What a lovely weekend. Busy and restful at the same time. Lots accomplished and still time to nap. What could be better! Heh heh.

Friday night I had dinner at Mudd's with my dear friend Ellen (no, not that one; the other one). Our birthdays are 9 days apart and some years we celebrate, some we don't. We've had trouble finding time to get together lately and have actually taken to scheduling outings months in advance. This year we hadn't planned anything. In fact, she forgot my birthday. I knew she'd be a lot more upset about it than I was, and she sure was. One of those "I didn't forget when your birthday was, I just didn't realize it was April already." Yeah, I've been there too. So Friday afternoon we realized we both had the evening free (bwahhahaha - as if I'm ever booked up on a Friday night!) and decided to celebrate. In limited fashion, since we both had to get up early and I'm trying to watch what I eat and drink. Um, I mean diet.

We each started with a nice Grey Goose martini with lots of olives. That was a hard decision; we starting by thinking we'd split a bottle of wine, then thought one of their fancy cocktails would go down well, then just decided to stick with the tried and true. One each only though! We split the crab cake appetizer. It was 3 little (very little) round cakes, sitting on an olive tapenade-type thing, with endive salad. Very good. For the main course I had the scallops, seared and placed on pea risotto in a pancetta nage. Yeah, I had no idea what that was either. Pancetta is a type of cured bacon and nage is a thin broth. It was beyond delicious and I cleaned my plate with a piece of warm bread. We passed on dessert. There had been some problem with, I'm not sure, the order, or the kitchen, or something, so it took a long time to serve us and they apologized repeatedly. We didn't care, we were pretty happy to just sit there and chat. The meal wasn't really diet approved but it was worth it all.

Saturday morning was a TnT coaches run. As I mentioned, it was changed to Lake Merritt and yuck on that. I got there in time to start with the first group and ran most of the first loop with Joann(e?), with whom I ran last week. I just wasn't too into it, so I checked with Coach Al and he told me that I only needed to run the loop twice since I had done a long run last weekend. Yay and yippee! I ran the second loop alone and ran at top speed. Contrary to my earlier expectations I didn't fall in the Lake. I hung around after my run while everyone else finished. It was cold, my fingers were getting numb, my lips turning blue, shivering. For some reason I decided that sugar would warm me up so I nibbled on gummy bears. Oh whoops there goes the diet again. At least I wasn't munching bagels.

I did a little work in the garden but the weather wasn't quite right for working outside. Some time during the week my first peony blossoms opened up. It's the plant in the most direct sun and isn't the showiest of the bunch. Still, it's loaded with flowers and the ants haven't destroyed it yet. The other bushes are getting close to bloom, and the columbine is flowering. I have a mystery flower. I've seen the bulb getting bigger the past couple of years but this is the first time I've really seen the plant itself. I have no idea what it is so I'm looking forward to the flowers opening. Maybe an iris? That's my current guess but we'll have to wait and see. There are a couple of little ones behind it that may have flowers too. I'm just hoping it doesn't bloom the weekend I'm off running my next marathon. I'm pretty sure that's what's happened the last couple of years.

Sunday wasn't too interesting, just the usual cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, blah blah yawn boring. I did manage to do one of my cross-training tapes, a lower body workout. I'm pretty sure by tomorrow afternoon I'll be owie owie-ing every time I stand up or sit down.

The only knitting this weekend was rows and rows of the super long wrap. Until I get good sick and tired of it, or I finish it, that's all I'll be knitting. Black alpaca, two rows, over and over. And over. My brain is saying "must finish wips" and my heart is saying "start a new project with the blue silk" or "knit a hat" or "knit some fingerless gloves." It'll be interesting to see which wins out! I have told myself that before I go to Stitches MidWest I have to knit something from yarn I bought there last year!

Have a grantastic Monday!