People Watching Is Fun

Brian, who works at the same company that I work at, moved into my building the other day. When we met, we worked for completely different organizations. Through the years, we have gotten closer and closer and now we are in the same organization. We even work together some. I know some people would have difficulty working with their spouse but it’s not too bad. We started carpooling together which makes it easier to do drop offs and pick ups at day care. Because our group had an outing to a spring training game, we went together and it was almost like a date since we didn’t have the kids and got a lot of adult interaction. That was awesome. We had beers and ate cheeseburgers and chatted with our co-workers on a beautiful 78 degree day. It doesn’t get any better than that.

We had a laid back weekend. We watched “Walk the Line” which is the biographical movie of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. Brian asked why I wanted to watch it and I said that liked watching biographical movies of country singers. He looked at me incredulously and asked which other ones I had seen. For some reason I really like “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and “Sweet Dreams” (Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline respectively). It just seems that country singers have the lives that make interesting movies I guess. They get married at 13 and their husbands always cheat on them. We also watched “March of the Penguins” which I was very afraid of at first because I don’t like seeing animals dying and you know all nature movies show that. There was some of that but mostly it was funny and very cute. They are just adorable and it is fascinating how they adapt to their environment and what they do to survive.

It’s difficult for us to leave the house on the weekends. I think I have woken Jack or Ty up from a nap maybe twice in their lives. We just never wake them up when they are sleeping. Right now Ty is sleeping from about 8:30 – 10:30, maybe 11 and then Jack goes down for his nap at 11:30 and then when Jack wakes up, Ty goes down for his second nap. So we pretty much cannot leave the house until 4 PM and then Ty is ready to go to sleep by 6 – 6:30 PM. We planned on going to the Tempe Art Festival on Saturday but it doesn’t make sense to go at 4 PM so we went to the YMCA and joined in the anticipation of moving Jack there. He liked the playground a lot. After that, we went to downtown Chandler and tried out the Mexican restaurant El Zocalo's for the first time, even though we have been walking by there for years. They sat us on the patio and after we got settled, we noticed a bride and groom walk in and we watched them get married. Now this patio isn’t that big. If I had a wedding at a restaurant, I would want the whole patio for myself and my guests and would not appreciate a grubby family with a preschooler and a baby sitting right there. But I guess that they didn’t specify that in the contract. So we sat there and ate our chips and watched them get married. While this was going on, some guy stood up in the middle of all the people eating and power smoked a cigarette. Even though we were outside, there was smoke going around everywhere. When he finished smoking, he tripped on something and crashed into someone’s table creating a huge spectacle and then he stumbled out of the patio and back into the restaurant. He was clearly altered in some way. So the food was decent and the entertainment was top notch when it comes to people watching.

On Sunday we did make it to the Tempe Art Festival. I don’t know why I think I will be able to leisurely look at all the booths when Jack is asking to eat every 10 minutes and Ty is crying because he is teething. We were exhausted after 2 ½ hours of this and Jack, Ty and I took a nap as soon as we got home. Yvonne came by to pick up my Ethan Allen sofa that no longer looks OK in our living. We bought this chair and ottoman that would fit Paul Bunyan (am I dating myself by referring to Paul Bunyan?) So the chair made the sofa look really scrawny and we had to buy the matching sofa. The old sofa is a beautiful, nice sofa so I was thrilled that Yvonne wanted it. I went to see “Blast” as part of the Orpheum series that I have. It was a combination of brass and percussion instruments (which is the part I liked) but then there were segments with men and women jumping around and doing thing with flags like a flag team at high school. I thought this part was really lame. This Orpheum series is over for the 2005 – 2006 year. The 2006 – 2007 year starts in December.