joy and shadows

I haven't blabbed about my weekend in weeks! I'm sure you all missed it a LOT.

Busy weekend, but in a good way. Friday night we went out for a very swank dinner at 3 West with one of my husband's friends from the R&A. They're visiting the USGA this week, and husband is good friends with the technical director. I tried merguez for the first time, and we had a lovely bottle of cabernet to go along with dinner, and dessert was banana and peanut butter spring rolls with vanilla ice cream. Mmmtasty.

Saturday was spent on domestic duties such as cleaning the floor and bathroom and making polenta and spezzatino for dinner (alternately titled "How Arafel Discovered the Joys of Instant Polenta.") Normally to make polenta, you boil cornmeal in water while stirring until it softens and cooks, and it takes 30 to 40 minutes. Instant polenta - dump it in and it's done. w00t! Husband spent the day setting up our new home theatre system, and we tried it out on Serenity, which fadingembers gave me for Christmas.

Sunday was Team Haxx0r Cosplay Day. jaina came over about noonish, and we spent the day on our knees in the kitchen (not that way, you dirty pervs!) drawing lines on black fabric. I have to say that things went VERY well, and we had plenty of time to watch Bleach 64 before we moved on to basting pleats in front of the Steelers/Broncos football game. Lookin' good for Katsucon, yes. Afterwards, I did some work on my own cosplay while dropping in and out of watching the Panthers/Seahawks game. We had the Traditional Football Meal of bratwurst on a bun with sauerkraut accompanied by beer. Neither game was terribly exciting, IMO - both the Broncos and the Panthers committed four turnovers, and you can't do that shit esp. in the playoffs and expect to win.

Now, back to work. I have done nothing productive for work all morning. Oh, and GIP too.

It feels like Sunday night, but that's because we just got home from a football game. :D

Thanksgiving weekend went nicely enough after the mishap on Wednesday morning. Husband and I split up that night, as he wanted to help his parents prepare Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday morning, but I wanted to watch the Macy's parade with my mother. (It was my parents' turn to host Thanksgiving, but Mom Q upset the apple cart there.) It was a delicious dinner, and I spent the rest of the day moving around very slowly and burping.

Friday, my mother and I braved the Horrendous Crowds to do a little Xmas shopping at Kohl's and Joann Fabrics. Kohl's was nutso, but we piled up the cart nonetheless, and they had arranged the checkout so that it was a controlled affair rather than consumer chaos. Joann's was similarly overrun, but we got some great deals on decorations and fabric. My father and my husband had gone out to investigate iPods, which I found spectacularly funny. My dad's new thing is that he Wants An Ipod, and it amuses me to no end that a 62-year-old retiree is jazzed up about a Nano and a Razr cellphone. When did my PARENTS get more trendy than I did? XD

Today was splendiferous fun. Rutgers U's football team, after a full decade of Purest Terribleness, is in a position to bid for a bowl game (a rinkydink bowl, but a Bowl nonetheless!) We decided we'd better see them while the seeing was good, and it was Family Day at the stadium, where a flat fee got you four tickets, four sodas, and four hot dogs. Not bad! Husband and I went with my parents, and our seats weren't bad at all, and it was a cold football-y kind of day, and everyone was in fine spirits.

We had practiced the RU Fight Song many times, and we were feeling very fierce in the cheering department and lucky besides, because the Broncos (with the aid of Fierce Cheering) had beaten Dallas to put the Giants temporarily in first place in the NFC East. We started out at Medium-Level Cheering, but it rapidly became High-Level Happy Cheering, especially as my mother and I got each other going.

No two ways about it - RU came out and owned Cinncinnati. There was much R-U RAH RAH, R-U RAH RAH because they play the fight song every time the Scarlet Knights score, and they scored a LOT. I learned the GO! GO! FIRST DOWN, FIRST DOWN, GO R U cheer, which I believe shares the same lineage with the "fuck 'em up, fuck 'em up, go C U" that is apparently common at Cornell U hockey games (also when a player goes in the penalty box, they all yell "SEE YA, ASSHOLE!") We also yelled "R!" "U!" back and forth with the other side of the stadium. The Scarlet Knight cantered around on his white steed, who was a very good horsey and didn't startle or try to run away when the cannon went off after every score. Rutgers trashed Cincy 44-9, and there was great joy down on the field. Nice way for the seniors to end their season. Of course, I won't be able to talk for the next couple days, but it's worth it.

Tomorrow will be the Giants/Seahawks game, which I expect them to lose but you never know, and in the meantime there's sewing to be done.

I think this is the only meaningful post I make all week. :P

Week 3 of Let's Travel All Over the US landed us in Buffalo to visit our friends P&L, whom we haven't visited in roughly two years, largely because it's a twelve-hour drive total for about 24 hours of visit. Neither husband nor I were terribly interested in going because it's such a long trip, but I wasn't feeling sick enough to stay home (allergy season) and we had no other excuse.

It was a pleasant enough visit, but still - twelve hour drive, 24-hour activity time. Their three-year-old is very well-behaved and a nice little boy. We visited Whirlpool State Park and the Niagara Butterfly Conservatory, where you walk through an indoor conservatory and the butterflies fly all around you. I kept hoping one of the black butterflies with shocking-pink highlights would land on me for a photo op (hee hee, hell butterfly) but I had to settle for an orange one. Will try to post photos later.

We had dinner at home with P&L, where P was very excited to show off his steak-cooking prowess. It was... fair. We had some heated discussions over dinner, mostly concerning religion (P has Found God and has taken to it with the same fervor with which he embraces any dogma he favors at the time) and then we watched Revenge of the Sith. I was hoping it would be better than the other offerings in the series, but alas, the dialogue was cringe-inducing and the bombastic finish left me completely unaffected. (I will have to write a rant on that some other time.)

Home again on Sunday, in time to watch the second half of the Giants game. Tonight I have a pile of laundry to tackle and hopefully an earlier bedtime.

Oh, and I started reading Death Note. Woo.

Back to work, sigh.

It was so godforsaken hot this weekend that it was hard to want to do anything but sit in the air conditioning. It's been so hazy that you can't see the sky, even at night - very disappointing, because I wanted to watch some of the Perseids.

After being turned away from the reservoir last weekend, husband and I were bound and determined to do something in the water this weekend, and his friend suggested tubing down the Delaware. So, off we went on Saturday morning to River Country. For $20/head, they load you on a bus, take you to a drop point, and off you go. The water was low and the current was not very swift, but we had a wonderful time drifting down the river. It was deep enough in portions to swim around a little, but other times it was too shallow and we had to get out and walk. We got there early to beat the crowds, and by the time we left, they were packin' them in.

I spent a lot of the remainder of the weekend working on the hakama in fits and starts. To anyone who plans on trying these, my advice is: baste the pleats. It will save you a lot of trouble. The front is almost finished - needs some edgestitching on the ties - but the back still needs work. To make the koshiita, I'd originally bought some Timtex, but it wasn't as stiff as I'd like. At the fabric store, they had some buckram with the other interfacings, and I discovered when I got home that it was (OH JOYNESS!) fusible. Layering two sheets of that with two sheets of Timtex produced a very nice semi-stiff backboard.

We did watch the football game on Saturday night, and true to form, the Giants were pathetic. It's going to be a long year. I also discovered that my folks had given away all the preseason tickets, which was annoying, but I put a word in for opening day since it's a 4:15 game.

Low point of the weekend was breaking the washing machine - the damn thing won't spin, thanks to me forgetting that the beach towels are really heavy when wet. Something must have stripped in the gears. Oh well, call the repairman.