Oh. Man.

I'm pooped. That was an exhausting week.

First of all, it was my first week of work at my Big Boy Job, which requires me to go into an office 4 days a week (yay for Work At Home Wednesday!). That means that I spent nearly 4 hours last week commuting, time that I normally would have spent perusing blogs, watching TV, nagging my child, or any of the other activities in life that give me true joy.

On top of that, my in-laws arrived for a 10-day visit. Now, they're good folk and I get along well with them, but having guests in the house just generally requires more cleaning, shopping, ass-wiping, cooking, pretending to be a good husband, overall consideration, and syllables in general. I only have a fixed number of syllables each day, you see.

Then, yesterday, after running about 15 miles, and then executing a series of precarious errands, we took the in-laws out for a fancy dinner in honor of my mother-in-law's 70th birthday. We went to Michael Mina, which is the most expensive restaurant I have ever attended. It was expensive in the sort of way where you wonder if they accidentally put the decimal in the wrong place. For example, when Hank needed some help choosing a bottle of wine, the sommelier first suggested a $600 bottle. Hank passed on that one, and the subsequent $400 bottle, and so on until the sommelier finally suggested one that didn't make Hank's eyes bug out of her head. My eyes still bugged out when I saw the final bill, but that's ok. It's a good look for me.

The food was really good. Michael Mina's gimmick is that he prepares food three different ways. So, for example, if you order the lamb, you'll get three small preparations of it on your plate: one small tasty lamb chop, one tasty braised lamb shank, and uh... some other cut of lamb. Ear? Tail? Crap, I don't remember. It was good though. It was all "trios". I had a crustacean trio appetizer, the lamb trio entree, and a chocolate trio for dessert. They were all delicious. And when I went to the bathroom, I was pleased to see a trio of urinals. Although I had to stand pretty far back to spray into all of them, as though I was watering my backyard, I was fully committed to the trio concept. Us Michaels stick together.

Afterwards, we attended a great birthday party where I laughed more than I have laughed in quite a while. Most amusingly (at least to me) was that there was a guest in attendance who reads this blog but I had never met before. When you have a Z-list blog like this one, that sort of thing doesn't happen very often, even if we do have a mutual friend (Nrd2) who gave him the URL. Anyway, he was a hell of a nice guy who now gets own nom du blog. I christen him: Bones.

Bones told me that he and Nrd2 sometimes quote my blog like a cult film.

I thought that was awesome until I remembered that cult films are always the unintentionally hilarious worst made films out there. So, uh, thanks, Bones and Nrd2!

Anyway, the rest of the weekend was a blur of errands, kid birthday parties, and a mountain of dirty dishes. As soon as I figure out the B-movie plot for a cult film that combines all of those elements, I'll write up the details in my next blog post.