It felt like an unusual weekend: I had nothing planned, no responsibilities, and no out-of-town guests. But it turned out to be very entertaining all the same.

On Friday night, I invited Linnea to the convent to share the evening meal with us. Linnea is here visiting from Wisconsin for a month-long art retreat. After dinner, she brought out "Beyond Balderdash", and almost everybody stuck around to play the game. Quality, cheap entertainment.

On Satuday morning, we did the usual stuff: morning prayers, pancake breakfast together, splitting up household chores. Then Ryan and I finished painting a room in the church that I had worked on during the week. (Linnea is using it as her studio space while she's here, and we wanted to fix it up for her.) We finished by lunch, so Ryan and I decided to go to sell some books to Half Price. There were three boxes of books in the basement that were just going to be recycled for paper, so I asked if I could turn them in. We got $14, so Ryan and I each got to pick out a book for ourselves! I got White Noise by Don DeLillo, a book I have been wanting to read for a few years. From Half Price, we went to Barnes & Noble, because we both had gift certificates. While we were there, I ran into our neighbor Rachel. We talked for a while, and then she invited Ryan and me over for dinner later that evening. She made some great Mexican food for us, and I was happy to be able to get to know her a little better. Although I was tempted to go out to a Mexican dance club with her and her boyfriend, I ended up deciding to go home to finish the book I was reading. (I was low on cash... and besides, Ryan refuses to dance.)

On Sunday I slept in until 8:30, made myself some coffee, and took it up to my room where I stayed in bed reading. I met my friend Michael in the afternoon, and we went out to lunch at Chipotle with two of his friends. From there, Michael and I went to an opera called The Good Soldier Schweik. He's going to school at UC studying set design, and he had painted the drop for this opera. It was a massive painting of Uncle Sam dressed as a clown... very impressive. The opera was bizarre, yet entertaining. After the show, we walked down the road to an old Catholic church building, and we got permission to explore the place. There are so many beautiful old churches here. I'd like to do some photography if I find some time. That evening, I drove up to Columbus to hang out with my friend Josh. He took me out to dinner at Bucca di Beppo's, and then we went see Along Came Polly. Basically, if you've seen the preview, you've seen the movie. But I'm not usually a huge fan of romantic comedies anyway.

On Monday, Josh and I went to German Village to the Book Loft - my favorite bookstore in Columbus. Later that day, I drove down to Springfield to have dinner with one of my former colleagues. Stacy and I taught first grade together for two years before I moved to Texas. I hadn't seen her in over a year, so it was nice to catch up with her and her husband. But it was weird driving through the town. The school where we used to teach has been totally torn down since I left. There's nothing left but an empty lot. It made me sad for some reason.

I eventually made it home to bed. Although it may have been painfully boring to read about, I had fun. It turned out to be a really full weekend, even though I started out with nothing planned.