Labor Day Weekend

There's nothing quite like a nice, long labor day weekend to make you appreciate just how much you hate going back to work on Tuesday.

I saw one movie every day this weekend. On Friday night, I took Vivian out to see the Wizard of Oz at the Holland Performing Arts Center in Omaha. They had a big screen set up in their courtyard, complete with a live Jazz band before the show and picnic baskets to make it a cozy dinner-and-a-movie event.

On Saturday, we had a nice long breakfast at Perkins before spending much of the afternoon catching up on freelance work. I had planned to spend this Saturday at home, but thanks to my laptop and a wireless connection at Panera, I was able to get a great deal of work done right around the corner from Viv's apartment. The evening was spent swimming, reading the bible together, and then driving down to the Dundee Theater for a midnight showing of The Princess Bride, one of Viv's favorite movies and one I hadn't seen in its entirety for years. I'd seen bits and pieces on TV at the gym, but hadn't actually watched the movie from start to finish since I was in elementary school.

On Sunday, Vivian and I went to church together and then joined the rest of our Jitterbug friends for Lindy in the Park. Somebody forgot to bring the water cooler, so I had to walk up to the Little King and bring back a couple bottles of Aquafina for the gang. After the dance (and a change of clothes), Vivian and I went to see the Transformers movie. It was quite impressive to see the robots in disguise on the big screen, and I was surprisingly happy with the remodeled designs of the characters, but the movie itself was very light on plot and character development and quite heavy on CGI battle scenes. After the movie, we went down to Eric's place to play the Order of the Stick game until 1 AM. It wouldn't have lasted so long if we'd spent our time trying to work our way down the dungeon instead of screwing each other throughout the game, but it was all fun nonetheless.

On Monday, I took Vivian to breakfast at Panera and then I spent the afternoon at her parents' place working on a comic for Legostar and a Cortland comic for that day. After a romantic walk around the shady, tree-lined neighborhood, I headed back to Lincoln to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with my brother. It was easily one of my favorites in the series so far, and it was especially cool to see some of the intense wizard battle sequences at the end. It can hardly believe how much of the original cast is still putting together these movies after all these years. It's almost endearing to watch Daniel Ratcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson all growing up.

It's a short workweek this week, but I'm hanging on tight until the weekend catching up on everything and then some at the office. On Wednesday, I got to have dinner at Mike and Bekah's place, watching Drew dance around on the floor and Alexa suddenly able to walk and talk for the first time in her life. I also got to chat all about the joys of Inn-n-Out Burger with Mike and their new roomie Daniel, right before he started a drum solo on Drew's plastic drum and then watched a couple episodes of The Office together.

I still can't wait for the weekend. I'm missing you, Viv!