, and we all went to the grocery store for some dinner shopping that he needed to get done. As he started to try and prepare dinner, my heart sank just looking at their kitchen. They *really* could use some help so I ran back to the store for some scrubby-sponges, came back, rolled up my sleeves, and started scrubbing anything not nailed down for the next three hours. Told you it was another manic cleaning episode. But Nathan and I got to chat for hours and have a major geek-fest, swapping stories about the internet back in the late 80's and early 90's, among other things.

In the end the entire kitchen was clean of every single dish, every counter had been scrubbed, everything clean had been put away, all the trash and recycling had been cleared out, and even dishes that hadn't even had a home in a while had finally been put away neatly. We sat down to a really yummy onion soup (not French Onion, but an onion soup done with some french techniques). No one was up to eating any steak, so that was put away. But everyone saved room for a slice of flan.

I was ready to just hang out and relax (thinking it was probably 10 or so), and was surprised to see that it was actually 12:30 am when we were done eating and cleaning up. I had no idea I'd been washing and scrubbing for that long. So we said our happy goodnights and I headed home.

I'm not sure what it is that is so enjoyable about scrubbing dishes, but I count this evening well spent.