Passing out from exhaustion has a way of changing your outlook on life.
I think it's the cold in DC that's sapping the life from everyone and everything.
No, really. For such a relatively easy week last week, Lyssa and I just barely crawled in to the finish line, with our eyelashes and fingernails just barely breaking the tape at the end.
After hacking together a quick dinner on Friday night Lyssa all but cold-cocked me to get me to lay down on the bed and take a nap. At some point, she joined me; I don't know exactly when because I was asleep but I do know that it was shortly after 1800 EST/EDT, and I woke up around 2230 EST/EDT feeling refreshed.
Lyssa, on the other hand, was dead to the world and offline for the rest of the night. For the first time in a while I was actually able to concentrate sufficiently to read for extended periods of time, so I took the opportunity to get two books that I've been carrying around for a while read and finished, and then, after making my rounds, programmed until 0200 EST/EDT or so, and went to bed.
As it turned out, Lyssa and I wound up staying up until 0300 EST/EDT or so talking, after which I went to bed and she stayed up for a while.
Due to getting a lot more sleep than either of us are used to, we got up around 0800 EST/EDT on Saturday morning and rather than wait around idly until everything opened, we headed over to Amphora for a breakfast of belgian waffles and coffee, and then set about running our errands for the day. We hit up Whole Paycheque to get a couple of things for Saturday night, then Giant, CVS, and Michael's, and then after a false start our local comic shop because they've started e-mailing us to pick up our subscriptions. We wound up buying about half of them (the earlier half, to be accurate) and left the rest for our next paycheque.
After that, it got a bit lazy around the apartment... we spent a good bit of the afternoon laying around reading and relaxing. Around 1400 EST/EDT we started dinner (cream of chicken, destined for biscuits) in the slow cooker and then straightened up a bit around the apartment. We were having a couple of people over that night, you see, and we wanted the place to be at least presentable. I spent the early evening working on a desktop machine for Hummingwolf, a late Yule gift that I'd like to get working exactly right before I hand it over. For some reason, the screen refresh under XP Pro is running much more slowly than expected, even on an Athlon 900 MHz-based computer. Lyssa wants to take a crack at it later this week.
Hummingwolf came over that night, along with Hasufin, Mika, Jarin, and Solo. We wound up sitting around eating dinner (Lyssa's creamed chicken over biscuits, as mentioned before, and tasty brownies from Hasufin) watching the Food Network and partaking of our favourite libations.
Later in the evening, we wound up laughing ourselves silly watching Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which is always good for a chuckle when you're decompressing from a long week and hoisting a few. Unfortunately, one of our partygoers (who shall remain nameless because they've been through quite enough this weekend) went a little too far with their partying and wound up quite ill. Jain and I spent a long couple of hours holding this particular individuals's hair in a cramped bathroom (every bathroom is cramped when you pack three people into it) and making sure that nothing untoward happened.
Once we were sure that the individual in question was going to be all right, albeit hating life for the next day or so, I went to bed because I was running on empty (having gotten up before 0800 that morning). Once my head hit the pillow that was all she wrote for the rest of the night.
The next morning we got ourselves up and around and once dressed, we trucked out to Maryland to stop at Tiffin's, the Indian restaurant with the best buffet in the area for a late lunch that wasn't too hard on the stomach. As expected, the food there was wonderful (you have to love a restaurant that makes its own chai tea from scratch) and we spent a little time wandering around in the tiny Indian grocery stores and shops o' miscellaney, and then geared up to head back home.
After dropping Hummingwolf off at home we set forth for the apartment, and met back up with everyond around 1630 EST/EDT. Jarin and Solo departed for home, followed shortly therafter by Hausfin (Mika had not gone with us to lunch). I headed back out to run a couple of errands for the week, namely, getting stuff for our two remaining bettas, doing some grocery shopping, doing some last minute shopping for cleaning supplies (Lyssa was at home cleaning up after the night before while I was running around doing the shopping and getting last-minute stuff).
By the time I'd gotten home I was again worn out (see a pattern forming?) and just wanted to not drive around anymore that day. As it turned out, however, Lyssa had discovered that the bathtub drain was clogged, and no application of chemicals nor mechanical power was able to unblock the tub. I made a couple of phone calls, and about half an hour later someone from apartment maintenance came by and poured something that practically boiled down the drain, and lo and behold the water drained.
And there was much rejoicing.