Weekend Wrap Up

Our weekend started off with a steak craving, thanks to Gina’s Friday Poll. Ted isn’t much of a beef eater, his red meat of choice is lamb. However, he’ll make the occasional exception for either an avocado burger at Manny’s if we happen to be in Stockton, or a good Rib Eye steak. On Friday, we decided to go out for a nice Rib Eye, and we hoped to pay a lot less than $200 for the three of us, which left out these pricey favorites. We ended up at Hungry Hunter, but were dismayed to see that the only Rib Eye on the menu was quite complex, with peppercorns and blue cheese and so on. Well, Prime Rib is the same cut of meat as a Rib Eye, though it’s cooked as a roast rather than as a steak. I’ve often thought that Prime Rib looks a lot like road kill, but since I’m overcoming my dislike for both polenta and risotto, maybe it’s time to get over the road kill association as well. So, we tried that. It was good, but the Rib Eye Ted grilled for me last weekend was much better. Later, we tried to watch the ever popular Jerry Maguire, but all I can say is….boring. She’s an idiot, he’s Tom Cruise. That’s not worth staying up for, even on a Friday.

Maya is a girl scout, and on Saturday, many troops in the area were converging upon the USS Hornet for an overnight adventure, complete with a trip in the flight simulator in the morning. The USS Hornet is an aircraft carrier residing in Alameda, where they used to keep the nuclear wessels (film reference, anyone?). 400+ girl scouts on one huge ship = 1 thing to us. Date night! Coincidentally, David Lynch has a new film out (starring Laura Dern, who turned 40 on Saturday…Happy Birthday, Laura!), which is in extremely limited release, and just arrived in the Bay Area on Friday. Because the release is so limited, it is unlikely to make it out here to this side of the tunnel, but it is playing in Berkeley, which is right close to Alameda. Lovely. Also, Ted has a friend who lives in Oakland, and between he and his wife, they have 5 children, though none together. This weekend was one where all of the kids were at the other parents’ households, so they were free to join us for dinner at a place we’ve been wanting to try, and a very adult (and 3 hour) film.

Problem number 1. We were supposed to take Maya, her best friend Jackie, and one other scout with us to Alameda. We stopped at the 3rd scout’s house, and she had been crying for the last 10 minutes, begging her mom not to make her go. Someone had told her the Hornet is haunted. She was freaked out, and her mom decided it would be cruel to force her. So off we went, with just the two girls. When we arrived, the rain was dumping down, and I stepped into a puddle. Problem number 2, my cute boots have apparently split at the bottom, so now I was sloshing around. That’s OK, we’ll stop somewhere and get some dry socks, and all will be fine. Problem number 3, as we were walking up to the gang plank, the CEO of the Hornet stopped us, and told us that there had been a mistake…they had double booked, and in addition to 400 girl scouts, they had 400 boy scouts there as well. Oh. There is a strict rule saying NO COED, so they had to choose. I assume the boy scouts had booked first, because they told us we should go home, our overnight would be rescheduled. Oh. So much for our ‘grown up’ evening. We called Jackie’s parents to tell them what happened, and they offered to keep Maya overnight so we could continue with our plans. Very cool. So, we phoned our friends in Oakland, told them we’d be later than we expected, and drove another hour to drop the girls off at Jackie’s house. From there, we went to Big 5 to pick up some socks for my sloshy feet, where we received a phone call from Maya, (problem number 5, the doozy of the evening) saying she felt feverish and was coughing, was it OK for her to take an ibuprofen. Well, we were already feeling a BIT guilty for leaving Maya there, since Jackie’s mom is in the midst of midterms, and her dad was working from home that evening, but this pretty much did us in. Jackie’s parents said they didn’t mind, they would keep her anyway, we should go ahead. But what kind of parents would we be, if going to dinner & a movie was more important than our sick child getting a good night’s sleep in her own bed, and instead hoisting her off on an already busy family? (I’ll admit, at first I thought she probably wasn’t feverish…just chilled from changing out of her wet clothes and getting into her jammies, so I probably could have been coaxed pretty easily…but Ted is wiser than I, so we picked her up.) So, our evening consisted of Brady Bunch reruns, reheated Indian lamb, and then Ted and I watched Little Miss Sunshine on the computer while Maya watched the first four episodes of season 4 of Kim Possible on TV. It wasn’t so bad, really. Though, like Proof, I wasn’t sure what all of the fuss was about, and I thought Little Miss Sunshine was just OK. The actors were all great, but the story was, well, just OK. So much for date night, and the best laid schemes of mice and men, and all of that.

Good thing, because Maya came into our room at 5am with a fever and a bad dream. So, yesterday was pretty low key…we went to breakfast at Chow, did some grocery shopping, sat around the house and relaxed. She was feverish off an on most of the day.

In the evening, though, we went to see Ted’s mom graduate from the Yoga teacher training she has been attending. That was VERY cool, because she has been working VERY hard on this program for months and months now (one year, actually) and it has been wonderful to see her confidence and knowledge grow in her practice and teaching of Yoga. She is so passionate and dedicated to yoga, it’s wonderful. Go, Ma, Go!

We couldn’t stay very long, because Maya was feeling sick. So we came home with our feverish pickney, and had some yucky chicken and dumplings. What made them yucky, you may ask? Well, I made the soup earlier in the day, thinking if you have a sick child, chicken soup is a good thing, but I didn’t realize we were out of Crisco for the dumplings, so I used some instant rolls instead, which didn’t cook through properly, and came out doughy in the middle. Sigh. I guess ‘pop n fresh’ rolls aren’t the same as home made, huh?

Then the Grammys, which started off with The Police (ROCKING, I might add) and moved on to Ted’s girlfriends, The Dixie Chicks, so it was a pretty good show…until Justin Timberlake’s self cam crap, and from then on it was pretty boring and predictible…finally I turned the channel and watched old Sex and the City reruns. The show did seem a bit heavy on the music performances, which is more entertaining, but light on the awards (many were given out earlier), which seems kind of odd for an awards show, doesn’t it?

Maya has today off of school for Lincoln’s Birthday (Happy Birthday, Abe! I had forgotten you were born in Kentucky!), so it’s an easy, non rushed day. Not that she’d be in school anyway, with the fever and all. Happy Moanday, everyone.