Average Jane’s Fun-Filled Weekend

I have today off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so the weekend isn’t really over for me yet. However, I figured I might as well wrap up the part that’s already taken place.

On Saturday night, my husband and I joined my sister and brother-in-law at a Brazilian barbecue restaurant to celebrate my brother-in-law’s birthday. If you’ve never been to a churrascaria, it is a carnivore’s dream. You start by visiting a bar filled with salads, soups and side dishes. It is advisable to eat extremely lightly at that juncture because when you’re finished, the meatfest begins.

You’re given a two-sided token to place beside your plate: the green side means "offer me meat" and the red side means "I need a break." Waiters come around with long swords on which are skewered various roasted meats, and they either pull off individual portions or give you slices from larger cuts. Our restaurant had fifteen different cuts and kinds of meat. I tried numerous cuts of beef, bacon-wrapped chicken, and pork tenderloin. It didn’t take long for me to get full, so I never got to the Brazilian sausage. There were also some standard side dishes on the table. In our case it was fried polenta, garlic mashed potatoes, cheesy biscuits and fried bananas with cinnamon.

Afterward, we went to see "I Am Legend," which was a bit scarier than I expected even though the monsters had physics-defying characteristics that only CGI can provide. I had a couple of movie-related nightmares that night. My brother-in-law said he did, too.

The next morning, I went to my sister’s house to take my niece and nephew to Build-A-Bear Workshop. They’re now one of my primary clients at work, so I wanted to go through the process of making an animal to see firsthand how it went. My niece, who is 7, chose a polar bear so of course my nephew (almost 3) had to have one, too. It was fun to watch them stuff the empty bear shell. I also enjoyed the heart ceremony where the kids make a wish on a satin heart and put it in their bear. As you can imagine,my nephew’s version was a bit abbreviated.

My niece was a Build-A-Bear Workshop veteran, so she helped guide my nephew through the process, although I think she encouraged a little more spending than I originally had in mind. Naturally, the kids wanted clothes for their bears, so my nephew ended up with jeans and a t-shirt for his bear and my niece got a little red skirt and a top with hearts on it for hers. I was glad I’d gotten them clothes because the first thing my sister asked me when I told her they’d gotten the same animal was, "Can you tell them apart?"

Bear condos in hand, we went to the mall’s playground for a while. I sat on a bench with the bears, coats and the kids’ stinky shoes while they ran around. We stopped for a brief lunch in the food court, then went back to the play area until I realized that my nephew was past his naptime. After one stop for pretzels on the way out, I took them home and returned home myself.

I spent the rest of the afternoon running errands with my husband before making tacos for dinner and going to bed right around 10:00 p.m. Ahhh.

Today I need to get the lyrics for the nine songs we have lined up for tomorrow’s band practice. It turns out my computer’s CD drive has pooped out, so I can’t burn the songs to CD and I’ll have to listen to them in iTunes sitting at my desk.

Then I have some work from last week that I didn’t get finished, so I’ll probably work for a few hours. It’s nice and quiet in my home office, so I figure I might as well.

Are you off work today? If so, what do you have planned?