I had a very good weekend. This is mainly due to having fun and different things to do, rather than sitting around and wishing there was something fun and different to do. The things that we did? Exactly what we set out to do.

Friday we bought supplies for and started working on our enormous (3' wide x 2' deep x 5' tall) cat condo. We're copying a model that we saw at Petsmart priced at a whopping $299. Thanks to a ton of carpet scraps that came with our house, we are building our own for roughly $40 in lumber and hardware. It's coming along slowly, but we'll definitely finish by next weekend. Pics of the kitties playing on it when it's done, of course.

Saturday I went grocery shopping and mowed the lawn while Ryan went biking. Then we floated down 6 miles of the Delaware on inner tubes. It took almost 4 hours, including a stop for snacks at the snack boat. There were a few fun little rapids, but it was mostly slow, lazy water that was good for relaxing. In my opinion, an excellent recreational opportunity, as it didn't require much energy but allowed me to be surrounded by scenery, nature, and Ryan. More rapids would have been better, but for once I'm trying to be satisfied with what I got. It was a beautiful sunny day, but we slathered on the SPF 30 so there was no painful aftermath.

Sunday we drove the hour and a half up to North Jersey for Scott and Julie's wedding. The ceremony was outside and they got more of the great weather for it. Which made me think to warn people to bring sunglasses to our wedding. Theirs was at 11:30 facing east, so the sun was mostly overhead but still making people squint if they didn't have sunglasses. Ours will be in the evening, facing west, so the sun's angle will put it in peoples' eyes even more. Anyway, back on topic. It felt a little choked up when the bridal party and couple were walking up the aisle, but fortunately didn't actually cry. I guess of the weddings I've been to it's the one where I knew the participants the best. I know Ryan and myself pretty well...I hope I don't cry at mine and mess up my makeup :/ The ceremony had a very personal vibe to it, with the officiant, soloist, and reader all well known to the couple rather than paid strangers.

There was a ton of food at the cocktail hour, and what I had was pretty good. I also had several glasses of wine (spread out over the hour and dinner), which led me to drag Ryan out on the dance floor multiple times, for both slow and fast songs. He resisted, but I think he ended up enjoying it. The couple did a good job of circulating and making sure they talked to everyone, plus it looked like they had time to eat and dance. The wedding magazines say that you'll be too busy to do it all, but I think they pulled it off. Their cake was beautiful...I wanted to dive headfirst into it :P

We hit some traffic on the way home, so we got back around 7:00. We skipped a real dinner and just grazed because we were still full from the late lunch. Then I baked a snail-shaped cake for my labmate who is defending his dissertation today (and studied snails). It turned out very cute...I'll see if I can get someone to take a picture of it today since I forgot to last night.