weekend roundup + tag

This past weekend, Monkey and I spent some quality time with our regular dinner gang of friends in a rented house in Lake Geneva. There was much good food, board-game-playing, pampering, shopping and embarrassment!

First, the food. It was like being home for the holidays! Everyone brought loads of food for snacking and we all took a swing at meal duty, each couple taking on making a meal during the weekend. We were having delicious things like twice-baked chicken and cheddar corn chowder and french toast and omelettes and food food food everywhere. Yum.

Board-game playing. We all love it. We’ve gotten together before just to have game nights. Perfect when it’s a big sleepover and it’s still wintry out (mind, it was warm, with highs teetering just over 32°, which means not freezing!). Monkey and I play a good game of Cranium & Pictionary because we’re dorks. And secretly pretty competitive, despite our overly laid back demeanor…We’ve got to use that useless info stored in our heads at some point!

Shopping. My friend Carrie and I went to check out the downtown shops and found many cute boutiques in which to spend our dosh. And although Lake Geneva is a resorty town with many a tourist from Chicago seeking some sort of respite, prices were really reasonable. Carrie bought a load of pretty glass things (vials, containers, wine glasses) for her kitchen, and I splashed out and bought a load of Burts and Miso Pretty and Smiths (also picked up strawberry for Lizzie because she likes non-soy balms) for Lizzie (for dogsitting Casey this weekend) and myself (because I am a product fiend) from a cute shop called Scents & Scentsibility. Monkey was suffering one nasty cold from all his flights, so I got him a magnificent sachet that has become a constant bed buddy. Nose candy of the non-drug-addict variety is a good thing.

Pampering. The boys got the afternoon Saturday to snooze, work out, do whatever they wanted to do/not do while we girls went down to The Therapeutic Touch for massages and facials. This is also where a mild case of embarrassment occurred. See, The Therapeutic Touch is this really new-agey kind of place, not so much salon, much more of a retreat of sorts. The space is this really gorgeous old apartment, with cushy rugs, tented ceiling treatments, Enya-like tunes and seasplash sounds. We were offered teas, coffees, juices, and we were instructed to kick off our shoes and pad around the “tea room (waiting room)” in our socks. Lots of warm drinks and sitting about lead to needing to use the restroom. Carrie is 6 months pregnant, so she was first to venture into the restroom. Michelle followed soon after, and I thought I had better have a go before getting all toasty-relaxed in a massage bed. Before I went, both Carrie and Michelle warned me that the toilet had this interesting characteristic of filling with water and rising to near seat-level before going back down and getting rid of your visit. Ok, duly noted. I joked that even though they warned me, I’d end up clogging the thing. I went along and did my thing and found that indeed, the water did rise to almost alarming levels but then went right back down. The only problem is, even when the bowl water level returned to low, the toilet paper didn’t want to leave, so I thought I should flush again. It was just paper, but I didn’t want to leave that for whoever was to use the bathroom next. So, I flushed again. Again with the alarming rising bowl water level. But. This time, it didn’t stop as it neared the seat. Nonchalance (“yeah, I know your tricks, pesky toilet!”) quickly gave way to great alarm, as a trickle began to drop to the floor. There was a plunger nearby (perhaps evidence of past issues with this toilet?), I tried it quickly, heart racing and my socked feet up on toes. No luck, big splashes of water started whooshing down. Near my socked feet. My socked feet in one of my favorite pairs of black and white stripes. Socked, one thin fabric layer away from toilet water. Splashing along the floor of this cutesy old apartment-cum-massage-retreat-space.

I had to hightail it out of there (I was definitely not going to wait till my feet were completely sodden and the floor fell through in tumbles of cascading toilet water and old apartment tiles) and flagged down a poor staffer who had the fortune of swinging by in the hallway at that precise point in time. I gingerly returned to the tea room and informed the girls that I had indeed flooded the toilet, and how awful would it be to have to have the staffer who cleaned up the flood be my masseuse ~ I couldn’t look her in the eye after inflicting the studio with toilet overflow (she turned out to be an aestetician)! Meanwhile, Kris was needing to visit a loo, and we all were trying to think how she could go when the main bathroom was rendered unoccupiable by me. Turned out there was another restroom, so Kris was fine, but I was cringeing thinking all the staffers were murmuring about the idiot guest (ME!) who broke the toilet (I used even less than my usual TP allowance, having been warned by Michelle and Carrie, and still, the floods) and threw off the schedules for the rest of the afternoon. To top it all, I fell asleep during my massage and had a “falling” dream and jerked awake, freaking out the masseuse and embarrassing myself just a little more.

A good weekend indeed. How was yours?!

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Tag

Kathleen tagged me with this bit of music fun, but I may have disappointing answers (consider yourself forewarned, Kathleen!!):

1. Total amount of music files on your computer: No clue. I actually love CD’s and don’t download music onto the harddrive all that often (unless I’m making a mix). And I’m at work, so I can’t check what my IPod interface has (on my laptop at home)…see, pretty disappointing so far!
2. The last CD you bought was: Soundtrack from Garden State.
3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message? “Come Away With Me” by Norah Jones
4. Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.

Champagne Supernova :: Oasis. I just love the flow of this song. And the concept of people believing they’re getting away for the summer.

She’s the One:: World Party. This song was the first thing I thought of after Monkey and I got engaged. It’s sweet, a little wistful, and lovely lovely lovely.

Fallen for You :: Sheila Nicholls. Sad chicktune that always gets me. Because we’ve all hit a sour note at some point in our personal histories. And they remind us of what we’ve been through to be where we are now (happy!).

I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You :: Tom Waits. Hmm, I never realized what a sappy fool I actually am until looking through this list of mine. Whatever, I love that his gravelly old voice is telling such a sweet tale with this song.

Fields of Gold :: Eva Cassidy. Her voice is incredibly haunting. And this Sting song has always held a teeny tiny spot of my heart warm (despite how much Monkey strongly dislikes Sting…I can understand on some level, but I think this song is a great story). Plus, couple Eva’s voice with her own story, and it’s just an incredible experience to listen to her tell the tale.

5. Who are you going to pass this stick to? (3 persons) and why?
Jenn, because she knows & grows to the same music of my youth, Hillary, because her creative energy must have a muse of the tunal variety, and Dawn, because I’d love to hear what she listens to as she formulates more gustatory delights.