Sorry, I'm whacktose intolerant

Friday: Umm.... Oh. Met up with Nate/Beth at Friday's South, the newish bar in beautiful downtown Collinsville. They have Newcastle on tap. It's neat. Belhaven pints for $2. Yay.

Anyway, my friend from FGI, Lori was there with her posse, who included Beth/Nate's neighbor. Hung out for quite a while chatting up the randoms, making friends, doing the networking thang. Good times. Hung out till about 11, where we decided we'd jacuzzi it up for a bit. Got the call after buying booze that the Lowns were out, so being the troopers we are, we headed back up to the bar, wound up hanging out until 2 with this dude Matt and his girlfriend, whos name I can't remember. He's a firefighter in Granite, most of that circle is all EMT type folks. We swapped phone numbers in a total heterosexual way. Apparently the bar never closes because they were still serving at 2:30, but that was about the point we headed home, since we had to help Helen move on Saturday, and were going to make it an early night. Whoops.

Saturday: Woke up way too early, and way too hungover to move. Had some McDonalds', which helped. Headed over to Helen's apartment, loaded up the trucks, and rolled over to her & eric's new townhouse (same place as our old one). Got parked, got a call from Nate that his truck had blown up in MO. Had Lance roll me back to the house so I could get a toolbox and Mustang, and hauled ass out to Webster Groves to see if we couldn't get the thing running.

Wound up, it had thrown a belt, overheated, and blew the upper radiator hose in half. Procured a new belt as a safety precaution. Spent the next 5 hours trying to locate the eluvise retarded Dodge upper radiator hose with a cap in the middle of it. During a run to a NAPA downtown, I got the distress call from Robdrea that their load was light and flying out of the truck, and were in need of logistical assistance. Realizing I was closer than I thought, flipped a bitch, hauled ass to the retirement home they were parked at and helped offset their load, led them back to Nate's truck where they unpacked enough to keep things straight and got additional straps. Then I found Nate's wedding band, and saved a kitten from a tree. (well, not the kitten).

On the severe plus side, it was nice as shit out, around 65-70 degrees, so I was happy to be driving all over the greater STL Metro area with the top down and the JayZ bumpin. Set back out in search of the hose. Wound up at a NAPA in the ghetto, got a little turned around, Nate made a few calls, and we found a Dodge dealer in the far south end of town that had the hose in stock. Elated, we hauled balls to deep south county, got the hose, and rolled back to Nate's truck. Replaced hose (after making yet another run for a different hose clamp). Got new belt on, threw in some coolant, had Nate crank it over, and blammo, threw the belt after running for 2 seconds. Re-re-ran the belt, had him fire it up again, same thing.

Triple checked everything, came to the conclusion CSI-stylie that the waterpump had mostly siezed (it was hard to turn by hand), causing the belt to dismount, and the resultant heat from stuff not circulating caused the pressure to build up in the cooling system, blowing the upper hose in the weak plastic area around the filler cap (Dodge guy said it was pretty common). So, happiness turned to defeat pretty quickly, despite our working on the thing for about 4-5 hours. Hauled ass back to Cville, let nate take my truck so he could go home and meet Beth and go work a wedding that night. Robdrea/Lance/Ellen and I hung out, drank a lot of beer, ate a lot of food, had a lot of fire and chillin. Good times. Ended kinda early, which was completley fine with me due to being out in the sun all damn day, and getting no sleep the night before.

Sunday: Ellen woke up around 6 to take some advil for her hangover, and discovered that between all the people food Boris ate the night before, and random shit he prolly ate off the ground, had developed a nasty case of the shits in the middle of the night around most of the living room. Opened the house to vent the smell, and headed to the store to rent a rug cleaner. So much for the day of rest. Spent the morning steam-cleaning the fuck outta the living room, and knocked out the spare bedroom as well since we had it. Ate food at some point, put the house back together, then I passed the fuck out for about 3 hours. Woke up, took back the cleaner, got movies, hit wally world for random shit, and grabbed some food. Watched Stranger than Fiction and The Departed. Departed rocked my butt, but i kinda felt robbed with the ending, the Ferrell movie was kinda interesting, but the ending kinda let down as well.

Whew. Weekend.