Last night Kathy left the kids overnight with her mother in Eagle Mountain, and we took advantage of the night off to have a double date with our friends Nick and Niki.

At first we were going to go to the Wiseguy’s comedy club, which we had done before and enjoyed immensely. For the first show, the doors open at 7 and the show starts at 8. We learned that Niki had to work until 8:00, so we decided we might go to the 10:00 show instead, but Niki also had to work at 9:00 this morning, so at first that idea was kinda shot out the window. We were on our way to the comedy club when we talked to Nick about all this, and they live near to it, so we asked if we could come by and see their house before we went to the later show at the club.

Nick and Niki recently bought a house. Very little of their stuff is unpacked at the moment, as they both work and have resided in the new house less than a week. While we were driving over there, Kathy had a brilliant idea – wait for Niki to get home from work, then go have some dinner and hang out. A night with friends is tons better than going out by yourself. Nick was agreeable to this, so that’s what we did.

Moving is hell. Once everything arrives at the new place, it’s overwhelming and you don’t know where to start, so you don’t – you relax a bit, enjoying the fact that you have a new place, putting off the ugly work until later. Another wrinkle for Nick is a medical issue that keeps him from getting in there and working on the job until it’s done.

While we waited for Niki to come home, I rearranged the stuff in their living room so they had the major items in the right locations, a couple of places to sit, and a clear walkway to most of the room. Before we got that done, the floor was covered from wall to wall with furniture and boxes, looking mostly as it had when I helped carry their stuff in the previous Saturday. I hope the small dent I made in the job helps them tackle the rest of it easier.

When Niki got home, she spent a few minutes being thrilled at the clean spot in the living room, then we sat around for a while and chatted. By this time we decided to go to the Greek Souvlaki on 3500 south near the E center, it was about 10:00 PM.

During dinner, some colorful conversation led to a mention of a particular episode of CSI, which led to talking about the merits of other prime-time network TV shows. Monk was mentioned as one of Niki’s favorite shows. That led to a discussion of different things Tony Shalhoub has done, one of which is Galaxy Quest. Nick said that he had never seen Galaxy Quest.

At that point, all thoughts of getting to bed at a reasonable hour were gone and fixing this grave injustice became a moral imperative. We drove to our house and put the DVD on. Kathy and I have seen it many times, and we had a very hard time not laughing in anticipation of the many funny moments in the movie.

We finally got back to their house about 1:30 in the morning. Last night was one of the best times I’ve had, and I hope to be able to do it more often. Nick and Niki are good people. Thanks go out to them for hanging out with us on a kid-free evening.