the paranoia, it drives me

We did indeed make it to the Farmer's Market yesterday, where I got to meet the owner of B&C BBQ (aka Bacon and Caviar, the frontrunner for wedding catering). He was super cool, and the preliminary conversation made me feel good about that option for later. Still no word on the legality of having our boozy wedding at the Market, but I am optimistic and think we'll hear something soon. I had bbq pulled pork (with white sauce) and mac & cheese, both delicious. As we were walking out, there was a kettle corn stand where they were pulling hot caramel corn out of the popper. Ding ding! I walked away with a still-warm bag, and then skidded to a halt on the first bite. I've avoided caramel popcorn most of my life, because I'm usually disappointed by it. I realized, with that warm explosion of sweet and salty, that I'm always disappointed because my first impression of caramel popcorn was freshly popped on the wharf in Monterey, and it's never that good. Never. But yesterday, it was almost perfect. Austin said, "You want to have that at the wedding now, don't you?" and I just smiled and nodded, with my mouth full.

I was mostly lazy the rest of the afternoon, sticking around to the house to greet the fellow from the pest control company, coming to spray (botanically, organically) for mosquitos, and powder the crawl spaces upstairs for wasps. The pest technician turned out to be a former high school classmate, so that was a little weird. But I'm glad to get that taken care of before the weather gets warm; our backyard and kitchen were mosquito farms during our painting sessions in September.

Then I headed to the roller derby bout, which was a bloody blur. Bloody for the New Orleans Big Easy. Final score: Nashville Rollergirls, 211; Big Easy 34. Ouch! It was almost hard to watch, but not really. I can't say I wasn't chuckling and hollering along with everyone else while our girls skated their asses off. Loads of fun.

After that I went to the Five Spot for Claire and Sara's birthday party. Showing up there sober was probably a mistake. Most of the attendees had apparently shared a pre-party and were making a lot of nonsensical racket. Luckily there was a vast snack bar, and good conversation to be had with some lovely friends. I also managed to get my boogie on for a few songs. I bailed out after midnight and had to perform my favorite routine of peeling off my smoke-soaked clothes, ditching them straight into the washing machine and climbing directly into the shower. Sigh.

You might be wondering why I was doing all of these activities solo. Where was Austin? Oh, Austin spent about 10 hours on Saturday playing a Battlestar Galactica card game with J.Burr et al. Please, feel free to mock him mercilessly for this foray into outright nerdiness. It's kept me busy all day today. I don't mean to imply that he didn't come to the roller derby; he did, like a dutiful statsgeek, but he went straight back to Jon's house as soon as the bout was over and made it home around one a.m.

Today was quiet but productive. We got Mitchell's for lunch (god how lucky are we that the best deli in Nashville is a half mile from our house?) and Austin mowed the lawn. I got new stuffed dog toys while I was at the grocery store, and Digby and Mischa were so happy and hilarious about them. They always wreck their new toys within the first 24 hours, but the abject joy we get on the big reveal is totally worth the waste of $4 worth of textiles. I know that's not very ecologically sound. I am providing a video to help you judge me less. We got the house straighted up, the laundry done, and made amazing pizza for dinner: asparagus and potato with goat cheese and andouille sausage. So delicious.

We watched The Bourne Identity while we ate our pizza. I'd never seen any of the Bourne movies, and was really enthralled. I'm such a sucker for action thrillers! Particularly with Clive Owen! Swoon! We've had this movie from Netflix since January; if I'd known my boyfriend Clive was in it, I would have probably taken the time to watch it sooner. Now I'm ready to watch the next two, as soon as possible. Very entertaining.

What didn't I do this weekend? Oh, read Watchmen. I'm a book club flunky. We're meeting at Megan's house Tuesday and it sounds like a healthy portion of attendees have actually read the damned thing, but I'm never going to make it. I don't like reading it before bed, it makes my dreams weird. So that just leaves lunches at work for reading, and I didn't do much catching up last week. Oh well. I'm usually pretty good about reading the book club book; this is just going to have to be a fail.