Weekend Round Up

Sheesh...there were so many times over the weekend where I had posting ideas, but never had the chance to get online and put them up. So, this will be kind of a long one (I think).

On Friday, we experienced the miracle of free babysitting as the HB was invited to the nephew's for a sleepover. So, after getting into a bit of snit because I didn't jump and the chance to sit in an hour of horrible traffic to have dinner and run errands with her mom, my wife took the HB there. The plan was then to see at least one of the Oscar nominated movies. By the time she got home (and cheered up) it was in that time of the night where none of the movies played again until 10 pm or so. So we stayed in and watched the Bourne Ultimatum which we had recorded a couple of weeks ago. She's usually not into spy-thriller movies, but managed to stay with this one. It was pretty cool and it did win the sound editing and mixing awards last night, so I guess we met our goal.

Saturday we headed out and looked for some new furniture as the existing stuff has a little more dog/child wear and tear than we'd like. I still like the style and would be happy to get them re-upholstered. Unfortunately, the layout of our house and size of the sofa make it almost impossible to get it in and out of the room without popping out a window. And now that we have double-paned windows I don't even want to think about doing that twice.

We didn't find much that we liked and you could see the impact of the bad economy on the furniture stores. Many were closed and several looked really shitty in terms of maintenance and keeping them an attractive place to shop. We went to a Wickes and it was a hell-hole and looked like it was ready to close. They have a Cindy Crawford line now, which was made obvious by all the HUGE posters of her with the quote something like, "I can't wait for you to invite me into your home." I told the wife that if they really wanted to move the beds, etc., the line should be, "I can't wait for you to invite me into your bedroom." But, she thought the wives might be a little intimidated by that.

So, after that big tour of duty we came up empty. Shortly after returning home, the HB was returned to us. Just in time for him to go to the cast party for his theater group. Another night of free (ok, we bought some juice boxes and a couple of liters of soda) babysitting! Woot! This time we did make it to the movies to see Juno. I had read Diablo Cody's blog occasionally in the past (she moved it to MySpace, so linking to the old one doesn't make any sense), so that added a layer to the movie for me.

I enjoyed the flick more than I thought I would and it is really well written. Good depth to the main characters and interesting (but believable) plot twists. I won't spoil it by saying more, but it's worth your two hours in the dark with strangers. Even if two of them are a bi-racial lesbian couple that gets bored of the movie an hour into and spend the rest of the time texting friends, softly chit-chatting and making out. Not that that happened to me or anything.

Afterwards we went to the bar of an old, renovated hotel for a drink and a nosh. It was a great atmosphere will comfy couches and good jazz. The wine and cheese plate were good, but not great, but we'll definitely go back.

But, the best part of the evening was watching the Tennessee-Memphis men's basketball game. Memphis was ranked #1 and the Vols were ranked #2 coming into the game. UT has almost always had kick-ass women's hoops teams (see Pat Summit only trailing John Wooden in number of NCAA championships). The Memphis coach, John Calipari, had been bitching for a while about having to play the game. Well, now we see why. His team completely got out-hustled and lost their #1 ranking at home. Well, look who has that rating now, bitches.

Sunday morning the wife was on a mission. The HB's birthday is next month and we decided to get him a Wii. Her sister told us about a place that sells the Wii without tons of other crap with it (bundles with only two extra games) and that they were getting a shipment on Sunday and they open at 11. My sil volunteered to wait in line starting at 10, so my wife went down to join her. And the SCORED! The HB will be so psyched. So, while on the Wii shopping rush, they went and looked at more furniture. Of course, my wife found stuff that she just LOVED. She'll probably change her mind in 48 hours, as she tends to do with household items that she LOVES.

In the afternoon we went to a birthday party for the NZS. He's done a great job of making friends at his school, so several of them attended as well as other folks from the Rotary Club. His current host family has a beautiful home ("He's gonna be bummed when stays are our house" cracks my wife) and are great people to hang with. The club pitched in a bought him a 160 gig iPod. He was very psyched.

We recorded the Oscars and finally got around to sitting down with a shaker of martinis to watch at about 8:30pm. Unlike sporting events, you just can't blow through something like this really fast. Sure, you can skip the commercials and the best song performances, but it was still about a two hour ordeal. I am not down with the idea of giving awards for art. But, I do appreciate the raw emotion shown by the winners in their speeches and don't find them boring at all. And I like Jon Stewart, so it was all good.

OK, time to get some work done. Whew....