17 July 2001

It barely felt like a weekend. When I woke up this morning, I thought, Well, that was a nice weekend, but wasn't it supposed to be longer???

Rather than attempt to tell you all about the weekend, I'll just try to share a few anecdotes, and a lot of pictures. (My apologies to those of you with slower connections.)

Thursday evening around 5:30, Ashby called to say that he and Karen were going to wait until about 7 - so that the worst of DC's rush hour traffic will have had a chance to thin - and then they were going to leave. That should have got them to our house by 10 or 10:30, so that was nice. At 9:30, the phone rang - it was Ashby. They'd allowed his mom to distract them with a movie and dinner, and so they were just about to leave, really. They made it to our place just before 12:30.

Jeff arrived Friday night, fairly late. But none of the rest of us had eaten yet, so we decided we wanted pizza for dinner. I called the Pizza Hut around the corner for delivery. The guy on the other end of the line took my phone number and address and then asked what we wanted.

"Three large pizzas. One with-"

"What kind of crust?" he interrupted.

Pizza Hut has all kinds of weird crusts, and I don't eat Pizza Hut pizza often enough to know them. (I'm a Papa John's fan, personally.) I asked him to tell me what my choices were. He started listing them, then said, "Hang on a sec."

While I was hanging, I confirmed with everyone that the middle-of-the-road hand-tossed crust would suffice. The guy came back and said, "We don't have any more larges."

This nonplussed me. No more larges? But... it's just dough. Make some more! He went away to check on the status of mediums. None of those, either. All they had left in the shop were two "Big New Yorker" pizzas - did we want those?

It was about five minutes to ten. I was so flabbergasted that I asked him what time they closed, thinking perhaps we'd called just before closing. But no; they were supposed to be open until midnight. They just didn't have any more dough. And while I was stammering, a walk-in took the two Big New Yorkers. He was very sorry.

Saturday was the pool party/cookout. Here, have some pictures.

Sunday, we went out for ice cream.

We were sitting around outside the Ben and Jerry's, just talking and being silly, when a little girl came up to me to say hello. She was an adorable little thing, ice cream smeared on her face and shirt. She proudly informed me that she was four years old. I smiled at her and chatted for a minute, and then when shyness drove her back to her family, turned back to everyone else.

"So," Karen said, "what are we going to do for dinner? And what are we doing between now and dinner? And then what are we doing after dinner?"

Matt appeared to give this careful thought. "Tickling you?" he suggested.

I laughed. "Tickling sounds good, yeah!" I teased.

Then I felt the faintest of touches along my side. The little girl was back, and - apparently responding to the conversation - trying to tickle me. I tickled her back a little, enjoying the game.

She had the hiccups, she shyly whispered.

"You know what's good for hiccups?" I asked. She shook her head, eyes wide in her head. "Tickling!"

She told me that to cure the hiccups, you had to hide and then jump out and make a scary face. I attempted a scary face for her, but she giggled and told me I was just being silly. She demonstrated a scary face for me. "RARRR!"

Heh. She was soooo adorable. I wanted to take her home with me, really I did.

Karen, Ashby, and Jeff all left Monday, leaving Matt to look forlornly at our pile of unwashed laundry. We had a good time. A really good time. It just wasn't long enough. Next year, we'll make everyone come for a whole week.

--Liz

Word of the Day:
euphuism - an Elizabethan literary style marked by excessive use of balance, antithesis, and alliteration and by frequent use of similes drawn from mythology and nature; artificial elegance of language
 
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