my arms are tired just thinking about it

We had a productive weekend. Busy, tiring, full, relaxing, and productive. Let's see. First off, our fun dinner plans for Saturday night got cancelled/postponed because we had to do a family thing and Ro & Pat had to go out of town. A bummer, but we still had a nice weekend.

Saturday I headed over to the state park to walk alone (since Ro was away), and decided to bring my camera. 11 miles is long, but its longer still when you walk it alone... I'm so used to the constant conversation (its our "girl talk" time), which really makes the miles fly. Oh well, I enjoyed my time and got some pretty pictures.

(This bush was covered in white butterflies, can you see them?)



Dragon-fly on the creek:


Portrait of a walker... aka. These shoes were made for walking... lol.

Once I got home, we had some time to kill before heading to Willy's, so we hit up the matinee of The X-files movie! So exciting, this is one I was dying to see... I'm the biggest X-Files fanatic!

(Skip ahead if you don't want to read the spoilers for this movie.)

::SPOILERS::
Well, I am definitely glad we went to see this, although it maybe wasn't everything I hoped it could be. It definitely had the flavor of the show, and almost just seemed like an extra long episode. But I did feel like David Duchovny (love him, and his acting as I do) didn't come back into Mulder as well as Gillian Anderson came back into Scully. And at points I felt like the movie was just trying to fit in all these details, all these facts about the years between, so that they almost ended up just thowing them at you and didn't necessarily fit them into the plot in a seamless way. Like I thought it was crazy how they just plopped it in there that Scully and Mulder were together, and hey, they had a kid! And he was named William, and he died! All in about 60 seconds. Then, right when it felt like I had digested that, they're possibly breaking up because Scully can't deal with the FBI stuff anymore... and thought they were done with all that.
I liked the case though... the spooky nature of it and the fact that it was very much like one of the old X-files. I like that it kind of got back to a first and second season kind of case. I think people assumed they would go straight to the aliens again, and I'm glad they didn't.
::End Spoilers!::

I'm so glad we went. Its nice having a date with my husband.

The rest of Saturday was taken up with the family stuff, then a lot of lounging (and Travis falling asleep at 9! Long day for the poor boy!).
Sunday I decided to start off, not with my walk, but with some house work! See that border?

That ugly, blah border?

Well, I used the steamer and removed it!

It didn't take too long... the steamer was a freakin G*d-sent! The hardest part was going up and down and up and down and up and down (get it) the step ladder. I had to go around the room twice too, first to scour the whole border, then to do the actual steaming and removing. And once that was done... well, damn were those walls dirty!!

So back up and down the step ladder another dozen times to scrub the walls. Now I'm not one to wash walls (I'm not really big on housework/cleaning, if you haven't noticed)... but really, it had to be done. Especially since we're going to be painting in there. Of course, we'll have to wipe down the walls again before that since we'll be creating quite some dust when we do the ceilings, but still I wanted to at least the the most of it so the next time it really could be a wipe down and not a scrubbing! (And as Trav is still wearing the boot, ladders aren't so do-able for him at the moment.)

(Travis took this picture... thank you lovely husband.) The worst part was how ridiculously sweaty and hot I got because it was already hot and humidy out, but then add to that the steam from the steamer, and the climbing of ladders... well, as you can see, it wasn't pretty.

Plus, damn did my arms hurt by the time I was done with those walls. But I was pretty pleased!

It also helped that while I was finishing up with the last wall, the thunder started rumbling and the sky got dark and the wind picked up (oh yes, lovely lovely wind!). In fact it got so dark I had to turn on the light in the room (at 2 in the afternoon!). See... dark!

So once I finished with the room we had quite the storm, which I took some time to watch. The breeze it created was very nice. I didn't take any pictures, but the last storm we had I took this video... and this one was much of the same (ignore us talking!).


After that I headed out for my walk... 5 miles. It wasn't too bad, the storm had cooled it off. But it was definitely still quite moist out. Yuck. By the time I was done I had that all over damp feeling which isn't so great, and I was tired and sore. So after a cold shower (ahhhh), the rest of the night was spent relaxing.

Today my little brother leaves for a month in the mediterranean! A friend of his got to pick someone to take with him on a 21-day cruise (with extra time at beginning and end in Italy!), and he chose my brother. They will see something like 7 countries (Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Malta, Morocco?), and will be gone for a total of 28-days! I'm a bit jealous. I wish him the best of luck though and can't wait to see all his fabulous pictures when he gets back.

Well, time for me to get to work. Ciao.