Weekend? What weekend? This one went by faster than most, and next weekend promises to go by even faster.
Friday I didn’t get away from the office until after 6pm. My team leader was out again, and although I wasn’t schedule to stay until closing time, things were hairy enough in the afternoon that I decided to stick around for immoral support. Also, one agent had some sort of personal ticket he wanted issued, but it turned out we couldn’t issue it as an electronic ticket, and he couldn’t use paper tickets. They were for family members to come up from Mexico, and there wasn’t time to get the tickets to them via express services. Kind of not his fault that we I couldn’t issue the e-ticket, because it’s hard to tell sometimes. Kind of his fault for leaving it so incredibly late. This was brought to me in the middle of some hairiness to do with hotel groups, and so I was really short with him, but really, what could I do that late in the game? I advised him to go to O’Hare the next day and purchase pre-paid tickets; we used to do prepaids, but by the time this solution was the only one left to choose from, it was after 6pm. It could have been done if it hadn’t been dumped on me at the last minute. But first, I would have had to find the PTA documents, and the validator, and the airline plates. It’s been that long since we’ve done one, and frankly I don’t know if we still do them at all.
Anyway, I got home and was mooching about – David was off at Joe’s place doing some advanced geekery and was about half an hour to the north. The phone rang; it was David, the geekery was accomplished, and we decided to meet at Nobu’s, “our” sushi restaurant. Hey, there’s my hubby, sitting at our regular table! He had beaten me there, of course.
It was kind of like a quickie date.
We decided not to do as much damage sushi-wise and didn’t order as many different kinds as usual – wise choice. Then, dinner over, we drove home in our separate cars, and again with the being beaten. What is this, street racing? Sheesh.
Yesterday, David had another geeky outing planned; he was meeting Steve and Steve’s nephew Benjy and some other SF/tech acquaintances for a trip to Frye’s Electronics for the last day of the big grand opening sales. David bought some stuff, and Steve and Benjy played Dance, Dance Revolution apparently, so that today Steve was complaining he was sore. No word from Benjy; probably feeling fine. Ah, youth – it’s wasted on the young.
The Art Of Purposeful Slacking
So I had the whole day, practically, to goof around with the helpless flailing of the new project. Also, got some chores done around the house and was quite productive (that’s two weekends in a row now). Result of flailing: eventual success! The left column now sports up to ten short quick-links to articles I ran across that were worth a read, but not worth taking the time to do yet another “lookit this news article that spiked my blood pressure” post. Meanwhile, there were interesting developments next door – the neighbors were getting new siding put on, so I took breaks from flailing and cleaning to pull a Mrs. Grondell, with listening to “Car Talk,” “Whad’ya Know,” and most of “Prairie Home Companion.” I’m listening now to “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me” on replay from WBEZ, so this long entry will probably be interrupted a lot for laugh breaks. Because while reading is fundamental, laughing is just plain fun.
Regarding Prairie Home, I’m still chuckling over the part of Garrison Keillor’s “Lake Woebegon” segment where he fulminated gently about the “Chardonnay Diocese” Lutherans from the big city of Minneapolis. They’re slack, apparently, and attend the so called “Church of St Benedict,” meaning they spend Sunday mornings eating brunch, often featuring that standby of brunchy fare, eggs Benedict.
The rest of yesterday evening included more relaxing activities – we ordered a pizza after David got home (hey, I do occasionally cook, but I have to have something to work with). We started to watch the fifth (or the second, chronologically speaking) Star Wars movie. We only saw it once in a theater, and I can’t remember if we got around to buying the DVD… and we’re avid SF fans, so what does that tell you. I wandered away when the Ani/Amidala smoochfest started, because I find that whole subplot just… icky. It was time for more flailing – not so helpless, but it involves much staring at the screen and searching for alternative methods. Eventually, I went to bed. Big day, eh?
This morning, after a weird repeating dream where I had to sing “Amazing Grace” for an audience several times, I eventually gained enough consciousness to get pulled together to go to church – it was Father Lundberg’s last Sunday as interim priest. It’s an 8:30am service and fortunately it’s very close, or I’d never make it in the summer. David had some important puttering to do in the meantime.
After some visiting and church nattery, I got back, still relatively early. And hey! David wanted to go to brunch! So off we went to the Millrose (jeez, do we ever eat a meal in? Well, yeah, weekdays).
And yes, they had eggs Benedict. Of course.
It was a good brunch; the Millrose is a nice, rusticated kind of place that looks like a converted barn. It’s got huge patios and a bunch of outdoor fireplaces, which they always have going on sunny days in the fall and even winter, if the weather is mild enough. Then we wandered around – no weekend is complete without a visit to either Menard‘s or Home Despot – and came home.
More flailing ensued. At last, I declared a qualified success and added it to the blog.
It’s Dingle-Dangle Dongle Day At The Zoo!
And then Steve called, just in time for us to make good on David’s threat to get out of the house and go on an adventure. When Steve arrived, we futzed for a short time, and then decided to go to the zoo.
Yay! Pictures! Funny animals!
On the drive down to Brookfield Zoo, I told them both about one happy, never-to-be-forgotten trip I made to the Seattle zoo, Woodland Park. On that occasion, my niece Ranny and college friend Kevin Swan and I went on the one day a year when it seemed that every animal in the zoo was busily having wild sex.
“It’s November 28th!” we’d say. “It’s Animals Having Sex Day today! Yay!” It was bad enough in the monkey house, but when we got into the insects and amphibians pavilions and they were all having sex, we wondered what they were putting in the food.
So we get to the zoo, we made our way inside and towards one of the animal enclosure/habitat complexes. Outside the Pachyderm House (a very cool but stinky old building) there were a couple of tapirs snuffling around in the dirt. And one of them had five legs! Yay! Or… well, it had hairy knob at the end of it, and it reached to the ground, but it was pink instead of leathery grey.
Yep, it was “Dangle Your Enormous Dongle Day” at the zoo. Or maybe “Penis Envy Day” at the zoo. Because not long after, we stopped to check out the zebras, and one of the males was scratching his belly. And he wasn’t using his hind hoof.
All the young dudes standing there with or without girlfriends looked on in shock and awe. After all, a prehensile belly-scratching appendage is nothing to sneeze at.
We wandered around in a relaxed manner and managed to see most of the major large animals except for the apes and monkeys. Also, sadly, we missed out on going to the aviary. Steve was wearing the “birdwatcher” hat he got at the Morton Arboretum on our last outing; it features a target printed on the top and some faux bird droppings.
Our last big stops of the day were the dolphin show, which was extremely interesting and fun, the seal and walrus pools, and then we wandered past some of the big cats, who were outside in their habitats, panting and trying to keep cool.
It was your basic zoo outing, but I couldn’t help gawking at some of the outfits that people (okay, women) actually wore out in public. There was an awful lot of bare belly fat hanging out, and one woman seemed to think that a black satin half-slip, paired with a matching diagonal-cut asymmetrical bare-midriff blouse AND knee-high leather Frankenstein boots was a good outfit for a summer outing. ::eyeroll::
Also, the usual millions of screaming spawn being hauled around in strollers and faux “Radio Flyers” wagons marked with the zoo logo made the day hijjus for all. However, it was pretty fun checking out the educational exhibits – they did a good job designing the various nocturnal habitats. So that made up for all the screaming and wailing going on all around us. After the obligatory stop to see the seals, I told the two of them “Ginny’s first visit to the zoo” story my mom used to tell, where supposedly I took off my shoes and socks and told my mom I was “going swimmin’ wif da puppies.” I was maybe… 4 at the time.
Well, I wanted to go swimmin’ wif da puppies again today, the water looked pretty nice.
The adventure came to an end and we came home in search of dinner, so we went and crammed many crustaceans in our gaping maws, brought Steve back home where he left his car, and bid him goodbye. Sadly, NONE of the pictures came out – I took a number of moblog ones, but they all appear to be washed out and unfocused. And David took some very exciting photos of the dolphins leaping high out of the water, but they didn’t come out, either.
Rats (no, we didn’t see them at the zoo this time).
And that was our fun, somewhat productive and very relaxing weekend. Next weekend will be a lot busier, a lot wackier, and probably won’t be blogged until after we return. But all in all, it was a good weekend; busy, but not crazy, with plenty of relaxing activities.
In fact, I want another weekend, please.