Well, I seem to have gotten slack on detailing our comings and goings. Bad me! All in all, this was a very pleasant holiday weekend.

I carpooled with takaza on Friday. I really like doing this because I usually have about a half-hour to kill by the time I get down to his employer, which gives me time to relax, read the paper, or take a short nap. On that day, I elected to stop by a nearby Starbucks and grab a tasty Frappucino. Once Dan escaped for the weekend, we decided that it was time to make use of all of the gift cards which had been showered upon us the prior weekend. As expected, the thank-you gift was two $25 gift cards to Target for each of us, so Target was where we headed first. That was quite entertaining, as we had fun wandering through the store grabbing small-ticket items which just happened to amuse us; for someone like me who always carefully considers each purchase, this was way out of character, and really fun. Even with all of that, we still had the better part of $20 left once we finished.

From Target it was over to Best Buy to make use of the gift cards we had there. Dan was due for a new Sirius receiver (his Audiovox PNP1’s display was unreadable in daylight), so he picked up a Starmate Replay which has a lot of neat functions. To round out the gift cards, I picked up a much-needed set of earbuds for my iPod. Finally, we finished off the night with a delicious dinner at Maggiano’s Little Italy, the majority of which was financed by a Lettuce Entertain You gift card.

On Saturday I made a stop by Sur La Table to pick up a new mandoline so that I could make the herbed squash and potato torte that thebroomecloset mentioned in his journal. Since we had some fresh basil on hand, I substituted that for the thyme, and while it paired well with the Parmesan I’d like to make it with the thyme for comparison’s sake. All in all it came out quite delicious – thanks for the recipe pointer, Mike! Once those were done, I packed ’em up and we gave siriuswolfstar and simbalion a lift up to datahawk‘s July 4 party. We had a really good time, though I feel bad that I was rather antisocial, confining myself to the front porch. Too many people in too small a space, unfortunately, but the weather outside was delightful and the company was excellent as well.

Sunday was wonderfully lazy and boring. We watched a bunch of TV and sat around the house. I like holiday weekends!

Monday was another nice, lazy day. Once we got rolling at around 2:30 or so, I surprised Dan with a light lunch at La Creperie, then it was off to shop at Whole Foods Market (hi kittylad!), the always-wonderful Paulina Market, and other places. Datahawk and linnaeus joined us for dinner as I made sautéed pork chops and oven-roasted potatoes in goose fat. Yum!

Tuesday saw a nice small party at Linnaeus’ place with emrldgirrl, wiktowasichu, daveqat, jimcyl, bullethc, Datahawk, Sirius, and Simba. It was pleasantly low-key, and very enjoyable. Sitting out on the back porch, listening to the unending cacophony of fireworks was quite surreal, and very enjoyable (as was the shirtless guy in the window in the apartment across the alley 🙂

And here we are, back to work. yay. At least it gives me time to update my LiveJournal 😉