Weekend and quickies

For those who saw it, I had to get rid of the post for the humor test. The reason? My brother pointed out to me that it made the blog render improperly in IE. Of course, this is really an IE issue and reasonable people no longer use that browser (teasing! sort of). However, since the post was only mildly amusing anyhow, I deleted it. Now all is well with IE users. Thanks, Rob!

The weekend here was pretty nice. Shawn declared before the weekend that she wanted to do nothing but sit and read. This sounded like a grand idea to me, but as I noted to Matt before leaving work on Friday, it was not likely to happen. Shawn, who is princess of restlessness, had already decided to break with this plan on Friday night. Little did I know that the innocent trip to breakfast and the Duvall Public Library was an excuse to get us closer to Redmond Towne Center for more shopping, but that was indeed the case. After shopping, we headed home and began planning and making dinner. We had fresh peas from the garden to use up not to mention that we are up to our crooknecks in zucchini. I put some music on and we cooked for a couple of hours before settling in front of the television to watch the second half of "Lord of the Rings".

Sunday found us taking another trip to a different book store. We also stopped by the hardware store and came home with a small table for the patio. While we were out, we ran into the grocery and grabbed some salmon and the ingredients for tabouli. Truth be told, I was told that we were going to the grocery store. The other side trips were planned by Shawn without my knowledge, but apparently fall into the classification of "doing nothing but reading". The Queen of Lists practices deceit and conspires with the Princess of Restlessness to do nothing by which she means "Do anything I want to do which classifies as nothing in my book". After getting home, I rebelled and asserted my right to do nothing. To my surprise, the Queen/Princess acquiesced to my position and promptly fell asleep on the sofa for an afternoon nap. By the time she woke, I was working on dinner and had opened a nice bottle of wine (1998 Pinot Noir from Adelsheim winery in Oregon). We enjoyed dinner with the movie "I (heart) Huckabees" which was a pretty amusing film.

Monday was a terrible day for Shawn. She witnessed the tail end of a car accident on the other side of the freeway when a driver hit the middle barrier, blood coming from the driver's forehead. While meeting a friend for lunch in downtown Bellevue, Shawn got a parking ticket for parking in the strip mall lot across from the restaurant. Not believing her luck and wanting to protest, she asked around and found out that only shoppers of that strip can use the lot. Towards the end of her work day, she found out that a bug in the software she uses had cost the company a lot of money for the second time in two weeks, so she raised the issue with her manager. The manager informed her that the temporary solution was going to cause a lot of extra effort on Shawn's behalf. Shawn was mulling this over on the way home, which explains why, when she was stuck in traffic 1.5 hours later, I got a call from her telling me that she might run out of gas on the way home. She didn't, but she came into the door anxious and needing to talk and vent her ideas. When she walked in, I was shaking a drink for her which I quickly thrust into her hand, then I listened while I wrapped up dinner (Minestrone soup - homemade with plenty of veggies from the garden). Finally, just as we were getting ready to go upstairs to bed, Shawn went to close the panel track blinds we have over our sliding glass doors in back and she yanked the cord too hard and pulled the track off of the ceiling and crashing to the floor. I thought that the screws had gone into solid wood above, but I'll need to put it back in using drywall anchors. It was no big deal, but it drove Shawn nuts - a continuation of a bad day. I told her to walk, carefully, up the stairs, climb into bed and do not leave it until morning. She was considering last night whether or not she would make it to work today. I still don't know if she left.

Quickies: James Randi has published his Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural online. I admire Randi's work as a skeptic.

ESPNSoccernet.com has this amusing headline today: ""Young Boys Wankdorf Erection Relief".