Whirlwind Weekend

When we last left our intrepid adventurers, they’d just seen their friends off to Cleveland….and it’s been busy since then.

We had been expecting Don and Dina [1] to come up and spend a weekend with us on the way back from their Florida vacation. On Tuesday night, I got a phone call from Kender’s mom, asking to give her a call at a payphone she was waiting nearby. She said they were thinking of coming back through early and would it still be ok for them to crash at our place. “Sure,” I said. “When are you expecting to be here.” “In about nine hours.” Well, I’ve often said that Dina is the one person in the world that I cannot say no to, so we remade the guest bed so it would be ready for them to fall into in the morning.

They arrived shortly after I got up for work, and we got them settled, with K. watching the Animaniacs episodes we’d recorded on the TiVo, and everyone else more or less crashing out from the road, and I headed to work. I came home after lunch to collect kitanzi‘s computer and take it to the shop to investigate why it was so crash-happy. Once Kit got home, we spent the rest of the evening enjoying dinner and watching the finale of Buffy. I also watched most of an episode of Enterprise, which D&D watch and I haven’t been. To be honest, it didn’t inspire me to add it back to my weekly viewing habits.

Once the kids were getting sleepy, D&D got them back into the van for the next leg of their journey, which would take them back to her mom’s before finally getting back home. They’re planning to come visit again sometime later in the summer when they can spend more time, but after nearly two weeks of vacation, they were just ready to get home.

Wednesday night we also got the bad news about nrivkis‘s surgery, which confirmed that something she was hoping would be possible wouldn’t be. She was naturally distraught by this and wanting very much for someone to provide her with lots of comforting while she worked through that news and got herself pointed in a new direction. So we offered to bring her back down here for a few days and spoil her rotten to the best of our ability. Minutes later, a bus ticket was bought that would send her off early Friday morning to arrive late Friday afternoon.

Everything looked ok until Thursday morning, when N. discovered her purse had gone missing with her ID in it. We shifted into crisis management mode and managed to get her through everything she needed to get her drivers license replaced, but discovered in the process that she wasn’t up to an eighteen hour bus trip. I canceled that fare while she found a super-cheap airfare instead, which would put her in Atlanta on Saturday morning rather than Friday evening.

Something might have happened on Friday, but I don’t remember it.

Saturday morning, we got up early to head down to the Atlanta airport to pick up Naomi. We grabbed some hot cocoa and a babel from the Atlanta Bread Company and found a comfortable place to stand at the receiving area, having arrived somewhat early. I’ve always enjoyed peoplewatching at this particular spot — everyone’s just so happy to see each other, it gives you faith that humans might get their collective acts together one day, just maybe.

Naomi arrived and we collected her luggage, and then returned home via downtown so she could see what the actual city looked like. (She and acrobatty missed it last time because we took the less trafficked route during the rush hours, and I don’t actually live anywhere near the city.

The weekend has mostly comprised a lot of talking and snuggling and singing and tv. We did manage to get out of the house on Sunday and went to the excellent Bogan Park Pool which telynor and folkmew had recommended previously. What a COOL place. They have two huge indoor pools. One is set up for swimming and diving, and the other is a shallow leisure pool with a 2 story waterslide and a lazy river and a contraption for the kids to climb on and, and, and….it’s just nifty! We had much fun going down the slide repeatedly and navigating the lazy river and splashing and having a great time. The only downside of the day was when I took a turn on the diving board and landed badly on my foot….I have a nice big purple bruise and am just a bit hobbled, but it should be better in a day or two. And it’s fortunately my left foot, so it doesn’t impair my driving.

Monday was shopping day, as we looked about for Memorial Day sales. Naomi bought a combination VCR/DVD player which was a steal, since they needed to replace their VCR anyway, and this unit was only $10 more expensive than the cheap VCRs after the rebate. Later, we went by Borders and I spent way too much money on their Buy Two, Get One Half Price sale…picked up the first Planetary collection from Warren Ellis, a collection of The Dreaming, and the second Lucifer collection. I’ve been out of comics too long, dammit. Need to talk to Oxford about a new subscription.

And that’s all the news I’m willing to admit to. 🙂

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[1] Previously referenced here as Shadow and Kender. I’m discontinuing the use of nicknames for non-livejournal users. It’s too much trouble to keep up with, and you don’t know these people anyway. *G*