Monday, October 18, 2010

Whirlwind Weekend

This is one of those weekend that got so busy and so crazy so quickly that you’re almost glad it’s Monday.  Except that I don’t have back up to keep Leah entertained on Monday. But it’s nice to have her to myself today!

Last Tuesday, we got the mail and in it was a little postcard from Lisner Auditorium.  I was sitting on the back porch when Penny brought the mail up and as I read the postcard, I yelled, “Holy sh**!” and ran in the house to buy my tickets for Cinematic Titanic, the live MST3K show.  I got a great seat and emailed my friend Joe and asked him to go with me, since we spent a good deal of college watching MST3K. 

Friday night, we met up at the Lisner and headed over to Bertucci’s for dinner.  It was a big night for us, every October on some nebulous date, we celebrate one more year of friendship, and this year we celebrated being friends for 16 years.  I brought him some fun cards and he paid for dinner.  Due to the crappy service at Bertucci’s, we sat around for 90 minutes, but it was a fun time to reminisce and talk about life now and I got to preview his new comic book, which is amazing.  (way to go, Joe!)

P1080545 The show was spectacular.  I laughed for 2 1/2 solid hours.  The movie was predictably horrible.  Although the postcard read for something like “Battle of the Insects”, the real name of the movie was Genocide.  (But as they pointed out, who wants to say they went to the theater to see genocide, and even worse, who wants to say they laughed at it?)  When Joel Hodgson stepped out on stage, the whole theater erupted.  One of the cast members said, “MST3K fans are the best fans in the world.  You know why?  Because the show has been off the air for 12 years and you’re still packing auditoriums!”  WOO HOO!!!!

The movie was horrible—I was actually bored of it, although not of the experience, but I was just like, “Come on already!”  As the MST3K cast riffed on the movie, there was a chance for them to interact with the audience depending on how we reacted to their jokes, so it was just amazing.  Joe and I agreed to bookmark it and if they ever come back to DC, sign us up!

Afterwards, we got on line to get autographs.  I had dug out my old VHS tapes, which Joe was extremely impressed at their condition.  And I had picked up a couple of DVD’s at Borders the night before.  The line was quite long but moved rather quickly and it was exciting to get up there and talk to the cast.  Joel said hello and shook my hand (I’ll never wash it again! haha) and then signed my tapes and I moved on down the line.  For some reason, one of my DVD sets piqued their interest as none of them had seen it before.  Go figure!  It was awesome to meet Trace Beaulieu (unrecognizable without the crazy hair) and Frank Conniff, who looks exactly the same as he did as TV’s Frank.  I shook hand with all of them and they were all so nice.  Joe and I were beside ourselves.

P1080547

I got home around midnight, and I was exhausted, but I knew the cavalry was coming.  Saturday morning, I got up and we got Leah ready to go to Woodbridge to spend they day with Auntie Melissa.  We drove her up there and dropped her and a pile of toys off and then came home.  Penny was waiting for us, and she told us she missed Leah as soon as we walked in the door! :-D    She had Homecoming on Saturday night, so she was excited to go dancing with her friends.  I spent the day cleaning up the house, which I am happy to report is still pretty clean even though Hurricane Leah has been home a full day now.  It only took me a few hours and then everything was more or less up to snuff—I need to wash the floors, but other than that, I’m in good shape, vacuuming, dusting, and surfaces all complete.

Penny’s friend Ashley came over around 4:30 to do her hair and make up and I sat down and watched a zombie prank on YouTube that my buddy Steve had posted to his Facebook.  I was laughing so hard Penny and Ashley came down to see what the heck was going on.  I don’t know where the Japanese get off making this kind of stuff, but it is HILARIOUS.  I was crying I was laughing so hard, mainly because I could totally picture Leah kicking the zombie in the back.  If you want to see it, click here.

P1080553 Afterwards, we got Penny dressed and took a few photos before going up the hill to see the family of the young man she was taking to the dance, who happened to be Ashley’s cousin.  He was all dressed up and ready to go, so we all took a bunch of pictures and then Ashley, Penny, and JB headed out and Michael and I came home to go have a quiet dinner somewhere.  We decided on Ruby Tuesday’s.  We went to the one in Central Park, but it was JAMMED, so we took off and went to the one on Mine Road, where we had a delightful meal.

We came home and decided it was a perfect night to spark up the firepit and have some smores and our neighbor Jett came over to say hello while we were out there.  We chatted with him for a while till the fire died out and then retreated to the warmth of the house just in time to get the call that Penny was on her way home.  I downloaded the new Sara Bareilles song King of Anything, which has become my new anthem of the moment and when Penny arrived, we were debriefed on the fun of homecoming, at which it seems she had a great time, and that was confirmed looking at her pictures!

Sunday, Melissa brought Leah home, although Leah didn’t particularly care if she was brought home or not (between you and me, I think she enjoys the spoiling she gets up there).  We took Melissa out to lunch as a thank you for watching our girl and then she headed out and I made a big pot of tomato sauce for my family for dinner, since I was heading up to NPR.  I had planned to bake pumpkin cookies, but frankly, I fell asleep.  The only thing that woke me up at 4:00 was my mother-in-law calling to talk to Penny. :-)  Since I needed to leave around 4:30, it was just as well.  I got up and found Penny and called back to Rhode Island and got myself together and headed out to WAMU, with a quick stop to get gas.  I don’t know how it happened, but I saved 60 cents on gas at Giant, which was awesome.  I thought I’d save about 40 cents, which would have been good enough, but 60 cents is even better!

Wamu I got to WAMU at 6:10 or so and found my preferred table was back where I wanted it to be.  My sister walked in and a bat-shit crazy part of me was so happy to see her that I even smiled at her, which she completely ignored and sat elsewhere with her husband.  I found his presence interesting on a number of levels that I can’t really go into.  Anyway, it was a good night, we raised $35,000 in 3 hours.  I only took about 8 calls and not for big money, but a lot of people were getting small donations that apparently added up to a bunch of money in the end.  A place called Tonic (I think) provided the meal, which was a chicken pasta dish, bbq chicken, mashed potatoes, carrots, salad, cupcakes and brownies.  The food was very good, especially the salad.  I picked up 5 or 6 new books from the table, which was cool, read a lot of my book club book, and I was home by 11:30.  I’m looking forward to the February campaign!

Good thing too since Michael’s carpool driver didn’t sleep last night (I know the feeling), so he had to get me up at 6:00 to go and take him to the train.  It was actually nice, though, as I got to spend some time with Penny before she left for school, and I was able to write out her note for missing a couple days for our upcoming trip.  I took a hot shower and now I’ve been able to fill in my blog updates! WOW!

By some miracle, it’s 7:45 and Leah is still sleeping!  It was most definitely an awesome weekend.  My father once told my sister that I didn’t understand the importance of feeding the soul.  Well I do, and this weekend, I fed it by just being me and having a whole lot of fun.  And can I just say, walking into a clean house is a real boon to the spirits!  I’ve been beating myself up mentally a lot lately, and this was just one of those weekends that let me put things into perspective.

Coming up, I will finish off my grad school applications—I am waiting on one more letter of recommendation—and we are heading out for my mom’s 60th birthday soon.  Penny and I will spend a day at Disney World, her first time there.  She has triple and quadruple invitations to Halloween parties, so she has to decide what she wants to do about Halloween and I have decided to skip the Rally to Restore Sanity to preserve my own sanity so I can take the girls to the pumpkin patch and we can carve pumpkins and whatnot.  The annual Kosior Fall Festival—I want it to happen! :)

Ta ta for now!

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