Is it over already...?

As the fabulous Independence Day weekend draws to a close and I begin to think about the upcoming work week, I figured I've leave ya'll with some other observations. The pain in my mouth finally reached the breaking point...that is, I'm "suckin' it up" and having some more dental work done. You may or may not remember that back in January, I had my first root canal and crown. I was actually very pleased with the entire process...the intense pain was suddenly gone, leaving a large "hole" of no-pain up there. The crown looks fabulous, too. In the end, only my jaw and wallet felt any real pain. Well, if you know me really really well, you also know that I have a mouth full of weak, old teeth. Several of which are ready to be executed. I have grown to the age where I take extremely good care of them (brush, floss, Listerine all twice a day) but it's not enough to reverse time and now the old fillings and the what-have-you are wearing out. BUMMER. Here's my new dentist's office, right by my house.

The staff there are extremely friendly and the rooms even have a tv! I've been telling Dentists for YEARS that I'd rather watch a TV than avoid eye contact with the good lookin' Dental Hygienists.

For dinner Thursday, Erin and I took recommendations and tried Anthony's Pizza. GOOOOOOOOD stuff. The staff are extremely friendly and the food was delish. We have many more pizza places to try before we can make official recommendations for the families and friends that should visit us.

Here's an adventure for us. Do you know how easy all ya'll have it in Illinois? If you want alcohol, you walk to any convenience or grocery store and plunk it in your shopping cart. Any time of day. Well remember how we can't buy beer or wine on Sundays? THAT'S NOTHING. You have to go to a handful or crummy little liquor stores (not even labeled as liquor stores) before 7pm on the other days if you want any other type of adult beverage. We went to three different stores at three different times to find Margarita materials. I guess there's a silver lining, they make it so difficult to buy liquor here, it must definitely curb the consumption, disturbances, alcoholism, etc. We just noticed the other day, that we could only name one or two "bars" in the entire metro area. Nothing like that around our city. Bartonville has, like what....6? Here's the store by our house:

On a differene note, my lawn is slowly developing. I've been fertilizing a little bit and watering weekly, too. That's GREEN GRASS folks! Most of that is grass.
War of the Ants: Update: Out of 33 original fire ant mounds, only 4 remain. The Over-N-Out really did work. I am convinced that the reason it hasn't worked completely was that I underestimated the size of our enormous new yard, which you might notice has some grass too :) Long story short, I will have to buy %50 more killer next year and probably have to manually kill the remaining ants. *&^($#(@)!

I was in Sears yesterday and was looking at the smoke detectors. One model popped out for some reason. Can you see it? "One of these things is not like the other" Ewww It's like the Sears had a fire and they are selling them anyway.

We have been having a lot of Thunderstorm activity here lately. That's fantastic! I even cleaned the pine needles out of the gutters yesterday.

Erin and I went out for coffee yesterday. This place was in Mauldin. They were supposed to have music on Saturday nights, but none of the employees knew anything about it, even though there were signs in the store telling about the music on Saturday nights.

Now that I can beat Erin at Srabulous, she feels the need to pummel me at chess. She checkmated me in like 4 moves. I told her that my Queen would sacrifice herself to save the King, but I guess that's not allowed in this version. At least the cake was good! overpriced

The atmosphere was great, too.

We went to the traditional service today, very nice. We also attended a 20-something Bible Study, where we met people our age. After church, we took advantage of some downtime to accomplish some chores. I changed my oil with my new floor jack, fixed a leaky showerhead and mounted my table vice. I'd say I was very productive :) Erin doesn't know how lucky she is to have a manly guy like me around. I sweat pure testosterone.