We passed a slow and lazy weekend, the kind I love so much.

After work on Friday, I stopped at the Imperial Garden for lunch. I now eat lunch at Imperial Garden every Friday. For $4.50 (plus tip) I get good Chinese food and great service. The lunch special includes an eggroll and two wontons and hot-and-sour soup and rice and tea, not to mention my choice from a score of tasty entrees. Lunch at the Imperial Garden is a fun Friday tradition.

After lunch, I finally closed my account with U.S. Bank. As much as I hate U.S. Bank, it took me a couple of years to actually switch my business to a local credit union. It gave me a small delight to leave behind the banking behemoth.

Before heading home, I stopped at the Milwaukie Public Library. As luck would have it, they were holding their annual book sale. The selection wasn't as keen as at the Multnomah County Library book sale, but I took the time to enter the raffle, and to rummage for the following books:

• Birds of America, a 1936 ornithology book (not the famous Audubon book) with long, rambling descriptions of all manner of birds. This is a fun addition to my growing library of bird books. Two dollars.
• 100 Years of Lynching, a sobering book that uses newspaper articles to tell the story of a century of racial violence. Very disturbing. Twenty-five cents.
• Pacific Coast Tree Finder A pamphlet — I enjoy browsing the pamphlets and booklets at book sales; there are some true gems to be had. When I showed this to Kris, she exclaimed: "Wow! Just what I've been looking for! A dichotomous key for trees!" My wife: the geek. Twenty-five cents.
• Van Loon's Geography: The Study of the World We Live In The "collectibles" table was rich with geography and cartography books. (There was a fantastic cartography textbook from the 30s, for example.) This book was available for six dollars, but I found a copy in with the non-collectible books for onlya buck.
• The Statesman's Yearbook (2003 edition). A comprehensive (though two-years out-of-date) factbook containing information about every country in the world. One dollar.
• Two Heritage Press editions, both with wonderful typefaces and lavish illustrations: Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. One dollar each (bargains!).
• And, my splurge from the collectibles secton: Vanity Fair: selections from America's most memorable magazine, a calvacade of the 1920 and 1930s — a fantastic book filled with photos and writing (both fiction and non-) from the magazine's twenty-year run during the first part of the twentieth century. I'll share more from this in the future, you can be sure. Eight dollars.

Library book sales are a great way to indulge my addiction without spending a lot of money.

On Friday afternoon, I did yardwork. I got up early Saturday morning to do more yardwork. There's always more yardwork at our place.

On Saturday afternoon, Dave and I ate lunch at Cha Cha Cha (my other favorite cheap restaurant), then went across the street to catch Batman Begins at the Moreland Theater.

Batman Begins is one of that rare breed: a good superhero movie. Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 also fall into this category, but I'm hard-pressed to think of any others. (I haven't seen Hellboy yet.) Batman Begins pretends the previous series of Batman movies never happened, which is fine by me. (No, I didn't even care for the first one.) The movie does suffer from a couple of flaws — the action scenes are filmed tight and cut tight, so that they're difficult to follow; and, worst of all, the five-minute Batmobile chase is completely lame (in the worst tradition of special effects over story) and disregards previously established character development (i.e. Batman shows no regard to the lives of the police officers he kills during the chase). Other than these two complaints, the film is great fun. I love the fact that the filmmakers have drawn upon secondary characters and villains and events instead of promoting a big-name villain like the Joker. (I also find it hilarious that, when he smiles, the new Batman bears a striking resemblance to George W. Bush. It's uncanny.)

On Saturday evening, we had dinner with Will and Marla. Marla prepared some tasty BBQ chicken pizzas (baked on the grill), and then the four of us played Settlers of Catan.

Here's a confession: I don't really care for this game. I know that everyone else loves it, but I find it tedious. It's probably because I suck at it. (Actually, it's probably because we always start playing so late in the evening, and I'm dead tired by the end of the game.) Still, I play it often because it's not so bad when everyone else is having fun. I never win, though. I can't figure the game out. Kris, however, has won several games in a row, including this time. "All day tomorrow," she told me on the drive home, "you have to call me Master of All Catan." Oh brother.

Before we left, Will loaned me a stack of DVDs "I like loaning stuff to you," he said. "You return things quickly."

I looked at the stack of DVDs in my hand, and thought of things borrowed years ago still in my possession. "Er, that's not always true." It'll take me months to watch everything he loaned me: the first two seasons of The Sopranos, Band of Brothers, The Ladykillers, Intolerable Cruelty, The Spanish Prisoner, and Three Amigos. ("That's a funny movie," Will said of the latter. Mac has, in the past, cited it as one of his favorite movies.) That's a total of 2395 minutes of video, or more than twice what we're watching each month from Netflix. Will's opinion of my ability to return things quickly will soon be dashed.

Today was the most freeform, aimless day I've spent in months. It was wonderful. It was the one-year anniversary of our being in this house, and in celebration, we did nothing.

While the Master of All Catan sat on the front porch, sipping tea and reading 100 Years of Lynchings, I went for an early morning walk (listening to Cloud Atlas, a novel which has received rave reviews, but about which I am ambivalent). Later, I did more yardwork: mowing the lawn (in my bare feet!), sweeping the sidewalk, pruning the forsythia (on Pam's advice). I spent a lot of time playing cancer-roulette: I lay on the lawn, sunbathing. It felt luxurious.

The only black spot in the day was my trip to Fred Meyer. I hate the Oak Grove Fred Meyer. It's so large that I find it difficult to find anything. For example, I went up-and-down the six health-and-beauty aisles twice and couldn't find the sunscreen. I wandered back to the camping section to look for it, but to no avail. I stopped an employee to ask for help, and he told me, "It's up in health-and-beauty."

"I've already checked there. Twice," I said, but he only shrugged, and then turned and walked away. (The Oak Grove Fred Meyer has surly employees. I once witnessed two young men, who were stocking the dairy section, get into an argument with their supervisor. They swore at him, in front of customers. Bizarre. When I went to purchase my stuff today, the checker mumble mumbled everything she said, was generally curt and rude.)

"Why do you even go to that Fred Meyer? You know it sucks," the Master of All Catan said after listening to my complaints. She has a point. (By the way: the sunscreen wasn't in the health-and-beauty section. It was in a standalone display near the customer service desk.)

Late in the afternoon, I fixed myself a frosty-cold gin fizz, and then watched Three Amigos with the Master of All Catan. We didn't laugh. Not once. It wasn't a funny movie (though it wanted to be). It's not a bad movie, just sort of dumb and pointless, a waste of 104 minutes. Maybe it's something you have to see as a kid in order to appreciate later in life. (Sort of like Buckaroo Banzai.)

At sunset, a thunderstorm rolled through. We watched the lightning in the distance and counted eight seconds before the thunder rumbled and cracked around us. "Look at that rainbow," said the Master of All Catan. While the thunderstorm oozed up from the south, the northern sky reamined clear and cloudless. Reflected light from the sun cast an otherworldly glow around the neighborhood and, best of all, gave us a double rainbow.

   

It was a good weekend.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2004 — Moving Day   Thanks to all twenty-two of you who helped make this move so easy, and to the three of you who helped on previous days. We appreciate it more than you could possibly know.

— Peeling Wallpaper   Yesterday was very productive. With the help of friends, we moved another vanload of boxes; we finished stripping wallpaper in the dining room; we began stripping wallpaper in the study; we moved potted plants.

2003 — Please Please Please   In so very many ways I was a typical angst-filled teenager of the mid-1980s. I never bought all the way in, though: I didn't like The Smiths.

2002 — Crow in the Road   Can animals become suicidal?

2001 — Nostalgic Reveries   There are four or five primary sources of nostalgia for me, all of the women who were, at one time, close friends.

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