You must be lost

Friday night we tried the new Nuvo Burrito in East Nashville. It was. . . meh. Not bad, but I won't be rushing back there. Not while Baja is in town! Their guacamole was good, but tasted a lot like ours with less [or no] lime and pureed into a uniform, albeit thick, consistency instead of leaving it chunky, like we do (which I prefer).

gondoriangirl has been generously offering to share her employee discount at World Market for a while now. Saturday, after balancing our budget and discussing it at length, we decided to take her up on it and bought two new leather armchairs and a matching love seat for the living room. She was even gracious enough to bring the two chairs over after work, since all three pieces wouldn't fit in our collective cars.

Sunday, I listed our fugly old couch on Craigslist for free and a couple of very appreciative college students came to pick it up that afternoon.

Monday, Chris took the day off. The new component cabinet that Chris ordered at the same time as the parts for his new Hackintosh arrived and we assembled that with little difficulty, but much time. arymetore & witchcat07 had invited us to the zoo with her brother and sis-in-law and their kiddos. Although the kids didn't interact much, I think they all had a great time. As for me, I'm always entertained by the zoo. I noted that the playground area, which we hadn't spent much time in until now, really would be a great place to take some pirate costume pictures, especially if someone had a tribal Jack Sparrow costume. Too bad Chris won't let me make him one.

After we left the zoo, Chris Jonah and I headed to La Hacienda (as seems to be a zoo tradition) for an early dinner of some cool, refreshing ceviche and tacos (well, I had a torta). On our way home, Jonah passed out in the car. Once we got home, he was a little fussy but settled in eventually to watch a movie. I wrestled with him for about an hour to keep him out of Chris' hair while he got some things done. After that, I felt absolutely exhausted between that and being out in the sun and humidity at the zoo all afternoon. So, I proceeded to do nothing for the rest of the night while Chris picked up the pile of packing materials we had accumulated over the weekend.

Yesterday, I spent a fair amount of time breaking down said packing materials so that I can take them out to a recycling receptacle besides ours (since there's quite a large stack of large pieces of cardboard from the furniture and two full kitchen trash bags full of styrofoam). Then just generally got the house back into shape. I'm pretty sure I've eradicated all little bits of styrofoam from the bottom floor of the house.

( And in other news. . . )

I thought since the day was going better, I should post about all the fun stuff we did this weekend.

( Ghouls at Grassmere )

( The Great Duck Race of Nashville )

( Lunch at The Dog of Nashville )

( Tennessee Fellowship's Fall/October/Peter Jackson's Birthday Moot )

( Lazy Sunday )

Friday, my mother-in-law came up and Chris took a half day off and we all went to the zoo. Unfortunately, everyone else in the world seemed to have the same idea. Duh, we should have known. Good Friday, a lot of people have off work, it was the last weekday of spring break and a gorgeous day to be outdoors. Chris' mom decided to get us a family pass. It gets us in all year (two adults, any children in the household under 18 plus a guest). That'll be nice and I won't feel bad about going for just a couple of hours and leaving. If we go 3 times, it'll pay for the family pass. We took a picnic lunch (something I really like about the zoo, they let you bring in coolers). I really think Jonah enjoyed himself, even if he was quite sleepy by the end.

Saturday, our neighborhood association did an Easter egg hunt. Chris brewed and I had committed to a hike at the Warner parks thinking it was supposed to be on Sunday. I canceled going to the park and took Jonah up there, and I'm glad I did (though I really would have appreciated a hike). But he had a lot of fun! I had to hold his basket, but he did a reasonably good job picking up the eggs and putting them in the basket. Unfortunately, after about 4 eggs, he noticed there was candy in them and lost interest in picking up more and started wanting to pull the candy out. Also, they had filled some with chocolate candy and it sat out in the sun that afternoon melting. Quite a mess. They did a bunny hop contest too, but Jonah just sort of stood there and looked at me. In fact, only one little girl in his age group (1-2) would actually hop. The rest of the day, we just hung out while Chris, Doug and Jonathan brewed. Well, and I planted our blueberry and raspberry plants finally (they've been sitting dormant in our kitchen window sill since fall). I also worked some composted manure into one 4x4 section of our raised vegetable garden. I was amazed and happy at how many worms were in that bed. I was also amazed but unhappy about how many tree roots grown up into it. Eventually, we may turn that into an ornamental bed and relocate our veggies.

Sunday, I sat on the back steps to drink my coffee in the morning. The air was cool, but the sun warmed up everything nicely. It was just absolutely gorgeous. After a late breakfast of omelets, I got out and planted some overdue daffodils and tulips into containers as not to waste them, then sowed some lettuce seeds in the bed I worked yesterday. I also went ahead and pruned the lower branches on the trees in the backyard. There really wasn't much to do. We did a lot of work last year and it seems there's not nearly as much to be done to get it back into shape this year. I'm now sporting a nice farmer's tan from wearing t-shirts to work in the yard this weekend. Guess I need to pull out the tank tops. Chris had picked up a chocolate bunny, some candy eggs and a little stuffed rabbit for Jonah's Easter basket Saturday night. He got to open it Sunday morning and really seemed to love it. He carried the stuffed rabbit around most of the morning and kept pointing to the basket during the day giving me the "more" sign saying he wanted more candy. He took no for an answer reasonably well when it just wasn't appropriate for him to have more chocolate.

I also finished reading The Tao of Pooh this weekend. It's been really cute, but also a very nice, simplified way to look at Taoist principles. Seems kind of strange to say "simplified Tao" since Tao is supposed to be so simple anyway. But it's sometimes difficult to really grasp such simplicity. Our minds, distracted by the material world, want to nag us to believe there's more to it. There really isn't.

So yeah, like most people were this weekend I would imagine, I was so busy, I probably wouldn't have bothered with LJ even if there wasn't a strike. Today, I need to get this house back into shape. It's amazing how when I don't clean for two days, it suddenly looks like I haven't cleaned in a month.