April 6, 2003 - I asked Janet to wake me up in the morning sometime after ten and before eleven, so when she called at 10:45 I was prepared with the cordless phone right next to my bed. However I was so tired that wasn't prepared to talk to her and she had been up for hours and was willing and ready to have a full conversation. After I stumbled through a few sentences and yawned excessively she got the hint that I wasn't ready to face the world and let me go. 15 minutes later I got out of bed and did the same thing to Mike Cloppert. He told me to call him at 11 AM to make sure that he would be up at my house by 11:45 AM to drive to Ripley with Brian Hauk and I. Mike didn't answer the phone. I called again just in case he was having trouble getting up to the phone and he didn't answer again. I figured he must be in the shower or something so I didn't really think much of it. 15 minutes later I called back and there still was no answer so I left a message telling him to call me when he got the message. At 11:35 he called and said that he would be driving himself out there because he wasn't ready to face the world yet himself. I figured that would be the end of him since he would most likely fall asleep and not wake up until after he had to be there but it is his life so I just let it be. Brian showed up a few minutes early and we departed in his truck for Ripley Union High School. The ride out there was brisk. Traffic was light and there was light in the sky unlike the previous drives out in dim or no light. I particularly like driving by the Cobra Club on US Route 52. The mailbox out front says Cobra and there is a sign that says No Trespassing! Who knows what the Cobra Club does? Maybe I will send them some mail asking for an invitation to join. They might be nice guys. Anyway since it was the Sunday performance it was actually lunch and a musical. Being in the pit got us free lunch. Well, at least it got Brian and I free lunch since we were there on time and Cloppert hadn't shown up. Lunch was chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, a roll, lemonade, and green beans (yuck!). I ate it all except the green beans. Overall it was a pretty good free meal. With time running out for Cloppert to show up we had already warmed up, tuned up, and were sitting on stage waiting for the downbeat. Just in the nick of time Cloppert walks in and gets his trombone assembled. The performance went decent but it was quite apparent from the lack of sleep that Cloppert had that his performance was not going to be up to par with his best abilities. I played decently and as a group we got through the songs with greater ease than the previous two nights. On the way back it was a pretty uneventful drive. I decided to make a nice dinner for Janet and I since she was coming over after her 7 PM church service. On the way out the door I ran into Josh, Suzanna, and Ivanna and asked them if they were going to be around for dinner. Since they were I got $10 out of Josh for supplies at Kroger and then went to Kroger. The lines were incredibly long to check out. I wish that I could take every one of their employees at the Queen City Kroger and drive them to Meijer in West Chester to show them how an efficient grocery store employee should work. It is the entire culture at Queen City Kroger that refuses to work at a good pace. Back at home I started cooking right away while Josh and the ladies rocked out to bad dance music in the dining room. Ivanna left for some unknown reason about 10 minutes before the food was ready and Janet showed up just when I was putting the last bit of stuff on the table. We ate lasagna, salad, garlic bread, and had some wine that my dad gave me. It was all really good. I made Josh do clean up but he didn't understand that he had to also put away the food. I ended up putting away the food in the fridge because he just doesn't get it. Janet worked on my computer while I drove to West Chester to swap back my mom's car for my car. I stopped at Meijer on the way home and grabbed some Vanilla-Black Raspberry Ice Cream with Chocolate Chunks and some marshmallow topping. It went over quite well with Janet and I liked it too. I helped Janet out a little bit with her Portfolio that she has to turn in on Tuesday and then went to bed.