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My, what a busy weekend I had! It was so busy that I had to add an extra day to fit everything in.

On Friday evening and all day Saturday, our main task was to clear out the guest room so that my husband’s sister, brother-in-law and nephew (who’ll be three in July) could stay with us on Sunday and Monday night.

In the process, I threw away an enormous garbage bag full of junk mail, some of which dated back to 2004. Yes, I’m ashamed.

My husband moved all his drums…somewhere. I think they’re hidden in the bay window of the studio behind the drapery. Now you know why I haven’t posted "before" and "after" photos of the studio yet. We can’t seem to achieve a nice enough "after" to take the shots.

Between cleaning and running errands on Saturday, I managed to make it to a three-year-old’s birthday party and a 50-year-old’s birthday party. On Sunday, I attended a 90-year-old’s birthday party. I clearly have a dizzying variety of friends.

Sunday was the day we had our electrical upgraded to 200-amp service.
Woohoo! Now I can use the oven and ALL of the stove burners AT THE SAME TIME and not have to tromp down to the basement to reset the @#$%& breaker anymore.

When our houseguests finally arrived on Sunday evening, we took them out for dinner and had a good time. We hadn’t met my husband’s brother-in-law before but he seems like a nice guy. He’s in the Army and they’re on their way through town because he’s being transferred to the Seattle area.

I awoke on Monday to learn that our nephew had been up sick all night long. I’d taken the day off so we could do more dining and running around, but our beleaguered guests weren’t up for anything but sleeping all day. I also had a suspicion (which never panned out) that I might need to go into work for a while, so I stayed tethered to my computer most of the day. The only thing I accomplished before five o’clock was playing with the kitten so much that I actually wore her out for the rest of the day.

By that time, they’d taken our nephew to the hospital. He’d been throwing up all night and all day and couldn’t keep any liquid down. The diagnosis: rotovirus. Not something parents want to hear when they have a long road trip ahead of them. Last night they moved out of our guest room to a hotel near the hospital. I wish there was something more we could do, but there really isn’t. We’re just glad it happened in a big city and not in the middle of nowhere.

So that was my three days of…not much. At least I got a chance to enjoy the nice spring weather.

Last night, my husband and I decided that it might be nice to go out for dinner. We drove to one of our favorite pizza places, went in, and stood at the register for about 10 minutes. The place wasn’t completely full, but it was pretty busy. One employee walked by and muttered something about getting back to us soon, but soon never came. We left.

After that, the next best option was a Houlihan’s restaurant not far away. Nuh uh. It, too, was packed and we could see people waiting in the foyer.

By this time I was getting low blood sugar-y and cranky. "Screw it! We’re going to McDonalds!" I told my husband.

I could tell he didn’t believe me, but I’d made up my mind. I knew it was close to home, cheap and wouldn’t make me wait. I also knew that I would regret eating there, but I was prepared to deal with that.

Thus, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I had a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for dinner. And you know what? It was pretty tasty. As I predicted, the Coke made my abdomen look as though I’d swallowed a watermelon, but that subsided quickly enough. Damned high fructose corn syrup.

Speaking of eating things I shouldn’t, I just got a new comment on my 2004 post Average Jane Loves Easter Candy. I must say, I still stand by everything I said then. In fact, I’m about due for a Cadbury Cream Egg.

I’m feeling very cranky today. It’s a good thing that the other drivers couldn’t hear me berating them on my way to and from work.

I can’t even blame the weather because it was sunny and relatively warm today. I even got to enjoy a bit of the outdoors walking to lunch and back.

I think it would help if I cut down on caffeine and sugar and stepped up the exercise. Until that happens, I guess I’ll stay tucked into my spiny shell.

I’ve recently had a lot of opportunities to talk to friends and relatives who keep up with me by reading this blog. Some of their questions led me to realize that I’ve neglected to post about the resolution of various events. Thus, I’ll do it now.

The computer. For a while there, it looked as though the Apple Store had given up trying to find a hardware explanation for the problems my husband had been having. In fact, they had a support guy specializing in our recording software call him. Then a tech happened to notice that one of the computer’s processors spiked to 100% capacity whenever anything was plugged into a USB port. They replaced the processor and now the studio is back up and running. Hooray!

 My limited influence. Our fundraising luncheon went better than I had imagined and I ended up selling 15 tickets. We raised more than $5,000 for the battered women’s shelter.

BlogHer. It looks like I’m not going to make it to BlogHer Business in
New York this month, but I will be at the BlogHer Conference in Chicago
this July.

That’s probably more than you cared to know about any of that stuff, but at least it’s now on record. Enjoy your Tuesday!

I had the best time on Saturday night when a large group of my friends came over to play board games. It had been several years since our last game night and I really missed getting together with everyone and trying hard to kick their asses be a good hostess.

There were nine of us, so I brought up the long plastic table that usually resides in the basement unless we’re having an outdoor barbecue. I don’t have a dining room or even a kitchen table, so I always have to make do with whatever flat surface is handy.

For snacks, I made a run to Costco and bought hummus, a small wheel of brie that I baked with brown sugar and pecans, brownie bites, and mini quiches in phyllo pastry. I picked up two 1.5 liter bottles of wine (an old vine Zinfandel and a Riesling) and then stopped by a Mediterranean bakery to get pita bread. My guests brought wine and beer and the ingredients for caramel apple martinis, as well as additional snacks. I had to bring out the bottle of Tums around midnight because, well, we’re all getting old.

We started with several rounds of Scattergories as guests arrived. After that we moved on to Apples to Apples, which was so much fun that I want to buy a copy immediately. We then played a round of Cranium Pop 5, but everyone liked Apples to Apples so much that we got it back out and played again.

My guests ranged from my sister and one of her friends, to people I worked with in the 1990s, to people I’ve met in jobs and through other friends since then. My massage therapist was there, too. Five of us had worked at one particularly horrible company (not all at the same time), and still had war stories to share. Two of my friends are teachers, so they got to chat about ridiculous certification requirements.

My sister provided a giant handful of pharmaceutical company pens for
us to use in score keeping. While she was pulling promo materials out of
her car, she stealthily brought in a thermal coffee mug in a box. I
didn’t find it until she had left and I kept wondering where it had
come from until I saw what was printed on it: the logo for a drug
described as "Diazepam rectal gel." Mmm! Just what you want to see when
you’re having a nice cup of java!

Cagey was there, obviously not drinking because of NewKid on the way, and I’m sure we all got on her last nerve. Sorry, Cagey!

All in all, though, it was a blast. I think I definitely need to have game nights more often.

My niece plays with Xena until they’re both all worked up and crazed.

At first I thought this was a "bad" photo. Then I realized that it conveys what the world looked like to both the kid and the kitten while they were playing.

Speaking of cats, Velcro is recovering nicely from her mastectomy. I predict that it’ll only be a matter of days before she’s back to her usual self, as seen below.

When I went to bed last night, I thought that a few rain-catching bowls on the living room floor would be the worst symptom of the storm. I was wrong.

My husband woke me up from a deep sleep around 2:30 a.m. Through the haze, I heard him saying something about an alarm and electricity and buzzing. It took me a while to realize that he was insisting that I get up.

When I finally stumbled out of bed and turned off my bedside fan, I could hear a loud, insistent buzzing sound from the basement that reminded me of the sound the dryer makes to indicate that its cycle is over, except that it didn’t just buzz and stop.

I looked down the basement stairs and saw a good three inches of muddy water covering the floor. The cat box had floated to the base of the stairs and was gently bobbing there. The buzzing noise was definitely coming from the other side of the wall, but I could envision all of the electrical appliances in the laundry room and was thus unwilling to touch the water in the course of trying to find the source of the noise.

I looked online (of course) to see if I could Google up any clues. It was possible that the sound was a water sensor that I didn’t know I had, but I really doubted it. My husband and I had absolutely no idea what to do. We’d had a bit of water in the basement before, but never this much. We guessed that the combination of the heavy storm and the lack of gutters on the house due to the roof work had overwhelmed our already porous stone foundation.

Finally, my husband called the contractor, who had already told him that he was available 24/7 if we had more problems with the rain. Still exhausted and completely unhelpful, I crawled back into bed and let the men deal with things.

This morning the alarm was silent. My husband woke up long enough to tell me that his buddy had stood on the stairs, reached over and opened the door between the sides of the basement, which caused the sound to cease. We still don’t know what it was.

The basement floor is now damp and dirty, but the standing water has subsided. I need to get a plumber out a.s.a.p. to clear our slow drainpipe.

Today’s weather forecast: a 50% chance of snow. Sigh.