A Grand Time Was Had by All (Well, Me)

Another Monday nearly done. I can finally exhale and relax … and remember my weekend that just ended. It was a typical weekend, and a great one at that.

Friday

Friday is my night. Time to slug, to veg, to fade away. I tend to cocktail a lot on Thursday, so Friday gives me a chance to recharge for the rest of the weekend and decompress after five days at the office. A perfect Friday night has yoga pants and R.E.M. T-shirt, take-home Thai and a good bottle of wine, a guilty pleasure movie and the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly. I don’t want to expend any energy beyond pulling the cork out of the bottle or flirting on the phone. You may be able to lure me out with the promise of cocktails and a cute guy clutching a microphone, but I’d rather share the sofa with my cats.

This past Friday night was perfect. An early Mexican dinner with a couple of magaritas, followed by my yoga-panted self drinking wine and watching Bridget Jones’s Diary. Twice. The 9 p.m. and the 11 p.m. broadcasts. (A call from a cute and tipsy boy at 9:03 made me miss Hugh Grant’s entrance, so I had to watch it all the way through a second time.) I know the dialog and facial expressions by heart, and can tell you to the minute when the elevator doors open on Hugh Grant and “Respect,” or when Colin Firth gives Bridget that look at her birthday dinner as “Dreamsome” plays in the background. I never tire of Bridget Jones’s Diary. It’s like watching a documentary of My Life as a Single Girl. And, well, it has Colin Firth and Hugh Grant.

Saturday

It was too darn hot for a delicate Southern flower such as myself to go outside (we mustn’t glisten around the menfolks, you know), so the canine nephew and I spent the morning watching a fun movie — Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Rent it today, and thank me tomorrow. Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer are excellent in it. Added bonus: Robert Downey Jr. sings the song over the closing credits; downloaded it yesterday and like it.

My friend Jennifer, whom I’ve known since high school, came over Saturday night. She recently went to her class reunion (she was a year ahead of me), so we drank wine (well, I did; she’s a much stronger soul than I), studied each Flickr reunion photo (Jimmy Knight is still very cute and very tall, and his gold band is very wide), listened to the Retroactive channel, and talked and talked and talked and talked. Jennifer’s a very cool woman, and I should see her more often.

Jennifer and I were on the newspaper staff in high school. I was the first sophomore to make the staff, which was a big deal since we had the best paper in the state. I thought I was selected because I was one helluva writer with raw talent waiting to be tamed. But Jennifer and I soon found out we made it because we had short, dark hair … and the photography editor had a thing for cute girls with short, dark hair. But I learned how to write and today support myself as a writer, thanks to everything I learned during my three years on The Panther Tracks.

Speaking of Jennifer, her son is in an up-and-coming Athens band. Check out Thunder Chizzle; go see them if you’re in the Athens area.

Sunday

A good Southern Baptist, I helped my mom fill in as teacher for the fifth grade Sunday school class. The kids were a lot of fun, and we got to arts-and-crafts it.

After we completed our Christian duty, we raced up to Lake Burton [for you non-Georgians, it’s a lake in the north Georgia mountains, one of the prettiest spots in the state]. My brother-in-law’s dad owns a home on the lake, and sister and hubby were spending a long weekend there. We had a fried chicken lunch on the porch, then the brother-in-law took me on a fast, fun boat ride. I’m considering pursuing the dad so that I can marry into that house.


And that was my weekend. I need to figure out how to live on five-day weekends and two-day work weeks.