97-98 Happy Mother's Day!

12.5.12 - Samstag, Saturday

I really didn't do much, I woke up late, and went to sleep early. I watched another Star Wars, wrote a few blogs, a pretty typical day.

13.5.12 - Sonntag, Sunday

It was Mother's Day! Although I wouldn't be doing anything for it until about 6pm my time, I still was ready for it just about all day. The plan with my family was that my sister, brother and his two children would go out to eat with my mom at our new "traditional" Mother's Day place called Vickie's Place in McHenry and then I would get on Skype and we would chat through my sister's smart phone. It would be as if we were all together again, except I was just a screen rather than an empty seat. I think one of my mom's friends suggested it, I thought it was a good idea.

I figured it would be perfect timing for all of us because it would be my dinner time as they were eating their lunch. I wasn't sure what I was going to cook, maybe my usual meat, vegetable, noodle meal, but I think there was only one pan available so I went with making myself an Italian sloppy joe thing which was ground meat with a basil tomato sauce on my bread with cooked vegetables on the side. I figured I would cook it before the allotted meeting time so I would be able to spend as much time talking to my family versus cooking.

I got the call, we chatted for a while, then I was really hungry so I grabbed my food and they had just gotten theirs. We ate together, chatted some more and then the topic of "What do you want for your birthday?", which was still a month and a half away, came up. Normally, I would say nothing, I never really need anything, or want anything. Or at least, I can't really think of something at the time they ask, however... there was a very specific something that I wanted and waited for 11 years to play. Diablo III. Well, maybe not waited, but I watched my brother play Diablo II when I was younger (13-11 years ago), and then I played it when I was a bit older, etc. But it was still and exciting prospect because I had heard about the game coming out for about 4 years and recently everything starting popping up. Anyways, I asked for it, and then we chatted some more and then Jackie's battery was about to die.

Fortunately, my brother also has a smart phone, and he got me on for a moment, but the camera wasn't quite right. He turned off Skype to try again, but for some reason couldn't get a hold of me again. At least we were able to chat for an hour or so nevertheless!

Later that evening, I got an e-mail from my sister saying that they were going to buy the game for me that night! I was pretty ecstatic, considering the game was going to be released on the Tuesday of that week. I also received an e-mail that day or the day prior that ISU had a summer program at Hochschule Mannheim, I had completely forgot such a thing existed. It could make things interesting, maybe? I can't say because I didn't know any of the people. But, on that Tuesday, we were going to meet them. Herr Schad was going to take us all out to have a drink at a "traditional" German diner. When I say "traditional", I just mean Bavarian mostly, because that's the American stereotype of all the Germans. (It's still amazingly delicious though!)

We would see how the next week would pan out.