If you’re up in what the East Coast considers the middle of the night (Saturday into Sunday) and you’re checking my blog, please consider heading over to keep Kat or Jen company. They’re blogging for 24 hours straight to raise money for charity. I’m not asking you to sponsor them (although certainly you can if you want), but if you ever wrote a paper during college and found yourself up and alone in the wee hours of the night, you know how alone and miserable you feel — and how tempting that bed (or couch or floor…) looks (just for five minutes, of course!).

Updating will resume shortly. Today was spent washing clothes, visiting cute kittens, and catching up with the family.

See you tomorrow…

You Are Big Bird

Talented, smart, and friendly… you’re also one of the sanest people around. You are usually feeling: Happy. From riding a unicycle to writing poetry, you have plenty of hobbies to keep you busy. You are famous for: Being a friend to everyone. Even the grumpiest person gets along with you. How you life your life: Joyfully. “Super. Duper. Flooper.”

I am happily listening to music this weekend at Falcon Ridge while spending time with my friends Shelley and Mike and their two cute kids, Irisa and Daschel. I expect to come back knowing many more truths than I did when I left home.

Well, we did not go to the beach to visit Karen and Michael today as we’d hoped to do. The stars just didn’t end up aligning properly to encourage that scenario to work out.

However, we tried to quench our disappointment with other fun (and productive) activities that we wouldn’t have gotten to do otherwise:

1. See Russian Dolls (Les Poupées Russes) at the Avalon. I loved L’Auberge Espagnole (Russian Dolls picks up a couple years after L’Auberge left off) when it came out a few years ago and the ability to see foreign, art, and limited-release movies like this is one of the best parts of living in the city.
2. Shop. I went to the farmers’ market this weekend and came home with corn on the cob, shallots, potatoes, seconds tomatoes (Rudi wants to make gazpacho), squash, peaches (to make a pie), milk (to use next week when we come home from vacation), cheddar, and a pepper. We also got to buy some of the provisions we’ll need for the camping trip.
3. Cook. Dinner was a broccoli-cheddar quiche followed by leftover cherry cobbler topped with French vanilla ice cream. All (except the ice cream) made by me.
4. Clean. (Okay, this part was not as much fun as the rest, but it was necessary.) I am ashamed (but not so much as not to share) that we have not finished cleaning up following last month’s floods. But today the bottom futon went back on the bed. The last chair we’d been meaning to drag out to the street got picked up by someone who was excited to have hand-me-down furniture. Laundry was done, including some winter stuff that ought to have gone into seasonal storage months ago. I found that we own a butcher’s block under all the mail that had piled up. Rudi was terribly productive and packed all his vacation clothes already. (I am not that productive, although I have decided on what knitting project to take with me…) We aren’t done yet, but we’re both feeling much better about where we stand tonight as compared to Friday.

   Two-plus days and counting until vacation….

Did you know that people get up early on Saturdays, leave their homes, and go and do things?

No, neither did I.

But this morning we were hoping our mechanic could do a quick oil change on the car and look at our non-working A/C before we head north 8 hours on Wednesday in 99 degree heat. Unfortunately either the person Rudi talked to on the phone Thursday was confused or they ended up being short mechanics because there were 30 cars ahead of me when I arrived at the shop at 8:10 this morning. So, no go. We’ll probably track down a Jiffy Lube or some such thing out in Virginia this week instead.

But when I came home, since the bike was already out of the Burrow and so was I, we decided to take a quick spin out along the river. 8.5 miles, half a bagel and an orange juice later, we’re back and it’s not even 10:30!

Now I’m going to jump into the shower before I head over to Western Market to see what wonders they can offer me. I’m hoping to find Christmas presents that I can squirrel away. It’s a possibility, right?

Other than that, we’re going to do some tidying this weekend and maybe drive out to the Maryland shore tomorrow to catch up with Karen and Michael who are heading down here on vacation. Laundry and other such nonsense must also be taken care of so we have clean clothes to wear to the theater and to Falcon Ridge.

The news today was glum and filled with gloom and doom. High death counts in Indian train explosions are believed to be terrorist attacks. A crime spree hits D.C. And experts have come up with what they feel is an innovative answer to HIV: circumcision. Yeah, because you’ll definitely convince millions of people to circumcize their babies when you can’t convince them to use condoms.

Plus the NL blew the All-Star Game — yet again.

Anyone have some good news to pass on? I’d love to read something encouraging.