tell me life is beautiful

I may have done too much of a hard sell last night, claiming that you would be treated to strange and wondrous tales if you returned tonight. However, I did have a nice weekend, even if it was neither strange nor wondrous.

On Friday evening, I went up to the evil city to see Vidya. She was dogsitting for her sister, who has adopted an extremely needy retired greyhound - an interesting houseguest to have in a highrise studio apartment. Then again, I am an interesting houseguest to have in a highrise studio apartment, but since I do not sniff my friends' asses, I believe that I am to be preferred. Unless you're in to that kind of thing, in which case Vidya's sister will likely need a sitter again someday, so you should call her. Anyway, Vidya and I went down the block to get some takeout Chinese - and it wasn't until after we had returned to the apartment (and I had eaten one of the eggrolls) that we discovered that we had been given the wrong order. So we trudged back to the Chinese place, greyhound in tow, to return the food and get our real order. Then we spent the rest of the evening talking, watching television, and shooing the dog away from our noodles.

After leaving Vidya's, I made a stop at Safeway and procured ingredients for Saturday brunch. Emily had called me earlier in the evening and we had agreed to have brunch on Saturday with our other friends who were in town for reunion weekend, but I decided that it would be nice if I made lunch so that we could hang out at my place as long as we liked without having to stand in line anywhere, be appropriately subdued (not that we pull that one off very often), or get ushered out if the place was busy. So I spent some quality time at one a.m. cooking some sausage for a breakfast casserole (thanks to Aunt B for the recipe, and to my mom for emailing it to me since I couldn't find my paper copy!). Adit came home from a night of partying around 2:30, so I didn't go to bed until after three.

Yesterday morning, I got up and made a blueberry cream cheese pound cake, and chopped potatoes, peppers and onions for some home fries (which didn't really fry up right - they were cooked and they were tasty, but they weren't crispy enough because I didn't use the right pan). The mixing and chopping probably weren't good for Adit's possible hangover (not that he admitted to having one), but he survived. We ended up having quite the crowd - Emily (in from New York), John, Jess, Oniel, Adit, Marina (in from Cyprus - I hadn't seen her in at least three years), Folkman (whom I hadn't seen in probably eighteen months), and Anthony (John's friend from high school). This meant nine people at breakfast, and I only have seven chairs, so two of us had to sit on my end tables. But, fun seemed to be had by all - I had a great time catching up with people, particularly when Folkman started recounting how his wife (Kristen, my freshman academic advisor), who is a small-animal vet, did this procedure on a cat without knowing how to do it, so she cut it open, took a picture with her cellphone, and texted it to the top vet in her practice. Isn't that great? The cat miraculously survived, and it sounds like Folkman and Kristen are happy, which is excellent. It was also good to see both Emily and Marina; I'd seen Emily at Zach's wedding but didn't talk to her much there, and Marina's a facebook friend, but we haven't really stayed in touch since she moved back to Europe after graduation.

So after brunch, all of those kids left to go to reunion activities (except Oniel - he's too cool for school, so went home to watch football). I spent the afternoon cleaning up my kitchen, finally putting up my bookshelf from when I reorganized my bedroom two months ago, and watched some tivo. This morning, I hung out with Adit and Katrina for awhile (Adit brought Katrina back with him because she didn't want to drive to the city, and he was v. apologetic about it - apparently when he asked if he could stay with me, I had said 'yes, as long as you don't bring any of your dirty friends with you' - I had forgotten that, and Katrina isn't dirty anyway, but it's amusing that he remembered). After they left, I went to Mike's for a leisurely late brunch, where I wrote in my journal for an hour or so. I spent the afternoon talking to my parents, cleaning my closet and watching Tivo. Isn't my life exciting?

I did a lot of brooding in my journal today, but I think that the time for brooding is done. I'm hoping that this week at work won't be too awful - I should have worked this weekend, but I'm boycotting it because I can't remember anything pressing that I absolutely had to do, and tomorrow will come soon enough. But I want to get out of work at a reasonable hour every night this week so that I can come home and work on my romance novel. Will that happen? I do not know. But you can wish me luck in my attempts!