This year my M.O. for vacation time has consisted of scheduling it out piecemeal into various four-day “staycation” weekends that give me a chance to get away from the office and recharge my batteries — in the company of my favorite person and my two favorite cats, of course! Since home is my favorite place to be, I’m perfectly happy to spend my vacations this way — and the fact that it’s both cheaper and lazier is a nice bonus!
This weekend held particular significance, though: Thursday represented the four-year mark since Jenn and I met at Worldcon in Anaheim. It’s been an exciting and wonderful four years so far, full of change and adventure for both of us. We rang in the occasion with a spectacular dinner at our favorite restaurant here in the Valley, Café Carolina. Jenn’s post describes the meal perfectly, so I won’t try to elaborate, except to show you the dessert:
We filled our Friday and Saturday with food and fun as well. One highlight was an outing to Dark Delicacies in Burbank, a horror bookshop where Amelia Beamer was signing her new novel. There we met up with friends and made some new ones, then stopped over at Porto’s for a pile of pastries.
It wouldn’t be a four-day weekend without TV, movies, and games, of course. I’m catching up on season five of Rescue Me (about halfway through so far); I always seem to forget how good this show is when I’m not watching it. I find elements of it problematic, but there’s something refreshing about how unapologetic and gutsy it is, and the ensemble cast is consistently amazing. (I think Steven Pasquale in particular is a brilliant comic actor, and his story arc this year has been filled with entertaining surprises.) We also instant-streamed the weird Belgian animated film A Town Called Panic, a wonderfully strange, frantic movie I found a little too stream of conscious for a full review — suffice it to say, it’s the best weird Belgian stop-motion animation you’ve ever seen. And on Saturday night we enjoyed some World of Warcraft instancing with friends, where I got to heal my first heroics with my neglected resto druid. (If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it…)
The weekend wrapped up with Jenn’s birthday, and I made my first solo batch of chocolate chip cookies — a personal baking milestone. Not only that, but they look and taste like cookies. Holy shit!
It was nice to shut down and relax for a while, but it’s Monday again and time to resume some responsibility. Back to work, to editing, to blogging and bill-paying…and soon, to writing, as I’ve decided September will ring in draft two of Subnetworks (or, more likely, draft 1.5, the last pre-critique version).
For now I’ll leave you with our anniversary photo — I do believe we are as happy as we look in this picture, so it’s a great way to remember a great weekend!
