Things started on an off note this morning when Takaza wasn’t feeling well. Instead of going to work he headed back to bed for a few hours to see if he would feel better with a bit more sleep. This indeed helped, and by 10:30 or so he was feeling good enough to consider heading in to work. I got a phone call from wildmouse asking if I wanted to join her, me_not_you, vileone, thebroomecloset, ovrclockd, and some other folks from Cisco for lunch at Allen & Sons, reputedly the best barbeque joint in the area. Takaza was sweet enough to hang around to wait for the A/C guy to show up while I showered and dashed out the door to pick up Janelle. On the 40-minute drive to the restaurant, I was treated to dazzling descriptions of how good their hush puppies are, how the banana pudding is to die for, how the ‘cue is wonderfully smoky and great even without any sauce. We pull into the parking lot to find…it’s empty. Turns out, they’re closed between 7/20 and 8/4 for vacation. Well, phooey.

We stuck around for about 20 minutes waiting for everyone else to show up and make plans, then Janelle, Donald, Rob, and me headed over to The Streets at Southpoint and got lunch at California Pizza Kitchen (OK food, though the shrimp spring rolls were less a delicate collection of flavors and more like a train wreck of cilantro and sweet sesame-ginger sauce). After lunch we stopped at Rocky Mountain Spotted Chocolate Factory to get some goodies to take to Dan: a chocolate cheesecake apple (apple dipped in white chocolate, graham crackers, and drizzled with milk chocolate) and a couple of chocolate-dipped pretzels.

We dropped the goodies off at Dan’s work (and met some of his co-workers, nice folks), then made one more stop before going home: The Flour Shop, a nice little bakery. Janelle picked up a hazelnut torte for tonight, as well as two small tortes: peanut butter-chocolate, and a combination white chocolate/milk chocolate mousse. Nummy!

So, plans for the weekend: Not a lot, yay! We’re going to stay away from stores as much as possible because this is the annual Sales Tax Holiday Weekend, though we had kicked around the possibility of going to a computer show to price out cheap laptops for MFF registration (no, we’re not budgeted for any, I’m just curious what we might be looking at).