Monday, April 25, 2005
Once upon a weekend…
Man. Those things go quickly, the weekends. You wait all week for a weekend, and then it happens, and then it’s over, and you’re back to waiting around for another one.
So we just had one (a weekend, in case you didn’t get that from the whole preamble). It started on Friday, when I left work at the early hour of noon to go and get some cheese. Yes, cheese. I said cheese. I couldn’t just go to the grocery store for this cheese, it’s special cheese you have to get from the cheese shop. Kefalotyri cheese. It’s Greek, and you use it to make FLAMING CHEESE (whereby you set it on fire, and it tastes wonderful). This flaming cheese is so great, in fact, that I burned the hell out of my hand, but I don’t care and will probably even do it again the next time I get to make flaming cheese. Usually Rob does the lighting-on-fire part, but the burning of my hand occurred during the melting process. You melt the cheese in butter (yum) and while I was flipping it over, it splattered down into the butter, which was launched in its burning melted state onto the back of my left hand. The burns are just on the verge of blistering. But I will not hesitate even at the next time. It’s worth it.
Anywhoo, where was I? Oh. Friday afternoon, after the cheese-procurement, I went to the gym to be tortured by my friend, T, and we worked out our legs. My legs were sore afterwards, and very tired. Then I went home and napped on the sofa until our friends Taron came over for dinner. Rob barbecued a beer-can chicken. Rob is a marvel of culinary knowledge. He knows lots of good recipes that seem effortless and fantastically tasty. Like this beer-can chicken. You take a chicken, shove a beer can up its butt, and season it on the outside, set in barbecue (standing upright, so don’t get one that is too big for the barbecue), and cook. Rob even injects his with barbecue sauce since I got him a giant chicken/turkey injector set.
So our dinner was very good. And we sat outside for a while until it got too windy. Then, Taron left and I went inside to watch TV, only I had had way too much to drink by then, so basically I just cried sad tears all the way through Joan of Arcadia (shut up) because the evil has made itself known, and that just makes me sad. Stupid evil. I mean, it’s not enough you have to combat the perils of everyday life without someone messing with you ON PURPOSE? You have to throw an actual evil in the mix so they’re deliberately making everything go horribly wrong? I don’t understand. Which is I suppose one of my larger problems in life. I just don’t understand. Or, maybe I understand, but I certainly don’t want to. I may not believe in god, and think it’s a fantastic fairy tale, and wouldn’t it be great if it was true, but I’m not so sure I don’t believe in deliberate, actual evil. I’ve seen enough of that around. I would rather just believe that the evil was the fairy tale.
ANYway… after that, I watched Third Watch, only I don’t remember much of it so it’s a good thing my tape was running as I watched and yelled at the screen. I remember the yelling. Rob’s friend Greg came over to hang out with Rob, who I think was cleaning the kitchen throughout most of that, and then we all went outside to sit around the fire.
The next morning, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. No headache, thankfully, but definite the kind of whole-body soreness that comes from too much rye. So I didn’t want to get out of bed. We were supposed to maybe go rock climbing with Rob’s friend Greg, but I did not want to go. Rob went, even though he had a headache. They drove off merrily in the Tiny Car, as I sat leaned-over on the sofa, wishing I could go back to sleep. I missed most of a glorious day by sitting inside.
That evening, I met up with T and we went to this Aids Calgary benefit thing. I’m not much for the chic scene, but I went anyway. I tried to get out of it, briefly, but ended up reconsidering and had a fairly good time. It was a party sort of thing, held at an “undisclosed, secret location”. Yeah. Except that the secret location was printed on the tickets, and if we’d looked at them, we would have seen that it was mere minutes from my house. Instead, I did not know that, so I met T downtown and we had some drinks there. We were then bussed to the secret location. And immediately upon entering, we were accosted by many many people wearing feather boas, who were selling those same feather boas for $10/ea. Eventually, T gave in, knowing that if we had ON a feather boa, the rest of the feather boa sellers would give up and leave us alone. It was a wise move on her part.
The show was a sort of dance type show. Mostly modern dance music, mostly modern dance steps. There was one “sensual acrobatic” section that was pretty neat. And the silent auction stuff was interesting, but the problem with that stuff is it’s never stuff you need, and it always gets way overpriced by, like, the third bid. I did not bid on anything. The ticket to the whole evening was expensive enough and enough of a donation to a cause I’m not all that keen on in the first place. If I have extra charity money, it goes straight to the nearest animal-related charity, never mind the people. The people can take care of themselves. It’s the animals we need to worry about.
At any rate, when that was over, I got Rob to pick me up and then I watched most of Jurassic Park III. Not the worst movie I saw this weekend (I had seen it before, so don’t judge). The worst movie I saw this weekend was Jerry Maguire while I was recovering on the sofa Saturday afternoon. I have no idea why anyone liked that movie. I kept on waiting for it to get all good, only it never really did. The Mac says that Cuba Gooding Jr. won an Oscar for his performance in that movie, and although he was certainly a supporting actor, I have no idea why that movie won anything or was even nominated. Stupid, stupid movie. That’s three hours of my life I’ll never get back.
On Sunday, I got up and the day was glorious. It was sunny and warm outside, despite previous forecasts of rain. And I let all the animals go outside for some quality frolicking time. I made pancakes, chatted with The Mac, and sat out on the patio for a while. I even did some yard work (I raked the lawn in the back). Once the lawn was nicely raked and looking neat, the NoodleDog dug a big hole in it, right in front of me. And as I stood there, incredulous, he looked at me as though nothing was wrong. It was then that I started shrieking “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!” and hauled him away. “Bad digging. No digging in the yard!” He just looked mildly annoyed with me.
We collected ourselves, and ran a few errands. We gathered up the doggies and went to get Rob’s dad, and then headed over to my parents’ house so we could all go to the Spring Thaw show ‘n shine. We looked at cars for nearly two hours, and it was fun. The day was fantastic – I don’t think there has been that good a day for the Spring Thaw in years.
We returned to my parents’ homestead and sat on the deck in the sunshine, chatting, and then had a great chicken dinner. The day was nearly perfect.
And now I have to wait a whole ‘nother five days to get to the next weekend, which I understand from the long-range weather forecast will not be perfect (cool and wet). I wish that the weekends were four days long, and the work-week three. I wish that I had skipped work today to lounge in the yard with the dogs, or snooze in the sunshine with the cats. Mostly, I wish it was Friday so I could get going on the next weekend, rain notwithstanding.
That’s it. I’m going to go and buy a lottery ticket.
So we just had one (a weekend, in case you didn’t get that from the whole preamble). It started on Friday, when I left work at the early hour of noon to go and get some cheese. Yes, cheese. I said cheese. I couldn’t just go to the grocery store for this cheese, it’s special cheese you have to get from the cheese shop. Kefalotyri cheese. It’s Greek, and you use it to make FLAMING CHEESE (whereby you set it on fire, and it tastes wonderful). This flaming cheese is so great, in fact, that I burned the hell out of my hand, but I don’t care and will probably even do it again the next time I get to make flaming cheese. Usually Rob does the lighting-on-fire part, but the burning of my hand occurred during the melting process. You melt the cheese in butter (yum) and while I was flipping it over, it splattered down into the butter, which was launched in its burning melted state onto the back of my left hand. The burns are just on the verge of blistering. But I will not hesitate even at the next time. It’s worth it.
Anywhoo, where was I? Oh. Friday afternoon, after the cheese-procurement, I went to the gym to be tortured by my friend, T, and we worked out our legs. My legs were sore afterwards, and very tired. Then I went home and napped on the sofa until our friends Taron came over for dinner. Rob barbecued a beer-can chicken. Rob is a marvel of culinary knowledge. He knows lots of good recipes that seem effortless and fantastically tasty. Like this beer-can chicken. You take a chicken, shove a beer can up its butt, and season it on the outside, set in barbecue (standing upright, so don’t get one that is too big for the barbecue), and cook. Rob even injects his with barbecue sauce since I got him a giant chicken/turkey injector set.
So our dinner was very good. And we sat outside for a while until it got too windy. Then, Taron left and I went inside to watch TV, only I had had way too much to drink by then, so basically I just cried sad tears all the way through Joan of Arcadia (shut up) because the evil has made itself known, and that just makes me sad. Stupid evil. I mean, it’s not enough you have to combat the perils of everyday life without someone messing with you ON PURPOSE? You have to throw an actual evil in the mix so they’re deliberately making everything go horribly wrong? I don’t understand. Which is I suppose one of my larger problems in life. I just don’t understand. Or, maybe I understand, but I certainly don’t want to. I may not believe in god, and think it’s a fantastic fairy tale, and wouldn’t it be great if it was true, but I’m not so sure I don’t believe in deliberate, actual evil. I’ve seen enough of that around. I would rather just believe that the evil was the fairy tale.
ANYway… after that, I watched Third Watch, only I don’t remember much of it so it’s a good thing my tape was running as I watched and yelled at the screen. I remember the yelling. Rob’s friend Greg came over to hang out with Rob, who I think was cleaning the kitchen throughout most of that, and then we all went outside to sit around the fire.
The next morning, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. No headache, thankfully, but definite the kind of whole-body soreness that comes from too much rye. So I didn’t want to get out of bed. We were supposed to maybe go rock climbing with Rob’s friend Greg, but I did not want to go. Rob went, even though he had a headache. They drove off merrily in the Tiny Car, as I sat leaned-over on the sofa, wishing I could go back to sleep. I missed most of a glorious day by sitting inside.
That evening, I met up with T and we went to this Aids Calgary benefit thing. I’m not much for the chic scene, but I went anyway. I tried to get out of it, briefly, but ended up reconsidering and had a fairly good time. It was a party sort of thing, held at an “undisclosed, secret location”. Yeah. Except that the secret location was printed on the tickets, and if we’d looked at them, we would have seen that it was mere minutes from my house. Instead, I did not know that, so I met T downtown and we had some drinks there. We were then bussed to the secret location. And immediately upon entering, we were accosted by many many people wearing feather boas, who were selling those same feather boas for $10/ea. Eventually, T gave in, knowing that if we had ON a feather boa, the rest of the feather boa sellers would give up and leave us alone. It was a wise move on her part.
The show was a sort of dance type show. Mostly modern dance music, mostly modern dance steps. There was one “sensual acrobatic” section that was pretty neat. And the silent auction stuff was interesting, but the problem with that stuff is it’s never stuff you need, and it always gets way overpriced by, like, the third bid. I did not bid on anything. The ticket to the whole evening was expensive enough and enough of a donation to a cause I’m not all that keen on in the first place. If I have extra charity money, it goes straight to the nearest animal-related charity, never mind the people. The people can take care of themselves. It’s the animals we need to worry about.
At any rate, when that was over, I got Rob to pick me up and then I watched most of Jurassic Park III. Not the worst movie I saw this weekend (I had seen it before, so don’t judge). The worst movie I saw this weekend was Jerry Maguire while I was recovering on the sofa Saturday afternoon. I have no idea why anyone liked that movie. I kept on waiting for it to get all good, only it never really did. The Mac says that Cuba Gooding Jr. won an Oscar for his performance in that movie, and although he was certainly a supporting actor, I have no idea why that movie won anything or was even nominated. Stupid, stupid movie. That’s three hours of my life I’ll never get back.
On Sunday, I got up and the day was glorious. It was sunny and warm outside, despite previous forecasts of rain. And I let all the animals go outside for some quality frolicking time. I made pancakes, chatted with The Mac, and sat out on the patio for a while. I even did some yard work (I raked the lawn in the back). Once the lawn was nicely raked and looking neat, the NoodleDog dug a big hole in it, right in front of me. And as I stood there, incredulous, he looked at me as though nothing was wrong. It was then that I started shrieking “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!” and hauled him away. “Bad digging. No digging in the yard!” He just looked mildly annoyed with me.
We collected ourselves, and ran a few errands. We gathered up the doggies and went to get Rob’s dad, and then headed over to my parents’ house so we could all go to the Spring Thaw show ‘n shine. We looked at cars for nearly two hours, and it was fun. The day was fantastic – I don’t think there has been that good a day for the Spring Thaw in years.
We returned to my parents’ homestead and sat on the deck in the sunshine, chatting, and then had a great chicken dinner. The day was nearly perfect.
And now I have to wait a whole ‘nother five days to get to the next weekend, which I understand from the long-range weather forecast will not be perfect (cool and wet). I wish that the weekends were four days long, and the work-week three. I wish that I had skipped work today to lounge in the yard with the dogs, or snooze in the sunshine with the cats. Mostly, I wish it was Friday so I could get going on the next weekend, rain notwithstanding.
That’s it. I’m going to go and buy a lottery ticket.
