Busy and Fun weekend

Friday
Stayed home (needed to recover from the week of Hades at work). Had a nice leisurely breakfast with some quiet booktime (always a GoodThing). Then I went shopping for flowers. I had picked out some Impatiens (they like the shade) for around a tree, some colorful marigolds (yellow, orange, striped) for the front of the house and some moss roses for the border when I found a flat of small snap dragons (they had a few flats of the tall ones but I think 36" tall snaps are a bit excessive). So, I grabbed them as well (ok, so I have a weakness for Snapdragons). I also had a coupon for a free $8 plant if I spent at least $10 and I grabbed a hanging basket on sale for $7.99.

So, home I went. I called Mom (who had offered to help plant plants) and invited her over and started putting plants in. The moss roses ended up making a border on the main bed in the front of the house (one deep in places, 2 deep in others with a few extras here and there). The snaps also went in that bed next to the Japanese maple and around the boxwoods. The marigolds ended up being put in the bed on the other side of the front door. I put some (miserable) 4 o'clocks in front of the windows on the driveway side of the door where the coriopsis was peeking out from the leaf-grow. I think I have learned that, for me, growing from seeds doesn't work very well at all. Mom put the impatiens in around the big tree in front of the house (lots of different colors and some stripes there as well). The neat thing about those plants is you don't need to dead-head them at all (just water them a lot). The moss roses need dead-heading (I think) but not much water. The snaps and marigolds both do better with deadheading. (Deadheading is when you remove the spent blossoms since the plant won't grow any more until the originals are gone and if the plant has gone to seed, it won't bloom again).

After all the plants were in (and watered), off to the store to get soup ingredients. I had been in the mood for making soup for awhile anyway and this seemed like a good day to do so. I got it started (cut and browned the meat, added other stuff set it to simmer) and took a quick shower. Then I hit email and LJ and read while watching the soup and waiting for a phone call. turnberryknkn was going to be in town and javasaurus and I had the pleasure of hosting him for his first 'free' night. He called when he was getting on the metro, so I waited a bit, turned the soup off, rounded up the cats and locked them in the bedroom (I didn't want to leave them unsupervised with HOT soup around), and headed to the metro. As I told Turnberry, "have book, will wait" I leaned against my car, enjoying the nice day and reading a good book. Back to the house we went (and Java ended up following us most of the way) and I got to introduce them properly (they probably met at Fest last year but only in passing). Soup and sandwiches were assembled and the fun began. Lots of interesting discussion over dinner, then some scheming, then a rousing game of Munchkin while playing various interst ing pieces of music on the CD-player (yes, our music collection is a little bizarre compared to the mainstream). Eventually, we all went to bed.

Saturday
Turnberry and I got up before Java (who had stayed up playing on the computer) and got breakfast then went shopping. He wanted to pick up something for silmaril and while we were out, I found something that was just so wonderfully wrong. Since Silmaril had been 'commenting' on the Wrongness of the Star Wars cereal where you a re eating C3PO's head and little R2D2s; I couldn't resist. There, by the checkout, was a display of Star Wars PEZ dispensors. A deathstar (eh, not that cool), a Palpatine (pasty skinned, pink eyed, and with teeth!!). I showed it to Turnberry and he grinned. So, I started going through the display. They had a Vader (which was pretty nice) and someone else (I forget the character's name). Then I saw the other display (discarded Chewbacca, bought R2 and 3PO). Poor Sil. Bwa ha ha.

Back at the house, we went through the new scenes in Return of the King, chatted with Java and then Silmaril called. Breno would bring her to our house and then head on out. So, when she got there, I mimed for her to wait while I went upstairs. In November, Turnberry had mentioned in a comment in his journal "I also want a pony" so Silmaril, xpioti and I decided to get him a pony. Now, a live pony wouldn't be feasible for him (with wards starting soon), but a toy pony seemed quite reasonable. So, I was given the task of finding pony stuff for him given what we could come up with. Xpioti made the order (since we were ordering stuff anyway) and they got stored at my place. The original plan was to box them up and mail them to Turnberry inside another box with "call Silmaril before you open the rest of this" and a copy of the relevant comment. But since I didn't have Turnberry's address, and coordinating the mailing with Sil was taking time (and there wasn't a hurry), it hadn't happened yet. The opportunity was wonderful. GRIN A Pony (about 1.5 inches tall), a bean-bag Hidalgo, a small stuffed pony, and a medium-small stuffed pony have now met their new owner and watching his face was worth it. Then he gave her his gifts ... then I gave her the bag with the PEZ dispensors. Her giggles were wonderful, her shock and "Silmaril's brain broken" look when she got to Palpatine were priceless. Giggle.

Breno had to go to work so we bid him a fond farewell and the rest of us headed to 6 Flags. Since Java & I are season pass holders, our admission was paid for. With the passes we get a few "Bring a Friend For Free" coupons and this seemed like an excellent time to use 2 of them. Off we went down the path toward fun. We rode 2 Face (Turnberry's face was wonderful and we got to watch it), Wild One (wheee), Superman (I hate the new cars, esp. the front seats), and headed towards Joker's Jinx. Jinx went down and we headed towards Typhoon Seacoaster. We stopped so Silmaril could get some DippenDots and got in line for the Seacoaster. It went down (which it does a lot) and Java had to leave (he had to meet his sister). The 3 of us left visited Roar (which was running VERY well ... poor Turnberry didn't know that you could bank wooden coasters like that) and went to Mind Eraser. We stopped for some ice-cream and I saw the sky start to turn DARK ... time to go! Out we went (via the fudge shop), got our hands stamped and got in the car just as the rain started. Back to the house (POURING rain) we went. I had already showed Turnberry the "Pony Room" so I introduced Silmaril to it (she was impressed) and we spent some time happily going through most of my button collection laughing and pointing this one or that one as appropriate for this situation or that person. Then I drove them to Breno's for a party, visited a bit (discussed possible plans for Sunday) and headed out. Dinner with Java and his sister was very nice (I don't get that much good quiet interaction with her). Then home, minor panic (I couldn't find the cats, they had snuck into the spare bedroom and gotten locked in there when I had closed the door but I found them), and sleep.

Sunday
Slept in (woot!) and got a call from Silmaril that they did want to GoBarn and could I please pick them both up? We worked out when I would be able to get them back to civilization (since they wanted to see Kingdom of Heaven) and I went to Mom's house to pick up my boots (which were in her car). Unfortunately, her car wasn't there (they had gone to church and then presumably to brunch with friends) so no boots. This meant no riding (while my stirrups are very good breakaway stirrups and my catches are such that it would take some real bad luck to get hung up, I am NOT going to risk it).

Picked them up at Silmaril's place and off we went. Much talking and laughter and we get to the barn. I introduced them to some of the horses who were all eager to meet new people who might have goodies. Ernie (aka ThunderPurr) made his demands known (pet me). I went into Geekland on colors and inheritance. I then got Echo out of her stall for some grazing while Silmaril worked on som e paperwork. Turnberry got a quick lesson in equine anatomy and how it compares to human. Then it was time to head back south so we put Echo away, gave her some goodies and bid the farm goodbye. I managed to stumble across the correct street for the th eater they were going to (I am not that familiar with that area), and headed home.

Said "Hi" to Java, took a shower, heated some soup (and packaged a lot of it for the freezer) and we watched some video together before time for bed. Up early-ish on Mo nday (since Java was traveling and needed to get out) and off to work.

All in all a mostly relaxing and a great deal of fun weekend. Monday evening I cut the flowers back (they need to work on growing a bit before major blooming again). I hear that Turnberry got home in good order (yea!).

edit - a link to a PEZ fan site with a picture of the emperor Pez - www.pezheadmonthly.com/archive/0405/page2.html#5ques