  Lost and Found Thursday was Game Night and we actually had a full complement of gamers at the house. Unfortunately, dinner was a little later than I had planned; I was making pulled pork but it took longer to cook than usual because I had to buy a bone-in roast instead of a boneless roast to start from. Then, when just about ready to serve, I discovered that Kate had eaten ALL of the buns at some point, unbeknownst to me, leaving nothing but the empty bun bag in the bread drawer.
Argh. Evan took me down to the store for more buns, and I added some chips, potato salad, and angel food cake with fresh strawberries and coolwhip to the list, as long as I was out. Yummy dinner, very late start to gaming. Friday morning Kate wakes up and discovers that her hamster is missing. Oh joy. I hadn't found it by the time Kate got home from school. First she wanted the neighborhood kids to come in and look for it, then began to roam the house sobbing and looking under furniture with a flashlight when I told her that we didn't have time for that nonsense because I had to get on a bus and across town to the rental car place, and she had to go to her dad's for the weekend.
After quite the ordeal getting the rental car sorted out, I ended up with an upgrade to a Nissan Altima, which the rental guy called "a sweet ride". Took Kate up to her dad's, then Chris and I went over to hang with Ray and Christine and some of their friends from Chicago.
No sign of small rodent when we returned home. Saturday I moved some things around in Kate's room until I found her hamster. He as so dehydrated! He went immediately to his water bottle and just drank and drank and drank. In the afternoon we met The Game Mechanics for lunch, to drop off authors copies of books and talk about some upcoming projects. Straight from there we joined Bruce and Tim for a viewing of the Angel puppet-episode, which TiVo somehow did not record for me. Laugh out loud funny, oh my god. I've seen the line "I'm going to tear you a new puppet hole, bitch" popping up in people's sig files. We moved from Angel into a viewing of urlLink Red vs. Blue and from there to frickin' Issaquah (yes, I went to the 'quah) for steak at urlLink Jak's Grill . Jak's doesn't take reservations, so when we showed up they told us it would be an hour and forty-five minute wait, which turned into over two hours. Sadly, Issaquah doesn't have too terribly much to do downtown after six o'clock on a Saturday, but we did go to a local brew pub for appetizers and drinks while we waited. Happily, Jak's food was excellent once we finally got to eat. Fun night, good company. Sunday was the day I used the car to catch up on things.
Went to pick Kate up, made a stop at Target and another at Trader Joes. Picked up things like cases of soda that would be a bitch to walk home with or take on the bus. When I finally got home, I poured myself into bed and watched Teen Titans on the TiVo. Tried to read a little but fell asleep after two pages. I'm never going to get through this book! This morning I discovered that the $40 quality sneakers (not to mention pink and sparkly) I bought for Kate have gone missing.
I was NOT happy. She went off to school wearing these foul dirty, stinky old slip ons because I can't find her new shoes. I did find out where all her clothes are, though. I'd been wondering for a couple of weeks where in the world her clothes had gone, since I washed everything in her hamper and she was still short of pants and shirts. Well, turns out that after her week of sleep-overs at the end of January, she put her suitcase away in her closet with all of her clothes (washed and neatly folded by Tammy) still inside! I don't know which is lamer, that she did that or that I didn't figure it out for several weeks! Well, at least she has pants to wear tomorrow. Now, if we can just find the shoes! 
