We both took Friday off, so Friday morning I headed over to the Blood Center of Iowa, West Des Moines location, and gave blood. Being in a very mellow mood, I was easily convinced to give a double red donation (They take out twice as many red blood cells, but put your plasma back in, it takes a bit longer, but apprenlty 60% of blood need is red blood cells). I found (and remember this time) that my blood type is O+ (like 38% of other people). So I did so it wasn't too bad. I ate some cookies, got double t-shirts (apprently it was t-shirt day) and went home.

Then we packed. We remembered almost everything. We headed north to hit I80 and head east, but when we stopped for gas and water, I remembered that we forgot my CPAP and forgot to go to La Mie to pick up bread like we had talked about, for our friends and family. So we went back to the house, I got my machine, and then we went to La Mie.

We got 2 loaves of Raisin challah, a loaf of Plain challah and a loaf of wheat bread. We also got some snack food for the road, I got an oatmeal rasin cookie (it was good), and Shannon had a Scone...chocolate cinnamon something. And well...she let me try some of that. It was a big wow. That was very very good, and I was jealous that I just got the cookie :-) (side note, there was a nice article in Cityview about La Mie.)

So then we headed east on I235 and then on I80 and drove to CR. We stopped by my parents house, and dropped off a loaf of the Raisin challah (nobody was home). We headed over to Shannon's parents and I dropped Shannon off. Shannon's plans including shopping (for wedding dress material) and spending time with her sister and mom (since they haven't done that in a while).

I gave Nathan a call, and he was headed over to Taco Bell to pick up lunch for his family, so I decided to meet him there and pick up lunch for myself.

I hadn't been to Taco Bell in a while, but the place looked kinda neat. After we got lunch to go, we headed toward's Nathan and Jenny's house.

We ate and the food was ok, certainly filling and not that dredfully expensive. Kinda what you expect from mexican fast food. Afterwards we made a Sam's Club run, to pick up some pillows and assorted other items (they didn't think that between Shannon and I staying in the guest room and Nathan's dad staying in the basement, that they had enough pillows to go around).

We came back, and played with Taylor (their 18 month old girl) and chated about stuff. Taylor loves the outside, and with thier huge yard, there's lots of places to go. Around 6, Jenny made herself and Taylor dinner, and about 6:45 Nathan and I headed out to Richard's Bachelor party.

Dinner was at Gringo's. We were on time, and still were beaten there by a couple of Richards friends that we didn't know. We sat down drank some (I had a couple of Boulevard Wheats) and chated. About 20 minutes later, Richard showed up with a couple of Russians, Scott P., and a few others, and we got down to the business of eating and drinking.

I ordered what I thought would be the spicy thing on the menu. It was name five alarm something or another and came in flavors of chicken, pork or steak. I chose steak. We had 15 or so people at the table. So we orderd a bunch of margaritas, and they came out in pitchers and we dug right in. They were ok at first, you could tell that they were made with not the best tequila, but what can you expect?

So the food came out. And...well...I don't know about other peoples food, but mine certainly wasn't what I expected. My food had slices (yes slices like across the vegetable) of carrots and zucchini, and wasn't spicy in the slightest. I mean not in the slightest. Like I've had plain ketchup that was spicier. And it's not that the food was bad, but it just really wasn't I was expecting. But it's not like it was good either.

As the night wore on, I swear they stopped putting tequila into the margaritas because they started tasting more like the margarita mixer and less like margaritas. So they got worse and worse.

We finally left down there, and we headed over to Fat Wally's. I've been to Fat Wally's a few times and when it comes down to it, it's not a bad place to go. The one thing that I've discovered that I don't really like about Fat Wally's is that they don't realize that some beer expires. The first beer of the night that I had, which was one that I had never heard of, was, of my opinion, and Nathan's too, spoiled. Too old. So I switched to more common things (bass, boddington's) and wasn't surprised by the taste anymore. We played pool, and darts, and it was fun. Eventually we headed out.

We drove over to Wade's Parent's house (at least the DD's drove over). We built a fire and sat around and shot the breeze. There were some snacks, Scott had made some layered cookie/brownie things and Clif had made some dipping chili. It was supposed to be hot, but it wasn't, but he thought that he had made it a bit wrong (to much tomato paste). So the people kinda parted up in discussion groups. The fire was hot, the weather was cool, it was pretty nice.

At around 2:AM we convinced a few people to move thier cars, so that Nathan could get his car out, and we headed back to Nathan and Jenny's House.

I got home and woke Shannon up when I came in. I wasn't hardly drunk at all, though, it's just I had to turn on the over head light and turn her around so that my head was closer to the table in the room (so that my mask could reach me).

And then sleep came.