We had this weekend totally to ourselves. The kids were with their mom, and I was going through separation anxiety – not because of them, but because this was the first time I have ever boarded Gypsy at a kennel. Up until about three years ago, I hadn’t spent a night apart from her since we moved to California. Since then, she has stayed with family a couple of times when Tall Paul and I have traveled, but in her approximately 10 or so years of life she has never been to a “pet lodge.” But since we are planning an extended, extended-family road trip (including Grandma) next summer, she’ll need to stay somewhere, so this was a test run. Tall Paul has prior (good) experience with this kennel, and they didn’t call us over the weekend demanding that we come and get her, so hopefully all went well and she’ll be welcome back next month when we take our anniversary-weekend trip to Catalina Island. She’s coming home this evening; I missed her greetings as we came and went this weekend, and I missed our walks.
But we did take advantage of her absence to rent a steam cleaner for the carpets, and they look and feel much better.
We saw 3:10 to Yuma at the movies on Saturday afternoon, but it’s not going to get its own post because I don’t have all that much to say about it. I’m not a fan of traditional Westerns, but modern ones tend to be more nuanced and have better stories, and this one is well-done (although it is a remake of an older, “traditional” Western – hmmm) . The plot synopsis is simple: a rancher in danger of losing his land to his landlord joins a group escorting an outlaw to a prison train, with the intent of being paid enough to clear his debt. The acting is good – Russell Crowe and Christian Bale in particular – the story is fast-moving and not hard to follow, and all in all it’s not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.
We had big plans for our own train trip on Sunday, but they were foiled by the discovery that the ticket machines at our train station don’t sell Amtrak tickets, only commuter-line ones, and the commuter trains don’t run on the weekend. We took a Sunday drive instead, and enjoyed that, but it was a little disappointing.
And for a much more fun account of a weekend when the kids were with the other parent, I enjoyed reading this.
