The Weekend

I had an awesome long-long-weekend. On Tuesday night, we decided not to wait for the morning, and headed up to Kelowna that night. My mom waited up for us, so we had a brief visit with her when we arrived at around 1:30am. It was a nice drive up, in the cool evening weather. The next day was scorching hot, so I'm glad we went up when we did.
The time in Kelowna was nice and relaxing, swiming in the lake and just relaxing at my parents' house reading my book. We also spent something like 2 1/2 hours at Value Village buying clothes. I got lots of great summer shirts, and a couple of pairs of cargos. I was silly and didn't get any shorts though. I also got a few nice long-sleved shirts for work, once the weather cools down this fall.
On Friday morning we left for Williams Lake. We left my parents' house down Westside road, which is very twisty and fun to drive. I was driving, however, so the Sara ended up having to take some gravol for the nasea and passed out. She was on-and-off asleep the whole way to Williams Lake, which was kind of too bad, because it meant I had to drive the whole way. Next time, she drives first shift.
The time in Williams Lake was great, even if it was a bit overwhelming for Sara to meet so many of my relatives. It was the first time we've had all my grandparents grandkids together for years, and I think it might be the first time ever that we've had all eight of us together, as the youngest is, well, pretty young. It was a lot of fun. Many games of Racko and Pictionary were played, though my sister and her friend Geoff won every single game of Pictionary they played. They were quite a team. It was great to see everyone, but in the end, I was glad to come home too.
On Saturday night in Williams Lake I got to open my birthday presents a day early. From my parents and sister I got a 320 GB hard drive. That'll go nicely in my server, so I can replace my ailing 40 GB drive in my gateway. Sara got me a set of computer surround sound speakers. I bought a set of Logitech Z-5300e 5.1 surround speakers a few months ago, with the Best Buy gift card CUCBC gave me when I left, and I've enjoyed them so much, I asked for another set for my birthday, to hook up to the old LCD-less laptop we use for watching movies and tv series. I mounted them around the bed (where we watch movies, leaning up against pillows stacked up against the headboard) the night we got home, so we could watch an episode or two of 24. Unfortunatly, the built-in soundcard in the laptop doesn't actually do surround sound, so we're stuck with simulated-from-stereo surround sound until I can get my Creative Labs Extigy USB sound card working properly in Linux.
Sara's gone for the next couple evenings, on the Island visiting her mom, so I'll have some time to tinker with stuff.