It's been an okay weekend. I am trying to get some admin stuff done so that I can free up my brain for some creative writing that I have to do in the next few weeks. One of the things that I have to do is write a report on my time in Hong Kong. BUT that also makes me think of a missed romantic opportunity with someone that I met there. Anyway, in some fit of madness(?), I just emailed him. Oh geez. It was like someone else was doing it! Before I knew I had hit send.

I also did see two shows this weekend that I rather liked (which is rare.) One show by a young UK company that was very simple but effective. And an aborginal opera that was quite well-executed. Plus saw some good friends that I haven't seen since I have been back.

So, all in all pretty good. Still plowing away on my report.

My weekend was GREAT. Friday night : watched a preview DVD of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnasuss, which I enjoyed, flaws and all. Saturday: errands, sewing, and then a double birthday party where I got to see a bunch of friends, then toddled home in the wee hours. Today: relaxed, wrote, ate a calzone, read two count em two emails telling me how awesome I am, whipped two friends in two different games of Lexulous (and got soundly whipped by another), watched District 9, wrote some reviews for the weekly newsletter, and that brings us up to now, when I am having ice cream and lying down in a haze of cheeriness. PHEW!

A mix. Lots of good gardening in the sun-but-not-too-hot time. Did a nice run on Saturday evening even though I usually take off Saturdays just because I was restless and stuck in my head, got my thoughts nicely unlodged and tired out. But the house is a messy mess, been nursing a sore throat, and we accidentally snapped a vine of a climbing rose while trying to retrain it. :(

But really it was mostly sunny and lovely and got a lot done. And guacamole. With bacon and tomato on homemade rolls. Nom.

My weekend was insane.

I just finished a 12-day work week. Then we went down to Savannah (my partner's hometown) to see his best friend's youngest kid get married. Beautiful wedding, amazing reception afterwards, and then we adults all convened on the back porch of the groom's parents' house and later had an "Oh shit we gotta go to bed" moment about 4:30 am.

Met the partner's five siblings and their various spouses/relatives for lunch at a restaurant around 12:30 the next day... this almost didn't happen. I haven't been that hungover in a LONG time, but the food and sweet tea cleared my head, thank goodness.

Drove home to Atlanta via a new route (suggested by a friend at the wedding) that took us through Millidgeville, Georgia, which was a very pretty city that neither of us had ever visited before. Once upon a time it was the state capital of Georgia (we saw the house that used to be the governor's mansion) and so that was cool.

Just got back from MacDonald's takeaway and a crappy movie over at a friends house - both of which I enjoyed way more than I should have. Spent yesterday schlepping around the house doing very little. Read through my NaNoWriMo entry from November and decided that it might actually not suck quite as hard as I originally thought. Gonna have leftover curry for dinner and a few gin and tonics to lull me off to sleep.

Just got back from five days of EbertFest in Champaign, Ill. Watched lots of moves and stayed up late talking and eating, lots of fun. Mr. Ebert doesn't look too good physically and only made a few appearances but seems to be in good spirits. Since he can't talk, an assistant would run out and connect his laptop to the podium and he'd come out and play some pre-sequenced sentences using his synthetic voice. While the MacBook was talking, he would mouth the words and makes hand gestures so it almost looked like he was the one talking.

Some my favorite movies from the festival were You, The Living, Munyurangabo and Synecdoche,NY. With only a couple of volcano caused exceptions, all of the filmmakers came out to talk about the movies afterward and take questions from the audience. Barbet Schroeder (Barfly) and
Michael Tolkin (The New Age) were very funny and Charlie Kaufman is very full of himself.

Meh with a visit from The Sad.
Friday, I was hounded into going over to Ashton because my mother wanted a shopping partner (she calls and asks me this every.single.weekend and I hadn't gone since the beginning of the month, so it was time) and I did but I didn't get much (just a pinkish/red nail polish from Sephora).
Saturday, I did lots of baking. And I just felt very agitated, which was irritating the fuck out of me.
Sunday, I had to go to work and I was feeling so tired and really didn't want to be there and I left early to go back over to Ashton because my brother was heading over there to work on the bathroom remodel and he wanted to look at my car before I went out of town. Of course, that turned into a 4 hour clusterfuck because the part that my brother brought with him wouldn't work and so there was lots of swearing and throwing of tools. My mother took me to Olney to get Chinese food for dinner because she didn't have enough thawed chicken and since she must go shopping all the time, we went to Homegoods where she bought me a lamp that will go very well with my soon-to-be reupholstered couches.
And then Sunday night I couldn't sleep until around 130am because my brain didn't want to stop crying.

Oh, man, next year I should really go to EbertFest. Those kinds of things are great for one-on-one discussion but equally great for people watching/listening. A sample from our own film fest, last week:

"I mean, Chile had an earthquake; what's the difference between them and Haiti?"

I had a good weekend overall. Friday evening was spent making red pepper soup and limoncello truffles for a friend who wanted to impress a date (I was supposed to just give him the recipes, but the poor guy was having enough trouble cleaning the apartment, so I pretty much made them for him). Then yummy sushi followed by trying to get to sleep while the roommates watched movies in the living room, because I wanted to get up early (6:30 ish) the next morning.
The whole of Saturday was spent volunteering for this program called Expanding your Horizons which aims to promote math and science to middle-school girls. I signed up to be a buddy, which involves chaperoning a girl from workshop to workshop. It was a LOT of fun, I think I enjoyed it about as much as she did. We attended a rocket making workshop, a soap making workshop and a workshop that involved taking turns being an astronaut or an engineer and fixing problems aboard a mock space station. Also a bug show and an absolutely fabulous physics demo (the highlight of that for me was the guy playing the Cornell alma mater on a set of perfectly tuned wineglasses with varying amounts of water). It was wonderful to see the amount of support on the Cornell campus for this program, which is completely volunteer-run. 36 heads of various committees, 450 girls, several dozen workshops, staffed by both female and male volunteers. Then the dinner for volunteers which was a lot of fun too. Nice to get a chance to talk to some of the other female grad (and undergrad) students, who I normally don't get a chance to interact with as we're all in our separate departments.
Then Saturday evening, cocktails with a couple of girl friends. A black cherry Old Fashioned, a ginger margarita and lots of juicy gossip.
Sunday morning coffee with a really good friend which turned into a two and a half hour affair. Also met a good friend of his who I really liked.
In the evening OK Go concert with Earl Greyhound as an opening act. I have a super huge crush on the female lead singer of Earl Greyhound. Between this and the Flaming Lips concert last weekend, not bad at all for sleepy Ithaca.

Was a long weekend here, so I spent most of Saturday travelling back from Vietnam and most of Monday travelling to Townsville. Both work-related trips :-(

Next weekend, though, we are going camping here, which should make for a much better weekend.