Yes, it's a regular two-day weekend, this one that falls after the longest week of the year, but it feels like a single day. Most of those things that I'd saved to do "over the weekend" remain yet to be done so it feels as if this weekend has been about 24 hours long.
Friday evening was a lovely (and noisy) dinner at our favorite local Italian place. This has been a NASCAR weekend at a racetrack not too far from here, so the area becomes overrun with fans and participants from far and near. For the first time in more than a year we had to wait for a table, and for the first time ever the wait was more than 15 minutes. Those of you who know that my husband says he married me so he wouldn't have to wait in line for his meals (college meal lines and restaurant lines are two of his least favorite places in the world) understand how good this restaurant's food must be for him to wait willingly and even patiently for a table. He had his typical pasta and meatballs and I had my favorite veal parmigiana with linguini, my treat to thank him for making some dinners during the week when I was so tired. We each have a small carton of leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Mmmm!
On Saturday my friend Mary and I went shopping. Now that bills were paid with the first paycheck of the year, this paycheck gave me a little money to spend on updating my wardrobe, so we headed toward a local department store that was having a sale. (It seems that some chains are constantly having sales this year, probably to lure the public whose buying patterns have changed with the spike in fuel oil and gasoline prices as well as the products with higher prices.) On the way there I pumped gas for $3.39/gallon and was glad for the bargain (the local convenience store is still charging $3.61). We both commented that two years ago calling this price reasonable would have been ridiculous. Times surely do change! I did some damage to my store credit card there, but I did end up with three full bags of clothing that looks pretty darn good on me. As usual, Mary and I found some items for each other, and we each bought a brown skirt that I'm sure we'll both end up wearing on the same day. I doubt that people will notice since we work on different floors and we chose different types of tops to wear with it. We had a tasty lunch at the nearby Chili's which was very rejuvenating. At our next stop I picked up ink for one of my printers and a few other stationery items, and then we went to Wal-Mart. Their products are dependable if not luxurious, and shopping the clearance racks is always fun. Finally we did a little grocery shopping, and headed homeward, but we just had to make a quick stop at Dairy Queen. My root beer float with a shot of vanilla DQ (it's NOT ice cream) brought back memories of high school when my dad's insurance agency office was across the parking lot from a DQ and one of my jobs on hot summer days was to take orders from office staff and go pick up some treats for everyone. It's probably a good thing the nearest DQ is now about 14 miles from home or I'd be in serious trouble. By the time we reached home, neither of us wanted or needed dinner but we were both happy with our day spent together in conversation and doing something different from house work and work work.
Today I slept late. It felt wonderful. Freshly made cinnamon rolls and hot coffee made the rainy morning pleasant. Then came help desk duty, finishing the laundry, and opening my shop. No one but my husband visited so I spent time trying to improve the wireless internet connection from the house to the shop. I had no success so there's more to investigate. I did manage to make a wearable bracelet out of silver wire after several attempts. There's so much more I want to try.
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