It’s one of those fake holidays today: Columbus Day, which means that everyone in the known universe has the day off except for those of us who slave away at this here University. (Actually, that’s not true: there are a lot of people at work all over the country, and all of us are feeling bitter towards anyone we know who gets the day off *coughbriancough*).

We had one of those uneventful weekends — for which I am thankful. Although I am happy about the way the house looks after Ray turned into Rambo with a scrub-brush last weekend, I am equally happy that Rambo stayed hidden away this weekend. It is *so* exhausting watching him clean.

Yesterday, we went out to Lake Travis (among other things, it was the location of one of the many secret lairs in the original Spy Kids movie, and also has the only nude beach in Texas) with some of Ray’s work friends … and their children.

I must confess: I am not kid-friendly. It has long been established that should Ray and I ever have children … however that would occur … that Ray would be the nurturing one who would take care of boo-boos and game time and little league and camping trips and I would be the parent who would lock myself in the office until the kid was old enough to bring me the New York Times (possibly after having driven to the store to purchase it). My biggest fear about having a kid is that that parenting instinct that everyone swears will kick in won’t actually kick in, and I’ll find myself standing there awkwardly saying, “It’s crying. Make it stop.”

You realize, of course, that I bring this up because there were children with us at the lake, which wasn’t so bad in and of itself, except for the part where I felt like I had started watching one of those awful American soap operas that have been running for 50 years, and you have no idea who any of the characters are and what’s going on. My favorite part was Ray’s assertion on the way home that our kids would never misbehave because we’d be good disciplinarians. Oh, famous last words!

I also walked at full speed into a tie-down clip that struck me in the right foot right in the soft place between my big toe and the adjacent toe, and the area is now the most spectacularly brilliant shade of bright purple. I’m also limping around like Dr. House, which is fun.

And so. I am at work this morning, dawdling on starting the utterly mindless and boring uploading of data into the federal grant reporting database we’re supposed to use, which was clearly designed by monkeys trying to write Shakespeare. Fortunately, this is a short week — on Friday, we’ve got a gang heading down to Monterrey (the one in Mexico — the one that’s much, much, much closer than Monterey in California, which is where everyone seems to think we’re going) to check out some of the exhibitions at the Universal Forum on Cultures. It’ll definitely be a bit of a break from the norm, and I’m all for that.

I hope your weeks are off to a great start!

Tags: Austin, friends, holidays, Home, mexico, Ray, weekend, work