gone cold Saturday

It was, distressingly, a cold, cold Saturday. It’s unfair because I am not prepared for the nippy days yet. But who am I kidding? I can’t tarry the cold weather, and that’s the truth. Anyway, it had been an eventful, happy weekend for me and hubby. It started with phở and ended with beef sinigang.

Last Friday after work, me and hubby double-dated with our friends, Darko and Janet at our favorite phở place. Such a modest and kooky place to choose for a Friday night double-date, no?! Then Friday night at home, since I didn’t have to fix dinner anymore, I found time to bake some chocolate brownie. My hubby loved it, I loved it, too! :)

On Saturday, we volunteered at the Taste of Falls Church. It’s some kind of a food fair, with some Falls Church restaurants and cafés participating. We manned the ticket booth from 1:00 – 3:00pm. It was fun, so much better that I expected. It was a pretty easy task- explain to people how the 1-ticket-per-taste works, take their ticket purchase, give the change, charge to their credit (if they’re using their cards), that sort of thing. A ticket costs $3 (you pay just $25 if you get 10) and you can use one ticket if you want a taste of any restaurant sample dish.

It was really cold that day! I had my jacket on but it was truly chilly for an early Fall weather. It was a dog-friendly event so lots of nice dogs with their owners were wandering about. My favorite was the beagle-like doggy which had the most unusual bark of all. People were really amazed by his strangely cute “woooo… woooo…woooo….” instead of the costumary arf, arf, arf! So adorable…

Saturday night, we were guests at casa de Lazics for shisha-smoking session again. Darko ordered pizza and I brought some of my brownie, too. Apple-flavored shisha goes well with red wine, (that’s what I think). When we got home that night, hubby said he’s kind of tired of smoking shisha. Kind of he ran out of steam with the whole shisha furor.

Too pooped out, I woke up really late on Sunday. Glad we were able to catch the 12:30 Mass. After that, we made a quick trip to the Library and picked up more books. We planned to play tennis late in the afternoon. However, just when we were leaving the building, black clouds loomed and it started to drizzle. So we dropped the tennis thing, and instead, decided to go to this shopping club thingy, which was a huge, huge, HUGE mistake.

After our purchases, we were horrified to see the total amount. Way, waaaay over the amount we were supposed to spend. We felt we were robbed. If anyone could see our faces that time, we looked as if we were punched in the stomach and swallowed push pins at the same time. Vital lesson for the day? Never, never, NEVER go saying on a rainy day- oh we’ll just drop by BJ’s and pick a few things. Because truth is, you can never ever pick up just a few things. Chances are, you’ll end up with a pyramid of stuffs which you’re gonna regret and grow tired of in the next six months. Last night, in an effort to rationalize our impulsive buys that afternoon, hubby and I resolved that kind of spending is just not for us. Maybe when time comes when we need crates upon crates of tissues, Campbell soups, cheeses and jellies to feed a little league baseball team. But not now.

So there goes one happy, frightful weekend. I made beef sinigang for dinner, we watched TV and hit our noses on the books. Hubby is reading The Wal-Mart Effect. As much as we can, we would like to remember that cold Saturday afternoon at the ticket booth, and not that mortifying spending spree.