Banner Weekend

I used my clothesline for the first time today, and want to go to bed really soon so I can slip between sun-bleached sheets and think about light while drifting slowly off to sleep.

There are also few things more relaxing than sitting on one's front stoop with a good cup of coffee, reading a good magazine and pissing away a couple hours smelling the wet earth from the flower bed beside you.

My sister was here this weekend, to add to the fun. We were celebrating the completion of the Sister Smell experiment and using the money to go out for a fancy-ish dinner. It was mostly her money - she made more because she had to spend two hours lying perfectly still in a PET scanner while doing rapid fire identification of various smells.

One of the things I love about visiting with my sister is the confirmation/contrast of those stories that make up my internal narrative. Turns out Amy always thought she had a bad sense of smell: I often smelled things that either she couldn't smell, or didn't smell until 5 minutes after I'd mentioned it. This is something I have always held to be true about myself, and for some reason, it was gratifying to know that I had outside support on that. The scientists offered up that perhaps I was smelling phantom smells, since it turns out she has a very sensitive nose. Either that, or I'm some kind of sniffer savant. We'll know for sure come fall, when she hooks me up with these scientists of hers and we figure the matter out once and for all.

My point, however, was that you shouldn't eat at Azteca. It got a decent review in the Xpress a week or so ago. Super overpriced and really weird service.* I was close to slapping our waiter's hands if he tried to touch Amy (or the woman at the table next to us) one more time. The food was tasty, but if I'm (or my sister is) going to pay $19 for an entrée, I think it should come with something other than Minute Rice as a side. Boo. We'd have had better food at the Manx for 2/3 the price. Still, it wasn't terrible, and I do love to have a good gab with my sister, even if it is at top volume over the three birthday parties going on in our dining room.

*To be fair, Lucy Rest mentioned this in her article and I knew we were taking a chance. Turns out the price and weirdness outweighed the tastiness.