Weekends tend to disappear without me realizing it lately. I remember in the summer, Ric said that life would be slower once we got to the fall, but fall seems even busier than summer.

On Friday, I dashed out of work to meet my sister and go to Disneyland. We had a good dinner at the Jazz Kitchen take-out place, then went into the park (what the heck - California Adventure closed at 6pm on a Friday?!) hit up the Haunted Mansion, Winnie the Pooh, the Tiki Room, and Indiana Jones, as well as did a lot of walking around and taking in the Halloween decorations and the fireworks show. Every time we go there we try and go somewhere one of us hasn't really gone before. Jenny had only been on Indiana once and couldn't remember it. Now that she's survived, I'm trying to convince her to go on the roller coaster rides with me. We wandered around in the Disney Store, then found another place we hadn't noticed before: the foot path back to the parking structure from the tram station. The tram on Friday nights is insane. We got home around 11:30. I was planning on a short night of sleep, but my back has been acting up, so I decided to make it a long night and went straight to bed.

Saturday I got up at noon and then started working on the condo. We still had a lot of catching up to do with cleaning, including a massive mountain of laundry that needed to be put away. We worked for a few hours, then Rob and Dee showed up to give us some direction on the bathroom project, which had stalled a bit. They helped us remove the toilet and put it in the bathtub, then provided us with a lot of advice and a list of items we needed to buy. They went home to freshen up, and we met up with them an hour later to head to Pasadena. We went to a bike shop to check out some wheels for Ric, who wants to start biking for exercise, then went to a pub (can't remember the name) that was very cool and sporting all sorts of exclusive beers on tap. We tried some new flavors and some of us discovered the potency of certain drinks (a.k.a. Russian Imperial Stout). We all got home around 9:30, and Ric and I watched some 30 Rock together until I got too tired from all the good food and drink.

Sunday, we went to church and Sunday School, and in the afternoon I went out shopping for items in our bathrooms. I picked up a shower curtain set for the downstairs bathroom, and some new sheet sets for our bedroom. FYI, the cheapest deal out there is actually a great double-set of sheets at Target for $70 (when one set can cost $60 at Bed, Bath, and Beyond - which doesn't even include pillowcases). Ric and I met up at Lowe's to buy more supplies, including a wet saw for tiles, stuff to re-attach the toilet after tiling is done, and a couple little items. We went out to dinner with the Andersons at Panera to tell them all about our trip, then headed home to relax a bit. I caught up on blogs and emails and a couple of tv shows, then watched some tv with Ric while he worked on tiles. I got sleepy early (11) and headed to bed, since I've recently started a new regime of getting up early enough to eat breakfast (and do some yoga with the Fit when I'm in possession of the Wii).

Up this week: shopping, condo work, and on Thursday I'm heading out to Vancouver for a few days to visit with Erika. Apparently we're going to a concert on Halloween. Then I'll check in at the Portland Hilton (right across the river) for a Registrar conference. The cool thing about this trip is that work is paying for me to go visit my friend! I'll be staying through next Tuesday and then I'll be back at work. Movies in the queue this week: Young@Heart, finishing Fitzcarraldo, and maaaybe starting a Madness DVD.

So someone sent me this and I'm totally sucked in. Just when I finished my Rookie Challenge on The Bigs and thought I was free.

If you're not a video game geek like me and have several hours to kill, I also strongly recommend Kevin Smith's new Q&A DVD, which is really funny and is over five hours long.