I accomplished my to-do list amazingly well -- especially since Nick & Tiff pitched in with the yard work. (I won't be getting any mean letters from The Association this week!) That basically summed up Saturday. But these things do go much faster with three people working. In about 4 hours, we mowed, edged, weedwhacked the lawn (front and back), trimmed the trees, weeded all the flower beds, socialized with the neighbors enough to fend off any gossip, trimmed the hedges... yep, very productive.

The rest of Saturday, I finished reading Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. I know, that's substandard even for my usual collection of trash-reading. But I didn't have anything else to read, and Gavin lent it to me for the plane ride back from Colorado... anyway, I know, excuses excuses. I've been in a real comfort-book phase -- I've re-read a bunch of Anne McCaffrey in the last couple of weeks, and now I'm on Raymond Feist, with some Peirs Anthony sitting on my nightstand. How weird is that? Its taking me back to my teenage years!

Sunday turned out to be really busy (no, Karen, I didn't forget about you just got really distracted yesterday!). I slept later than I planned, then lolled around the house until the absolute last minute for me to shower (this is when Karen called) and get out the door. I met a friend for lunch, went to Michael's and Old Navy (never ever ever let me shop on Tax Free weekend! stupid stupid), B&N and the library (looking for books on the history of Peru). Then I headed to the grocery store. Went home, burned copies of pictures on CD's (apparently their machine doesn't take USB memory sticks) and drove them back to Walmart. I ended up running errands for the better part of the day (it doesn't help that the bookstore and the library suck lots of time out of life). Finally, we had our nice "family" dinner at Mely's (it really does feel that way, because its almost always the same group of people and it occurs on nearly a weekly basis).

Instead of going strait home, Nick, Tiff, and I unsuccessfully tried a few more "errands" in the most inefficient manner possible: 1. A trip to the Starbucks at Randall's (closed - ended up driving to another Starbucks) 2. Went to Walmart to pick up my photos (photo lab closed) 3. Back to near the Starbucks to rent a teen-chick flick (The Prince and Me isn't out yet, and the Princess Diaries was out). Finally, we went back home, basically failing at all the post-dinner errands. Tiff and I settled on watching The 4400 (which I'm really enjoying!) due to lack of chick flicks and the yet-again poor performance of the I-Control function on my digital cable.

I had my first meat since Greece this weekend. It really upset my stomach (this surprised me, because I eat things with beef broth and I'm not *that* careful about avoiding meat-things). I guess that's why I start early, to prepare my stomach for Peru! At the grocery store, I bought meat and ingredients for two meals I miss -- chicken curry caserole (thanks, feighs, for getting me addicted to that) and steak and potato salad (yum!). I've also started to take Typhoid. Oh, that's so fun to say: Hey, its time for a little dose of typhoid. Giggle. Its the vaccine actually, but its a live virus. I'm just doing all sorts of crazy stuff to my body right now.