Bats are cute.

Not too much happened during the past week other than work. Fortunately, this weekend has already been making up for it.

Last night, I met GM, AE and JH at Southpoint. We went to Rockfish for dinner and they had coconut shrimp as their appetizer. Naturally, I had two orders as my meal. In hindsight, perhaps one order and a salad, the way I did it at Outback, would have been a better choice. It was good, though. We also had calamari as our appetizer and we shared stories about our encounters with bats. I didn't have much to add to the conversation other than sheer amazement. They ranged from having bats flopping about in the room to actual blood dripping from a bite. After this conversation, I was actually quite glad that I wasn't able to contribute. I think bats are cute.

After that JH and I went across the way to Marble Slab Creamery and AE and GM went toward the theatre, to head to the chocolate shop. After a terrible bout of decision making, I decided to have vanilla cinnamon with coconut and slivered almonds. I think I've had something similar before, as my faithful blog readers will, of course, remember.

We met up again and starting heading toward the theatre. While we were standing around eating ice cream, a guy came up and said to me that he thought I'd be drinking beer instead of ice cream by now and then he walked off. I was almost positive that I didn't know him, but many people confuse me with other people.

Then we noticed that there were a bunch of people wandering around strangely near the fountain across from the movie theatre. It gave the impression that they were doing some sort of free theatrical performance. It was kind of a warped Wizard of Oz type thing. Each of them was going around saying that they were witches, tornados, wizards or chihuahuahs. There was a cowardly lion that had a sign on his chest saying that he was only 80% cowardly. It was all quite odd. JH gave them his free ice cream card when it was over. Although they refused monetary donations from other people, they did accept the card. The guy that had approached us earlier joined the "audience" at some point. The people in the group asked people in the audience to share their vision for the world. The guy, who later said his name was Bruce, launched into a description of a quasi-pantheistic world view. Given that the performers didn't really address his religious views, it seems unlikely that they were from a religious group. They said something about being in a leadership group and it was something they had to do. After the performers ran off to the parking lot, Bruce told us that he hadn't been getting along with his girlfriend and her mother and that they were still inside. JH gave him some vague consoling responses and he eventually went back inside.

The movie, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was quite good. I thought it was cool how they combined modern day special effects with almost retro ones, particularly for the spaceship. Unfortunately, it's been quite a few years since I read the trilogy, so I still don't have a particularly good idea of how faithful it was to the book. GM and AE thought it was good, though. Even though JH hadn't read the book at all, he still seemed to enjoy it.

My traffic cone was stolen in the parking lot. Fortunately, I have more. I'm surprised that I've been using them this long without getting one stolen before.

This morning, there was amusing squirrel behavior. This squirel flung the side of his body against the deck doors a few times. Then, when I approached the door, he got on one of the patio chairs and stared at me. I got some birdseed out of the garage and he stayed on the deck rail while I put it out. Quite a demanding fellow. I think that's pretty cool, though.

The weather was beautiful today and my mom came over to plant and do some weeding. The flower bed in front of the house is really coming along.

This afternoon, I made my first ITunes purchase. I was looking for Hitchhiker's old theme song, "Journey of the Sorcerer". They included part of it in the movie and I could get it from the soundtrack. That was just 1 minute and 15 seconds long. It turned out that I could get the original version, which was performed by the Eagles. The awesome thing was that the original, which is what I really wanted anyway, was over 6 minutes long. Considering that both were 99 cents, regardless, I was pretty happy to get more song for my money.

The bad thing is that somehow I hadn't realized that ITunes music was in AAC or mpeg4 format. I'd wanted to be able to play it on my Treo 650 phone. For now, all I can handle is mp3s. I'm not sure how easy it will be to convert it without losses or find some player that will work on the phone.