Apple and Cherry Weekend

I'm always looking forward to weekends. Weekend means relaxing, waking up late and not sticking to schedules. Although there are chores I 'need' to do on weekend, I always have the option to delay it, or skip it altogether. David and I always have 'something in mind' for the weekends. Last weekend was supposed to be jogging, carwash, then cherry blossom. However, a slight drizzle and a gloomy sky suddenly altered our plans. We decided to do it the next day. However, we woke up a bit late the following day. Since it's back to Daylight Saving Time, we missed a full hour. So we had to change all the plans. :)

But it was still a wonderul weekend. On Friday night, we went out for shisha with Darko and Derek. We tried double apple. It was great. I enjoyed smoking it, though I am not supposed to smoke (bad, bad me). Just imagine me and David smoking flavored tobacco with hookah. It was exhilirating. However, the guys just talked about cars! And (gasp!) girls. Next time, we're gonna try caramel, or even coffee! We also met Derek's friends, two very nice Egyptian ladies. It was a wonderful night to be out, we sat on the chairs outside the hookah bar, and the night breeze was cool.

Saturday, since our plans had changed, I suggested that we go 'look' at shoes. 'Look', could mean, maybe just browse over an aisle or two of shoes, then go back home. But I meant to shop for a pair of shoes. Shop is a scary word for David. Because to shop for me means looking through ALL the shoes in all the stores in the mall before I make the ultimate decision. But I am not a hoard-girl, I am a one-at-a-time girl when it comes to shoes. I don't pile up in one go. And though we only went to a couple of stores, David grew restless right away! So I picked a pair of black thin-strapped sandals. Plus- a black tote (on sale!) which I eyed upon entering the store. David may always be annoyed with me when we go shop, but he is still very considerate. ¡Soy la chica más afortunada!

On Sunday we went to see the cherry blossoms in Washington, DC. It was a wonderful sight! It was a little bit crowded that day, but I still enjoyed my first encounter with the cherry blossoms. We walked along the tidal basin and enjoyed the scenery, and David took a lot of pictures along the way. And we were parked blocks and blocks away, so we did a lot of walking that day! Although we missed our jogging, we felt we still accomplished something.

We can't wait for another weekend! Since it's getting warmer and days are getting longer, so it means more exciting things to do, places to go and wonderful weekends to look forward to. I love that the sun sets at almost 9:00pm.

*A hookah is a traditional Middle Eastern or Asian device for smoking. It is also known as a water pipe, nargeela/arghileh/nargile, shisha, kalyan, ghelyoon or Ghalyan, or hubble-bubble. The hookah operates by water-filtration and indirect heat.

**The most commonly-used hookah tobaccos (known as tobamel or maassel) are produced using a 1:2 mixture of shredded tobacco leaf mixed in with a sweetener such as honey, molasses or semi-dried fruit. Originally, tobacco was mixed with one of these sweeteners to form jurâk (e.g. Zhaghoul brand), a flavorless, moistened tobacco. The now-popular, fruit-flavored hookah tobaccos got their start in the late 1980s when Egyptian tobacco companies began experimenting with flavored tobacco as a way to sell more of their products to women. Due to the popularity of flavored hookah tobaccos, many modern manufacturers have begun to use glycerin as the primary sweetener in hookah tobaccos because of its humectant qualities and subtle sweetening properties that accentuate the various tobacco flavorings. Today, shisha tobacco is often mixed with dried fruit, natural extracts and artificial flavorings to produce a varying assortment of tobacco flavors, such as apple, strawberry, mango, cappuccino, vanilla, coconut, cherry, grape, banana, mixed fruit, cola, and mint, which has a cooling effect on the throat. This proliferation of flavors is rather new, starting perhaps in the mid-1990s.