So this is what weekends are like

This past Saturday presented me with quite the dilemma: what to do on my first wedding free weekend in five months.

Most of you guys probably take your Saturdays and Sundays for granted. You mow the lawn, you go for dim sum, you watch the Mets win or watch the Redskins lose. It's not too complicated, and I guess that's the way weekends were meant to be.

But for those of us in the business, weddingless weekends are a rarity. I can count the number of free weekends in 2006 on one hand. And so when one does finally roll around I tend to think of all the things I can catch up on: movies, dinners, cleaning out the garage. (Well, maybe the first two...)

Of course those things never happen. The reality is that I sleep late, read the newspaper out on the grass, and end up watching some football game on TV that I haven't the slightest interest in. By then it's already dinner and the day, with all its promise of activity, has slipped away.

But who cares, right? This weekend we took Alexandra to a pumpkin patch, made a quick trip to Gettysburg, and took the local firehouse up on their offer of an open house. We bought a new leotard for her ballet class, went out for some sushi, and pretty much did nothing of great consequence.

Of course everything, or, in this case, "nothing" is relative. We got to hear her tell the firemen that she would call the mailman in the case of an emergency (the uniforms are pretty similar), watched her deliberate over which tiny pumpkin to choose, and chased her as she picked every dandelion on Little Round Top. All in all, a perfect weekend.

Matt