For the love of all things holy...

What an interesting weekend it's been! It was delightful, in fact. No deep and meaningful hunts for any variety of household items, no appointments booked, nothing. We invited a colleague from work and her previously thought to be Polkaroo partner for dinner (yes, he really does exist!!) and that was the big item on the weekend's calendar.

Then I spoke to my friend CJ who mentioned her Kia was in the shop for a routine check up (yes, we have almost matching cars - she has the sedan, we have the hatchback - needless to say, she has excellent taste) and it dawned on me - our poor workhorse of a vehicle hadn't been to the auto spa in way too long. So we booked her an appointment for Saturday morning.

At 8am.

Ugh. Not the way I'd really wanted to begin the weekend but what could we do? We needed to get it done and were pretty lucky to get a weekend appointment the Friday before, so we sucked it up. Until the alarm went off at 7, and I seriously questioned my decision making abilites.

But we managed to haul carcass out of our warm bed, engage in a land shower (translation - got dressed, put on deodorant and a ball cap - very un-diva-esque but it was 7freakin am, dammit) and just about fell off our collective chairs when we saw the snow outside. So not cool. Where the hell is spring anyway? I've been patient...snow was most certainly not a part of my weekend plans...sigh....

And here's how we slip into the tales of a suburban super diva. You would not believe how many errands you can accomplish while your car is at the spa - and you're putting mileage on the dealership's loaner car and not your leased vehicle that's already waaaay over where she should be by this time in the lease.

Bear in mind it was 8:00 in the morning - and we're in the suburbs. Not much open in this part of the world at that time, much to my chagrin. Case in point - we headed straight to Costco in search of some kick ass steaks, etc for dinner with our friends. We arrived in the parking lot at 8:20 - to find a very closed store and an hour wait ahead of us.

But the diva gods were smiling on me - the one Starbucks in the region (that I've found, anyway), opened at 7 am and was but a parking lot away. Now THAT'S what I call good karma.

So Hubs and I headed in, had a very delicious (and well earned, if you ask me) latte, then flooded into Chapters when it opened at 9am. Thanks to a post by ckmaki, I found out about and subsequently purchased the book Will Write For Shoes: How To Write a Chick Lit Novel to properly set me on my new writing path.

And what would you know? By the time we walked out of Chapters, Costco was just getting ready to open.

Can I just have a little sidebar here and go off on an early morning Costco tangent? Have you ever been to Costco right when it opens on a Saturday, one tiny buoy in an ever-expanding sea of bargain hungry shoppers who are also quite likely morning people? Bad combination, bad my friends. Especially when you're really only there for steaks, and you're being mowed down by a beef hungry couple in search of some elusive cut of meat - and your cart is impeding their search. Dag, yo. The cow is dead. It ain't gonna walk off the shelf when it sees you coming. As fun as that would be to watch.....

Anywho, steaks etc procured, we left Costco and took further advantage of our shitbox from the dealer to our next chore of the day - wine making! My sister and I spoke earlier and decided to split a batch of home made wine, so I cleverly sourced a make-your-own place and we hightailed it over there, just in time for them to open as well. Like clockwork. Couldn't have gone better if I'd planned it that way. Actually, planning it would have been the kiss of death - much better to fly by the seat of our pants and leave it up to chance. Seemed to work this time, at least.

After the ceremonial sprinkling of the yeast we hit the grocery store for some fresh produce, then returned home to shower (for real this time) before making our way back to the dealership to pick up our silver baby.

All this, and it was only noon. Wow. Who's impressed? I know I was. Fabulous.

This allowed us plenty of time to rest, relax and prepare for our dinner guests. When they showed up around 4pm we were delighted to meet Dave in the flesh and proceeded to have a fantastic evening with them. Great food, good wine, excellent and hilarious conversation, and a charmingly competitive game of Balderdash that was going so well until I slipped from my first place position to a hideous third. Funny, that's when they chose to say their goodbyes....convenient? I'd say so.

Today we got to sleep in. It was glorious. No alarm clocks, no appointments, no reason to be out and/or about before noon...absolutely divine. The only reason to leave the house was a coffee or potential manicure date with the lovely JBJ which would have been fantastic, but the poor girl (working too hard yet again) is still recovering from a nasty cold and has a huge presentation tomorrow, so we agreed to re-book our face time.

The remainder of the day saw us finally setting up the guest bedroom, watching The Departed, and taking a walk (gasp!!! what has become of me?) in the freezingly insane wind to get a coffee at Tim's. Let's face it - I had to leave the freaking house.

And since there are so many wonderful temptations in the immediate vicinity of our local Timmy Ho's, we grabbed three more movies from Blockbuster, picked up our takeout from East Side Mario's, and completed our circuit home.

As this has already been a marathon post (if you're still reading I applaud you...it's totally okay if you slipped into a 'stream of consciousness' coma 25 paragraphs ago), I will cut my final rant short. But I can't just let it go entirely, so fasten your seatbelts...this could get bumpy.

One of the films we got this fine evening was Jesus Camp (www.jesuscampthemovie.com). This documentary was Oscar nominated...and was one of the scariest films I've seen all year.

Now, the last thing I want is to turn my wee, lighthearted blog into a debate about the Christian right et al, but wow...what a film. What I will say is simply this - if this is a topic of interest to you, I wholeheartedly suggest that you take the time to watch and digest this documentary. I'd be more than happy to discuss this offline with anyone up for a good convo, but for the sake of keeping the peace and to avoid the possibility of offending anyone I'm going to let this one lie.

I've already babbled on long enough so I think this is where I will take my leave for the eve. Hard to believe this lovely weekend has already come and gone and in 12 short hours I'll already be two coffees into my Monday. Hope yours flies by...try caffeine. It seems to do an okay job for me. Ciao!

And that's your daily dash. How's your diva doin'?