Blackberry pie a la mode and rootbeer floats in between picking apples and blackberries with Rudi and Sarah at a local farm.

Two acquaintances from the Dean Days have been roaming the country, correcting the irksome misspellings and typos found on public signs.

In a case that should chill the heart of teenagers everywhere who fail to perceive the danger of posting every action on the internet, Ben and Jeff were recently arrested because of a blog entry.

Apparently while they were in Arizona back in the spring they stopped at Grand Canyon National Park, where they fixed some punctuation problems on a sign, which, it turns out, was not appreciated by the Powers That Be. Someone alerted the officials to the blog post, in which Jeff and Ben discussed what they’d done, and the former roommates were arrested.

This week in Phoenix, they were sentenced to probation, banned from national parks for a year, and ordered to pay $3,035 to repair the sign. My question is: How will the National Park Service fix the sign — will they go with the correct grammar or add in the corrected edits, but in an appropriate yellow color to match the original text?

This morning I was out the door two hours before I normally wake up. My fellow night owls may find it comforting to hear that although there are some crazy people out and about at 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday that there were fewer people than I feared they would be. And none of them chirped at me, which was good. Even after I returned from BWI, hitting the grocery store just before 8 a.m., streets were still somewhat empty. Of course, Dupont Circle was bustling half an hour later, which just pained me.

Actually, getting up and out was easier than I thought it would be. Of course, that could be because I’d only had four hours of sleep, so perhaps my body thought I was just getting up from a nap. I’m definitely starting to feel like it’s time to go back to bed. It is 9:30, after all.

We’re off to a friend’s wedding this evening. One minimizing bra later and I was able to go shopping in my own closet. This was especially exciting since I’d bought the bra (on sale!) to wear to last night’s strapless bridesmaid dress fitting (for Karen’s fall wedding) and wasn’t really expecting it to help me out this weekend. I even own shoes and a bag that will go with the dress I found, so although I’m going to run over to Macy’s and Filene’s Basement to see if I can come up with a summer shawl, the purchases for my wedding outfit will be minimal. I may go in pursuit of a pedicure this afternoon, though. I didn’t particularly enjoy the last (and only) one I had, but you really can’t argue with how nice your feet look afterwards. Maybe I’ll text some local friends and see if they have other suggestions for places to go.

Okay, I’m off to have another mug of strong tea and then to run some errands — or, y’know, take a nap.

Have a great Saturday!

I’ve been kind of grumpy all weekend. Too much time sulking, not enough time doing. I’ve had a hard time getting out of my head.

And now the week is upon us again.

Yippee.

Does anyone have cheerful things they can tell me in the comments? Good news — yours or someone else’s? Happy music or movies to investigate?

A mild stomach bug confined me to the house most of yesterday, so many of this weekend’s plans failed to materialize. I did manage to:

• Go to Costco (although I didn’t get to pick up my contacts) and go grocery shopping for some supplies for our trip
• Reorganize the kitchen so that it’s more user friendly, particularly regarding our cookbooks and what’s kept in the oven
• Work on two socks, although I didn’t finish any!
• Back up this year’s photos onto cd and clear space off the camera’s memory card
• Watch a couple episodes of The Muppet Show
• Finish The Book Thief and read this week’s chapters of Sense and Sensibility

We leave on vacation Wednesday so my plans this weekend partly have to do with that and partly have to do with just doing weekendy things:

• Pick up contacts from Costco
• Tidy the apartment enough that I’m not horribly embarrassed that someone will have to stop by to look in on the cats
• Pull out the camping gear from the closet
• Ride the bike
• Finish two socks (thus completing two different pairs) and work some more on a third
• Bake a cherry pie
• Make granola
• Write a belated My D.C. post
• Back up this year’s photos onto cd so I can clear space off the camera’s memory card
• Visit the garden
• Watch a movie or video or two (I’m thinking more along the lines of Mamma Mia! rather than Dark Knight, which Rudi confirms is way too disturbing for me to watch)
• See the new Jim Henson exhibition at the Smithsonian
• Finish at least one of the books I’m reading
• Pay bills
• Go swimming

Hmmm… methinks I’d best get to sleep so I can get up early and get started on this list! G’night!