This week was a busy one. I don’t think I ate dinner before 10 any night this week. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not really complaining. It’s hard to complain when your dinner is delayed by movies and baseball games and concerts.

So yesterday, Rudi and I slept in until noon. We got up and lazed around the Burrow, picking up nothing more consequential than the tv remote or a knitting project until after 5. I did manage to wash the dishes that had been languishing in the sink all week, but that was it.

We split up for the evening — Rudi to a soccer match and a pool hall, me to the DC Film Fest (see the entry below for my review).

And then this morning we arose early to try to beat Nora to the ramps, morels, and strawberries that were going to be in limited supply at the market. No luck, but we came home with an overflowing basket: green onions, a half gallon of whole milk, young cheddar, damson plum-sweet cheese spread, purple lilacs, almond-goat’s milk facial scrub, blueberry scones (much better than last week!), pea shoots, asparagus, rosemary, a baguette, a photo-ready lettuce, and a bunch of chubby, stubby carrots.

We returned home to feast on the aforementioned scones and hot beverages, watch morning talk shows, peruse the Sunday paper, and doze under a warm wool blanket in the nest.

Rudi has left me with the Nationals-Mets game on tv to go on a short bike ride. We head to Ladies in Lavender, the closing film of the DC Film Fest, later this afternoon. Maybe between then and now I’ll walk to the store to buy bread flour to inaugurate the bread maker. Or maybe I won’t. During a weekend of relaxation, it’s just hard to say.

Joyous wishes to Jason (my birthday twin) and Essia, who celebrated their … hmmm … fourth(?) wedding anniversary on Friday.

And felicitations to John, who celebrated his 32nd birthday today (Saturday).

Jason and John played major roles in the drama of my college days, and I’m lucky to have them both still in my life. And I’m happy that Jason married such a fantastic woman and has such lovely children for whom I can play aunty.

May the celebrations go long and the happiness last the year through.

Just discovered this site via the Webby Awards voting: The four word film review

Now you can have Dave Barry seven days a week…

This thought occurs to me periodically, but I would just like to say now, for the record, that I have the utmost respect for people who stand on their feet all day.

I did a brief stint at a bookstore after I graduated from college, which is where I first discovered that I do not enjoy standing for hours at a time.

My night volunteering at the DC Film Fest tonight reminded me.

The folks were nice who were volunteering at E Street. It was a bunch of us in our 20s and 30s and one woman in her late 60s who was very talkative.

But after working all day (at a desk, mind you), 5 hours of standing was tiring. So my hat’s off to those who do it on a regular basis.

When I’m not being me, I play the role of a health literacy educator. My job is to take the information we have on biology, diseases, and the body and to make it understandable for the general population — a translator of sorts, if you will.

So when tooday the government announced its retooled food pyramid, I was very excited. The panel that was convened to help rework the food guidelines has been notoriously prickly about this topic, and factions within the group had a hard time agreeing on how to rework the pyramid or whether to have a pyramid at all, leaving the panel several years over its original deadline for getting revised guidelines out. The only thing everyone could agree on was that people were getting fatter and something needed to change.

So they’ve changed it all right. They kept the pyramid, but they’ve now given us twelve of them.

I would give you more details about these pyramids, except that every journalist in America is currently flooding the USDA’s web site. At this point, I feel it would be faster for me to fly to Egypt and take a tour if I want to see 12 pyramids.

So check back with me later and I’ll give you more information.