Friday - early

It was a good day yesterday. 

Got up early, saw the kids out, got on the road about the same time they would be leaving the school. I knew I would beat them, I didn't realize I would beat them by almost an hour.  No biggies, just sat out in the parking lot in my vehicle and then decided to mosey up to the entrance and wait for them.  I had no idea that there would be several other schools showing up from all over the place. 

Once our busses showed up, we went in side, bought a few souvenirs and then headed into the arena.  Huge affair, looked like a light, powdery sand on the floor where the performances were done, there were hundreds of people in there at least, the place was full.  There was lunch waiting at our seats which had a long, narrow strip of counter top running in front of the rows of seats for your food and drinks.  

The boy wanted a drink, so I got up and waited in line. The performance started while I was out doing that, I didn't miss much. It was some dude on a horse in the middle of the arena facing the King and Queen, the Queen seated on a large throne, the platform they were on near the ceiling at one of the ends of the arena.  

Some actors came out and there was a skit done about bullying.  But, of course, they took that portion too far and went into DEI.  Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness. These are alert words, you hear any of that you know you are being exposed to pure, unadulterated wokeness.  It was disheartening to hear all of that and wondered whether the entire show was going to be like this?  The message about bullying was ok, the rest of it was ridiculous.  I then assessed - well, this is  Dallas, a leftist bastion of socialist/communist ideologies, not surprising you are going to hear such nonsense here. Just one of the reasons I refuse to ever live in a big city again. 

They got done with that s*** and then the real show started, fortunately and thankfully.  It was pretty cool. They had actors on horses - well versed actors that had obviously taken the time to learn their parts and also hone their sword and jostling skills - and they did the entire show on different factions "fighting" each other for the championship title.  Yes, the place is divided up into 6 different groupings, wherever you are seating, you in one of those grouping and your knight in shining armor represents you in the arena.  

 There were skill sets, fighting sets, horse back agility sets.  They were using real, metal swords, by the way, these were not wood or plastic stuff. The sparks from when the swords clashed against each other proved that, which gave the whole scenario a heightened sense of reality, like: this isn't fake, they could actually do each other real harm if they mess up and accidentally hit each other. Not that I would want that to happen, but it added to the authenticity of the event.  

I was imagining what this place must be like filled with adults and getting rid of the "school" style talk, this show was definitely geared towards kids, but, it was a lot of fun regardless.  The boy had a blast, I was egging him and others on to cheer on our knight. The instructions online stated the more you shout for your knight, the better he will fight!  

I can say that 2 hours of it was about the perfect length.   By the time they had all of their skill sets/fighting scenes done, I was also done. Oh, well, during this time we ate our meal which consisted of a half chicken (small chicken, lol), half a small baked potato and a half piece of corn on the cob.  After that, they brought around some garlic toast, very delicious and after that, they brought some large, prepackaged chocolate chip cookies.  I ate one of the 2 in my package and gave the other one to the kid, who happily devoured 3 of them.  

Fortunately, my pep talk on not being able to go home with me worked, he was all happy when we left, but mostly that was because I let him take his newly acquired sword and shield and lighted cup with him.  

The drive home was uneventful even if the road is filled with idiots paying more attention to their phones than the road and acting like morons cutting people off all over the place. That's on the Interstate, driving in Dallas is the same as driving in any other big city: it sucks.  I'm well versed in it, I don't miss it at all.  I just let people do their thing and enjoyed my ride home.  I sort of pushed the speed limit a bit, will freely admit, I was following along a small group of vehicles going a wee tad faster than posted signage allowed for.  

Got home, relaxed.  I never did go to the park yesterday, but I did note on the security system that the new people were cleaning the amenities shed and mowing grass. 

I made dinner which consisted of reuben sandwiches, quite delicious if I do say so myself. Taylor agreed, we have somewhat same tastes in food, tho I love onions and she hates them, lol.

I ended up going to bed early, 8:45 pm.  And for once, I slept through the night, only waking up once and quickly getting back to sleep. The sleep monitor app said my sleep was "average", balderdash.  I slept quite well and I feel pretty good this morning.  I think it counts snoring against me.  When I'm tired like that, I will snore quite a bit.  It said I was snoring well over an hour and also a very minor amount of sleep apnea.  

The reason I got the app was to see if my problems were related to sleep apnea.  I almost never show any of it on there and if it does show some, it's because I'm wasted tired when I go to bed.  Never more than a minute, couple of minutes at most. But, I guess they think snoring isn't so great either.  

Never-the-less, I am ready to hit the ground running, so to speak, get down to Nac, get the trailer washed out, get over to Lufkin, load, come home and then see what this dude has done.  They are clearly looking for reduced or even eliminated rent rate.  My only beef so far is the trailer is dirty.  It's in good shape, but it's covered with dirt and mildew.  Please clean that.