.jeri.

Hey all,

Hope you're doing well. I am just dandy, although I could do with some cooler temperatures. Thankfully, I was able to stay out of the heat for most of the weekend.

Friday, Ric and I hung out at home for a bit and then went to see Inglorious Basterds with my sister. I will post a review soon, and for those holding their breath, it's a mixed one.

We got home from the movie super late on Friday and I felt like staying up a while, so I decided to sleep in on Saturday. Well, I guess I was sleeping soundly, because I didn't wake up until Ric had already gone and come back from a bike ride and his phone rang at one o'clock. Yikes! I made up for my laziness by trying to be productive, and set to work at baking my first candy, a Scottish butter tablet. Maybe it was beginner's luck, but it was everything I was hoping for. More on that later, probably. I got a few things ready for my sister's birthday after that, then hunted down Ellie and took her to the vet. She doesn't like going, but she actually does well there. Not a single hiss or meow (for her, no meowing is a remarkable thing, since she's a big time talker). Once I got her home and gave her a bath, it was time to go out for my sister's birthday. The family had dinner out on the shady patio at Rutabagorz, and I highly enjoyed my veggie surprise (veggies, pilaf, and cheese). We went back to the parents' to eat dessert (and tablet) and open gifts. Then Ric and I headed home and stayed up late once again to watch tv together.

Sunday we made it to church and retreated home to the air conditioning. I spent a couple of hours painting while listening to Passage to India and then picked up my sister to go to Disneyland. We rocked the park last night. There was hardly anyone there, and we took full advantage. Ten minutes before Fantasmic, there wasn't even much of a crowd around the lake, so we decided to hit up the Haunted Mansion, which had no line at all, and came out in time to get a lakefront view of the show. We went on as many rides as we could, which was basically 3/4 of the rides in the park. I don't know if I'll be sore later on today, but it was fun while it lasted. We stayed until midnight just because we knew it was a rare thing to get the park on such a good day.

You may have noticed the title of this post, which describes the weekend as the weekend before class. That's because I've decided to go back to the classroom. But, since I'm more of a fan of knowledge than course assignments and worrying about grades (the perfectionist in me goes a little overboard), I'm auditing. Amy told me that Ryan was auditing some courses and told me about one of them, and I thought it sounded great. It's an advanced criticism class on Kurosawa. Lately, I have often regretted not taking any cinema classes while at the university, and know I'm behind my peers when it comes to fully appreciating what film has to offer. So I've been thinking about auditing some courses for a while, and hearing about the course from Ryan gave me the kick that I needed. I think a criticism class is a good place for me to start. I went to the first class today, and we watched Sanshiro Sugata. It's just such a different experience to be in a class with younger students who are so career-focused. But I'm hoping it'll be a good one and that I'll learn some valuable things.

There aren't any real updates on the family this week. No news is probably good news. I'm continuing to make steady progress, and I think the scale is finally starting to tip downwards now that I'm able to do more physically.

Work is steadily busy. We celebrated our boss' retirement on Friday with a Western-themed party. He'll be going down to only six ours a week from now until we get a new person to take his place and get them trained. In the middle of all of our other stress, this is one more thing to be nervous about. We're hoping and praying.

Up this week: I've got grocery shopping tonight, a ball game with Ric's parents on Wednesday for his mom's birthday, farmer's market on Thursday, and some shopping and Los Angeles Plays Itself at the Aero (my first visit to that theater) on Saturday. I think I'll be keeping busy.