I had a fun weekend. On Saturday, we went to Athens to hang out with Mark and Nancy. Nancy and I ditched the guys for a girls-only lunch at DePalma’s - fabulous wild mushroom bruschetta and I also had marscapone ravioli with artichokes. We had dessert at East-West Bistro; I had chocolate truffle cake and a cognac. The big news is that Nancy officially agreed to be in my wedding party. It's all her doing, after all. Anyone who comes needs to thank her because all the festivities and free food and stuff is all thanks to Nancy, who introduced us and spurred Alan to ask me out in the beginning. If you have a speech prepared thanking her for her contribution, even better. Be sure to point and laugh at the hideous butt-bow dresses I plan to make her and Cheryl wear, too.

After running a few minor errands we stopped by my brother’s apartment for a very important task. Remember a few weeks back when my brother’s wet laundry was stolen? We drove over to his apartment complex incognito (using Mark’s truck) to leave a ransom note on Bo’s car listing my demands and with a shred of old towel stapled to it, like when a person is kidnapped and they send an ear or a pinky. The ransom note demanded that he dance around the parking lot like a monkey, turn over his top two fantasy hockey picks and his King Crimson “Great Deceiver” CD. In retrospect, demanding “Great Deceiver” was probably a mistake because now he knows it was me. As opposed to the many other people who would leave ransom notes for his towels.

After our nefarious deeds were done, we returned to Nancy and Mark’s house to hang out, play with Anthony and eat dinner, which was Nancy’s homemade lasagna (yummmm). It was great seeing them.

On Sunday I actually accomplished something around the house! First I finished trimming the kitchen wallpaper. Then, heady with that success, I hung the rest of the border along the hall and replaced the doorbell (which had been removed for the wallpapering project). It seems like I did something else productive, too, but I can’t recall. While sitting down to relax, I started feeling really weird - got very hot all of a sudden and felt very odd, so I laid down for a while. I have no idea what was wrong because once I got back up, I felt fine and I’m fine today.

My final order of business is to announce my next Big Blog Contest! Regular readers may remember that on Labor Day weekend, my noisy weirdo neighbors vacated the premises. They left quite a mess: old mattresses, broken appliances and crap everywhere. Here’s some photographic evidence. Now it’s almost two months later and no one has moved in, there are no “for sale” or “for rent” signs up, the place is still deserted and all the crap is still lying in exactly the same place on the property. So I’m starting a pool. Everyone can pick a date and the person who guesses closest to the date that the junk gets cleaned up wins a valuable prize! Nancy has already taken February 2, 2006. Place your bets now, before all the good days are taken!