It was a manly scream. Really.

It's one of those days where it feels like the universe is conspiring to make me late and behind on everything. I won't go into any detailed whining on the matter other than to point out that the main culprit in making my day a stressful one is a Bad Times (tm Poundy) gas station near my house. Everything was running smoothly until I got there. Ever since then it's been total chaos. Bah.

So, the weekend: 'Twas a good one. Matt's birthday is this Wednesday, and since we're too old and tired to venture out of the house on work nights and next weekend will be filled up with bridal showers and still yet more wedding prep, I took him out Saturday night for a birthday dinner and a movie. He, being a fan of the Michael Mann, wanted to see Miami Vice, and since it was for his birthday I kept myself from trying to nudge him toward Pirates 2 (which, no, I still have not seen) or Snakes on a Plane instead. But Miami Vice turned out better than I expected (and I gotta say, my expectations were pretty low), so it's all good.

We also stopped by a jewelry store to find out our ring sizes so we can order our wedding rings this week (we're pretty sure we're settled on going with Irish claddagh rings, because we like the symbolism and we're not going to let Bangel ruin it for us (or for me--Matt actually prefers B/A; somehow this did not become grounds to call off the wedding). We tried a few rings on at the store just for the heck of it, and I found that I still really don't like big and showy rings, that my definition of "big and showy" is some people's definition of "small and understated," and that a wedding ring on Matt's finger looks really good and gives me warm, fuzzy feelings.

The only real glitch in the evening was when we stopped by our bakery of choice to order our reception cake only to find out that only thier Tulsa locations sell wedding cakes and they don't deliver outside the Tulsa area. And since nobody wants to drive to Tulsa to pick it up, either, we have to find another bakery closer to home. I think I've found one that will work. We're going to drop by tomorrow to check them out and, hopefully, order our cake.

I suppose walking into the pub where we wanted to have dinner only to find it filled with a Celtic band and a film crew (?!) and overflowing with geriatrics in kilts and the only available seating being the smoking room upstairs might also count as a glitch, but it was a minor one, as we realized we were both more in the mood for Mexican food, anyway.

And I suppose the slightly scary thunderstorm that came out of nowhere when our movie let out could also be called a glitch, but it led to heroics (Quote, after Matt braved the lightening and pounding rain to go fetch the car and pick me up at the door of the theater: "I know I drove like an asshole pulling up here just then, but dammit, I had to come and get my woman!") and ended up lending a little extra romance to the evening, so that doesn't count, either.

The evening wrapped up on a pretty neat note when we got home and discovered a smallish (as far as such things can be considered "smallish") brown tarantula at the end of the driveway. I realize this would not qualify as "neat" for a lot of you, but with the exception of certain evil brown recluse hell spawn, we like spiders. Tarantulas in particular. Matt even used to keep them as pets. As down as I am with the spiders, I'm not really down with keeping them in the house, so I was pretty relieved when he talked himself out of capturing and keeping this one, deeming it "too feisty." Now, when you see tarantulas in the movies, they always creep along really slowly, giving folks plenty of time to fling them off their persons and run like hell before they can be eaten. But I'm here to tell you that, in reality, these buggers can move. Fortunately it was running away from us instead of charging at us (except when it got turned around and ran up on Matt's shoe and made him scream like a girl--okay, maybe "like a girl" is a bit strong, but I was a little surprised that his voice could pitch that high, which, hee!). Matt kept trying to steer the little guy towards a nearby cricket in the hopes of seeing "something cool," but apparently the spider either wasn't hungry or was more interested in hiding from the two hairless giants who kept looming over and poking at it, because it ignored the cricket completely. So finally we herded it away from the street so it wouldn't get smooshed and went inside.

And that was Saturday.

Sunday was less eventful and hardly even worth mentioning except to rant about how I couldn't upload the promised baby pictures because I couldn't get a turn at my mom's computer and how I couldn't finish my laundry because certain cousins who don't even live there decided doing their kid's laundry was more important and took my laundry out of the washer and dryer so that they could cut in and do theirs, but I won't, because complaining is boring, and because the latter thing resulted in my mom and aunt both offering to finish my laundry for me to keep me from killing anybody. So I will just say that getting ready to move is definitely going to be priority one in the new Bauhaus household.

And I just realized that it's fifteen minutes into my lunch hour already. And it just started storming outside. Hooray for rain! I'm going to go eat something now, maybe play a little mah jong, and hope my afternoon runs a little more smoothly.

Oh, and PS: Tomorrow we're driving down (up? Over? I need to Mapquest this place) to Eureka Springs to scope out the wedding venue and pick up our marriage license (yay!), which will mean a day of blog silence. But I'll be back to tell you all about it on Wednesday.