Kris and I enjoyed a fun weekend with friends, though it wasn’t particularly relaxing.

On Saturday morning we hosted some Willamette friends and their children. We don’t see Chris and Cari or Michael and Laura as much as we used to. It’s great when we do; we enjoy their company. About twice a year, we gather for food and fellowship. This time, we hosted brunch. We’d hoped to be able to eat outside, but the week-long deluge prevented that.

On Saturday evening, we spent time with old high school friends. Dave and Karen came to dinner, and Mitch brought his kids. We ate hot dogs, played games, and talked about comic books.

My sister Shelley was in town Sunday, so the family gathered at Jeff’s house in Molalla. We had hoped to barbecue, but the very last of the rain kept us indoors again. Noah and Kendall were eager to clean up afterward:

By the time we took dinner to Craig and Lisa on Sunday night, the rain had passed. After dinner, I took Albert to the park. Or, rather, he took me to the park. He led me out the back door, down the alley (pausing only to look at a peculiar piece of gravel), down the sidewalk, and across the street to the park. He had me push him in the swing, but I couldn’t get him high enough to satisfy. I taught him how to walk up the slide backward, and how to go down on his stomach. We ran over to watch the pick-up soccer game. Albert gathered sticks. He hugged trees. He pulled moss from cracks in the sidewalk. Back at the house, we enjoyed some awesome chocolate pudding. Before we left, Craig showed us the progress on the basement.

On our way home, we stopped by Paul and Amy Jo’s. Paul gave us some of his posole (which, it turns out, is quite good).

Amy Jo gave me advice on writing, and loaned me a book about publishing non-fiction.

I had planned to do a lot of chores on Monday, but I got sidetracked. I’ve discovered that I love to prune. I’m not so fond of shearing hedges, but I love to lop off limbs and to prune for aesthetics. We have a several huge ungainly rhododendrons which haven’t been pruned in several years, so I spent three hours crawling beneath them, choosing which branches to prune and which to save. The largest rhodie took me ninety minutes to prune on its own. The plants look much better now, though they still need minor “haircuts”.

In the afternoon I joined Andrew and Tiffany for X-Men III. I had watched the first two films again over the weekend in preparation. My evaluations remain unchanged from first viewings: X-Men is pretty lousy and X-Men II isn’t a lot better (though it does have a few great moments). The first twenty or thirty minutes of X-Men III was fantastic, though; I was giddy with fanboy excitement at what I was seeing onscreen. Then the film bogged down — the plot stalled. The climax is a bunch of noise and nonsense (though I did love seeing Kitty Pryde — always my favorite X-Man (er, X-Woman?) — battling Juggernaut. (Aside: Enough Wolverine already! There should be a Federal law banning Wolverine from all media for a period of two years. Ugh.)

As I say: a fun weekend, and great to see so many people, but not particularly restful. I have a feeling that I’m going to spend the next couple of nights doing nothing. And loving it.