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On Friday I was really tired. I had stayed up until 2:30 am finishing this book I was reading. It was a good book.

Even though I was tired, I still made plans to have fun on Friday. I heard that my church was having a game night from 7:00 until 10:00, and earlier in the week games sounded theoretically like a good time, so some TFA folks agreed to go.

After school on Friday was a different matter. I had no energy to move, so even though I had some work to do in terms of putting my classroom back together (it's like an explosion went off in there at the end of every day), I just couldn't do it. Hoping that motivation might come, I sat at school for half an hour while I read espn.com. I almost fell asleep.

I made up my mind to leave school at 4:35. I debated between going home and sleeping forever, and following through on my plans. I went rock climbing as a compromise.

I really like rock climbing, but I am not very good at it. My strength to weight ratio is not high enough to make me capable of all the really cool stuff that rock climbers do, like dyno-ing. A dyno is what Tom Cruise does at the beginning of Mission Impossible II, in that part where he jumps from one ledge to another. I'm just not strong enough to do it. Or I weigh to much to do it. Either way.

Another observation, is that rock climbing seems to be gaining acceptance as a trendy spot for youth birthday parties. Maybe kids don't go to arcades anymore since everyone under the sun has some video game platform, but it seems like every time I am over at Texas Rock Gym, there is a herd of 7 year old children running around and screaming their heads off. Part of me laughs and enjoys watching the abandon with which these dervishes approach their play (getting to the point here soon) but another part of me recoils from the screaming, twisting, running, bouncing, here-I-am-but-now-I-want-to-do-that-give-me-a-cookie-now-I'm-done-bathroom-or-else energy. It ruins my controlled, purposeful brainwaves.

Mr. Beuthin, his roommate and I ended up riding bikes over to church. Do you ride bikes? You should. It's grand. We stopped at Pei Wei for dinner, and marvelled at what we currently believe to be free beverages and unlimited free fortune cookies. How do they make money? Seriously. I could probably live (for about 3 minutes) on beverages and fortune cookies. At least I would live a very knowledgeable life right?

Game night was held in the children's area of my church. When we got there I immediately started playing with the blocks. They had all sizes, but there were some 2 by 4 size blocks that I was using to make a giant something awesome. Someone commented that it looked like Jenga, and bam, giant super Jenga was born. We played giant super Jenga for about 20 minutes. It is very satisfying when a 4 foot high tower of 2 by 4s falls crashing to earth. Slightly dangerous though. Luckily, there were no casualties.

After game night, we rode home. We attempted to hold on to the back of this SUV, but that didn't work, so we raced him. He went home and cried to his momma after we smoked him. We rode by this big fountain and decided to climb some trees. At the top of the trees we had a tree shaking contest, an animal noise contest, and a peeing contest. I eventually decided that I was Rafeekee from the Lion King, and started chanting some mumbo jumbo, that unknown to me at the time, was actually the key to turning on the fountain. Marvelling at my power, I attempted to chant the fountain into spitting fire, but sadly, this never panned out.

We continued to ride our bikes around, travelling to this little park. On the way, I rode down a big hill and hit a giant mud puddle, effectively transitioning from clean-but-sweaty-Mr.-Blair to did-you-get-in-a-fight-with-a-wild-boar-Mr.-Blair. At the park we rode around on the basketball court running over cockroaches. They crunch and squish, squish and crunch in a very satisfying way. At the play ground we were secret agents infiltrating a compound, and we were careful not to set off the motion and pressure sensitive floors. Or to fall out the window and land in the lava. Both would have been a sad way to go. Home.

We wrapped up the night by attempting various gymnastic exercises on the crossbeam of the swing set, and by throwing a football in the parking lot.

Apparently, little kids are contagious.