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Good golly miss Molly, but I’ve been a busy boy of late! I bet you’d just love to have some more detail to go with that sentence too, wouldn’t you? Well, here’s what’s been going on so far in July.

I ate barbequed or grilled things for seven meals between the 1st and 5th of July. Yay Summer, I guess. If you do the math, that means I was eating grill-food for far more than 50% of my non-breakfast meals during that span (and I did manage to avoid BBQ breakfasts).

On July 1, August Home celebrated its 30th anniversary. As a result, I got to hear a bit of the history of the company, and it sort of cracks me up. Our CEO left Meredith on June 30, 1978, and on July 1st he decided he still liked eating and whatnot, so he’d better figure out something new to do. Yadda yadda yadda, now I have a job too.

On July 3, the UPS guy delivered a very awesome, very large present from myself (and Amanda), to myself (and Amanda). We’re now the proud owners of Rock Band, which is a ton of fun.

Hannah and Tono also came over for dinner, drinks, and some Rock Band action on the evening of the 3rd. We had brats (one of my many grilled meals) and ate out on the back porch, which was great until the mosquitoes figured out where we were.

The 4th of July rocked in all manner of rocking. Amanda and I woke up and headed straight down for a bit of Rock Band fun, then got ready for the day. Then we met up with a bunch of friends (Hannah, Tono, Megan, Klay, Sara, Julie) and had a free grilled lunch courtesy of Meredith. And then we headed to the fantastic and huge 80/35 concert and had a fantastic time. We managed to see four bands in action: Public Property (a local band), Ingrid Michaelson (really funny), Andrew Bird (so good, I nearly cried), and The Flaming Lips (pictured above, rocking). It was, all told, and incredible experience. After the concert, we headed downtown for drinks and got to bed way too late.

We got up way too early on July 5th and drove north to Minneapolis to attend the wedding of Amanda’s friend Nicole. Originally, I was a little miffed to be spending my Independence Day weekend at a wedding for a girl I’d only met once before, but I ended up having a good time, and Amanda and I took lots of mental notes for our own wedding and reception plans. I discovered that I really like Black Russians, and it’s become my new cocktail hour drink of choice.

We got back into town late on the 6th. Grandma and Grandpa drove Miles back up for us (they’ve had him nearly every other weekend ever since we got back from Europe!). They also brought us Arby’s, which was pretty nice, since all I’d had to eat so far that day was cookies and gummi bears. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The 7th and 8th were pretty low-key (which we needed at that point). On the 9th, we toured a reception hall that we liked a lot. The only negative, really, was that it’s a ways out of town, and we were originally hoping to have our reception in the downtown area somewhere. But the place is very pretty, so we may have to compromise on that one.

On the 10th we went to a Tweetup, which is a gathering of your friendly neighborhood Twitter friends. We only stayed out for a few hours, but we had a really good time, and met several new people. We also got to hear a live poetry reading, which I hadn’t done since college.

Ahh, the 11th… how’d it get to be Friday again already? We went out to Friday Fest with new couple-friends Tigon and Ben. We ended up having enough to drink that it seemed perfectly logical to ~keep~ drinking after the Fest bit ended, so we headed downtown to El Bait Shop. Ben is a huge fan of beer, but he’d never been to the Shop to witness their 160 Taps of Glory, so we figured we should remedy that. And after that, we headed back to our place for a little Rock Band action. On the way home, we stopped by a liquor store for even more drinks, and Ben bought a bottle of Iowa-made Templeton Rye. I gave it a try, and discovered that it’s easily my favorite whiskey, so I think we’ll be getting a bottle soon as well.

We were pretty lazy for most of the day during the 12th except a run to the Woodsmith Store for supplies, but that evening we headed to Lindsay Rees’s place for her third annual July barbeque. It was my third year in attendance, which made me the only true veteran there aside from Lindsay herself. We had drinks (well, I did – Amanda was driving, so she mostly behaved herself) and chatted, listened to music, played cards… all the fun mid-July barbeque stuff.

And then on the 13th we got up decently early, moved all our furniture out of the bedroom, and painted that bad boy. It ended up taking all day, because we were painting using three different colors (the ceiling is one color, the three walls another, and an accent wall a third), but I think it came out looking really great. Of course, the paint was still drying when it was time for bed, so we ended up sleeping on the futon in the basement last night. Tonight, we’ll pull off all the tape, put everything back in the room, and snap some pictures. So expect a post covering our handiwork in the near future.

And as for this week… it’s looking more sane and sedate. Which is good. Our only big plan so far is we’re going to a midnight showing of The Dark Knight with a bunch of Twitter friends on Thursday night (technically 12:01am Friday morning). And as a result, Amanda and I are going to take Friday off from work to have a nice, relaxing day to ourselves. Unless something really cool comes our way, of course. :)

Words cannot describe this video. Alas, you’re stuck watching it.

My workBud Jeremy seems to think that this is an example of what makes the Internet a less-than-useful place. I disagree. This video is an example of what makes the Internet a wonderful, utterly useful place. I mean, just think — twenty years ago, before the Webbernets came about, the people in this video are the sort who probably would have exhausted their obviously excessive pent-up energies smashing mailboxes with baseball bats, torturing small animals with sticks, or lighting their farts on fire (all to impress The Ladies, of course). Or… well, whatever the Japanese versions of these national pastimes would be. I’m sure face painting, garish typography and used women’s underwear would come into play there somewhere.

But look! Instead of all that, these misguided chums can simply funnel their otherwise plausibly destructive energy into song, dance and rudimentary video editing. This way, the only thing they’re really destroying is my afternoon productivity. And I’d rather lose that than my mailbox any day.

So last night Amanda, Hannah and I all took a little road trip up to Ames. What was the occasion? To see Dirty Dancing in the theater. :)

It seems that, in honor of Dirty Dancing’s 20th anniversary, the Powers What Be have decided to re-release the movie to select cities for two days only: yesterday and today. Hannah happened to see an ad for the showing on TV last week, and she happened to mention it to Amanda and I over the weekend, and Ames happened to be one of those select cities. At that point, things had been set in motion that could not be undone.

There’s something very fun about seeing a movie you’ve seen dozens of times in your home on the big screen for the first time. You see things you hadn’t noticed before. You catch all the nuances of sound as the director meant it. You whisper instead of talking over the movie. You clap and cheer when Patrick Swayze says, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

Long story short, the movie fairly well rocked. I was five when the movie came out in the summer of ‘87, so I thought I’d never have the opportunity to see it on the big screen. I’m glad I got the chance. :) Oh, and Amesians: if you’re not busy tonight, you should check it out. Tickets are $10, and the showing is at 7:30, though you could be 20 minutes late without much of a problem, because there’s a 20-minute “Past and Present of Dirty Dancing” at the beginning. It seems they’re making the movie into a musical. And you know what? If it ever makes it to the Midwest, I’ll probably see that, too. :)

Busy week, tis been, tis been. For worky values of busy, anyway. My evenings have been fairly lax, so far as I can recall. Amanda and I made a couple of meals (last night was meatloaf, earlier in the week was salmon, and I’ve forgotten all others), watched a couple of movies (La Cité des Enfants Perdus last night, Blade Runner a couple nights ago, and I’ve again forgotten the rest), and went out with her Garden Gate co-workers one night (but I’m not even going to try naming them all).

This weekend should be more than sufficiently busy to make up for all of the easy nights I’ve had recently. Tonight Amanda, Anne, Justin and I will be going out to dinner, then heading to the Iowa Cubs home opener, then warming up in the bars (prolly El Bait Shop or High Life Lounge, if you wanna find us) afterwards.

Tomorrow morning, I’m going to get up early, move everything out of my living room, and head to the Woodsmith Store to buy supplies to start Refinishing My Floors(!), which should take at least all weekend. Most of Saturday will be sent sanding down the floors. Saturday night, we’ll probably be attending a small get-together at Chuck’s house, to celebrate Anne making it back from Amsterdam and Hannah making it back from Costa Rica. At least, that’d be a good excuse for having the party. Sunday, we’ll be putting down a new finish.

Things that made this week cool:

• I’ve already burned nearly 2,000 calories in the workout mode of DDR. I started doing the workout mode last Friday.
• My flags came! I ordered them on Tuesday and had them on Thursday. Flagline rocks on shipping. I plan to hang my pirate flag tomorrow.
• I’m finally getting around to refinishing the floors.
• My boss has been gone to a conference all week, and we pranked him something fierce. See photo above.

I’m sure other cool stuff happened, too, but as I may have eluded to earlier, my memory isn’t working so hot this week. ;)