Mixed Bag Weekend

Hello again on a Monday.  And a rainy Monday to boot.  Ugh.  It's rainy and it's too warm and it's Monday, and I feel cheated out of my winter weather.  I mean, I only do my best to put up with summer because I figure it's a tradeoff for winter.

But I am certainly not in charge of the weather, so time to move along, right?

How was your weekend?  Mine was definitely a mixed bag.  Friday morning we woke up to some awful news.  If you have read my blog for any amount of time, you may remember that there was a year when The Tim was a permanent substitute teacher in the Philadelphia public school system.  He had a class of fifth-graders all year, and he loved it!  Well, Friday morning on the news they reported that a young man who was a popular chef at a neighborhood restaurant had been shot and killed while sitting in his care outside the restaurant.  Once they said the name, The Tim realized it was one of his former students.  This kind of thing is always sad and frustrating to hear, but when you know the person it adds a whole other level.  So if you are a praying type, please say a prayer for Quadir and his family and friends left behind wondering what happened.

Saturday, I convinced The Tim that we should head out and go to what I thought was a Michael's craft store not that far from us, that is also near to a Home Despot (as it is known in our house) and a Lowe's.  The Tim always finds a reason to go to one of those places.  But when we got there, the store that I thought was a Michael's was in fact a former A.C. Moore, and now closed.  Whoops.  

The rest of the day was just spent doing and not doing stuff at home.

Sunday turned out to be beautiful - cool and very very sunny!  Hamlet and I had a couple of really good walks, and even met a couple of very young and adorable puppies on one of them.  I finished a book that I was reading, and then I finally started on something that I had wanted to do for a few weeks, but just never got around to doing - I cooked ahead!  By the time I was finished, I had two casseroles of stuffed shells with spinach (one went into the freezer right away), and a huge pot of veggie beef and peppers that can be served over rice, noodles, or mashed potatoes.  

We had one of the casseroles of stuffed shells last night, and not only were they yummy, but we have enough leftovers for yet another dinner later this week!  I realized after the fact I could have put some of the beef and peppers in the freezer as well, but I'm not gonna beat myself up since I got so much accomplished.

And - when I walked over to the market for a couple of ingredients for my cooking, there was a table where some young girls were selling Girl Scout cookies - Thin Mints for the win!

So although the weekend started sadly, and there was an undercurrent of sad the whole time, it really ended up being OK, which when you think of it is how life turns out.  

This week we see the arrival of Valentine's Day on Friday, which is also the birthday of our Pip!  So we will be celebrating at our house, and it's also a long weekend here in the U.S.  I'm glad to have something good to anticipate all week long.  :-)

I hope you had a mostly good if not all good weekend, and that this coming week will be nice to all of us.  Even if the rain continues to annoy me ...