Ah - Another Restful Weekend!

For some reason, I was crazy-busy this weekend. It's been tons of fun stuff - but now I feel tired.

This weekend, I had dinner at Cafe Istanbul with friends (a Turkish restaurant - yum!). Their red lentil soup is one of my absolute favorites. I also love their ezme (chopped tomatoes, onions and hot peppers in olive oil.) It's kind of like a salsa for bread!



I Scream, You Scream...





On Saturday, my friends and I kicked off the summer festival season with the Utica Old Fashioned Ice Cream Festival. It was at Ye Olde Mill, where they make Velvet Ice Cream. They had a craft tent where you could buy clothes for your pets. The "designer" told me someone bought a shirt for his rabbit (is that what they're calling it these days?) and another wanted a T-shirt for her goat. Who dresses goats and rabbits? For that matter, who dresses dogs and cats?



My favorite booth was one with clothes for the cement geese you put on porch. There were holiday costumes, sports-themed outfits - even leather for that dominatrix goose in your life. They also had an ice cream eating contest - you were supposed to eat a pint a minute. I'll have to train for next year. Although talk about brain freeze...



I ate a corn dog and the most massive banana split. You could choose three ice cream flavors and three toppings. I had chocolate covered strawberry with strawberry topping, vanilla with hot fudge and cookies & cream with marshmallow topping. Yum and blech!

Indy is Swell

I also saw the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie this weekend. Apparently, I'm the only person on earth who liked it. Here's the thing - it's Indiana Jones. Of course the plot is unrealistic. It's just a fun, summer movie with a way-too-old Harrison Ford. There's always some mythical object. Weird stuff happens when you find it. Bad guys chase you and there's a big action-packed scene. It was mindless, cheesy fun - and I didn't look at my watch once (a sign of an enjoyable movie!). People are saying that this is the only unrealistic Indy movie. I'm sorry - he found the Holy Grail, which was guarded by some 800,000 year-old knight. That wasn't exactly plausible. Although I will admit the monkeys were ridiculous...

Cookouts Galore

On Sunday, I went to cookouts and parties. I made a watermelon and feta salad and a trifle with angel food cake, berries and a cool whip/pineapple/vanilla pudding mix. The watermelon salad wasn't very popular, but the trifle was a big hit!

I also played cornhole - and am officially the worst player on earth. I'm a terrible beanbag tosser!

I Swear I'm Not Normally This Dumb

Monday was supposed to be my very first yoga class with my friend Kelly. My responsibility was printing off the directions. I forgot to bring the paper with me that told me where we needed to go but figured I could look it up online.

I searched for "Mount Carmel" and looked at what facility was in New Albany. It was the New Albany Surgical Hospital. I thought that was a little odd but figured they had some community room or something where they taught health and wellness classes. (It's hard to type with a cat sitting in your lap insisting you pet her.)

We were both running late, so ended up with 15 minutes to get across town in rush-hour traffic. We opted to use back roads and were doing fine until we found streets with no signs. That made it hard to find the right one! Thank goodness for cell phone GPS.

Finally we pull up to the New Albany Surgical Hospital and are struck with a sinking feeling that we're in the wrong place. Trotting into the super posh lobby (it is New Albany, after all) with our sweat pants and yoga mats, we ask the security guards where the yoga classes were. They stared at us and finally one says "Um we don't have yoga here."

At this point a cute doctor had stopped by the desk (probably wondering what kind of freaks wanted to do yoga in a hospital) and I was wishing a giant hole would open up in the ground so I could jump in. Finally, we managed to find out that the New Albany Health and Wellness Center was on High Street.

Of course, we don't have an address so we just set our GPS for High Street and headed for North High Street instead of the correct South High Street. (Did you even imagine we'd go the right way?) We finally show up to class 40 minutes late.

It takes us 5 minutes to figure out which room was ours. (Kelly said, "I keep hearing chimes" to which I explained "no that's just creepy yoga music." They were also burning incense. We pushed open the door and saw a lot of middle-aged butts in the downward dog position. (see, I know some yoga terminology!) Alas, there was no space for our mats.

Defeated, we left, but headed for a cute custard shop on North High Street. (Getting lost has its benefits.) And really, aren't we winners if we end up with sugarfree dulce de leche custard? I thought so!