Things I Learned This Weekend

1. Papa's pizza is even better after just meeting a big deadline and writing for 10 hours straight.
2. People at the next table who throughout dinner repeatedly rock the opposite side of the booth you're sitting on by pressing back on the seat to wiggle their fingers into their too-tight jeans pockets over and over despite me angrily and unsubtly, pressing the seat back towards them really make me mad. It's just rude and unnecessary.
3. When ordering a custom omelet with everything...don't. Just pick a couple of ingredients or so. Otherwise you'll end up with cheese, onions, tomatoes, peppers, olives, bacon, ham, sausage, jalapenos and a few other things, wrapped in a thin layer of egg. Not good.
4. No matter how incredibly good the coffee is, if Ben has the equivalent of about 8-10 cups of it, he's going to regret it later. 
5. When shopping for a baby shower for a little girl, it's almost impossible to resist the urge to buy something pink.
6. Someone in Fort Smith makes incredibly good cupcakes with incredibly good lemon icing that I am just going to have to learn to make.
7. Baby showers are mostly all the same, except when you are related to the baby of honor or except when they have incredibly good cupcakes with incredibly good lemon icing. 
8. Walking the dog on a late autumn afternoon is the best. 
9. I still like the movie Castaway a lot, perhaps because I only saw the last hour of it.
10. The Nazis were way more into art than I ever realized and the story of the massive numbers of masterpieces that were stolen or accidentally or purposefully destroyed during the war is pretty fascinating, even though the documentary "The Rape of Europa" about it could have been better.
11. Starbucks' new gingersnap lattes are not as good as the gingerbread lattes were, and the shreds of real ginger in them are kind of weird.
12. It really is best not to discuss politics over lunch with opinionated mothers-in-law who completely disagree with your views, but if you have to, best to do it as you are already on your way out the door and telling her you love her and appreciate her cooking.  
13. Ben finds it hard to relate to films about French teenage synchronized swimming girls coming of age. 
14. When soaking a cotton shirt in bleach, don't forget it and leave it in your best stainless-steel bowl overnight and expect your bowl not to be corroded almost completely through in the morning..
15. When washing something that has soaked in bleach all night and corroded your best bowl and gotten a nasty rust stain on it as a result, don't then try to wash it in the washing machine, even on gentle cycle. It disintegrates.
16. Peanut brittle that you bought from an eager volunteer outside the grocery store promoting autism awareness tastes better than other peanut brittle.
17. Dexter is a very well-written show, if creepy as all get-out and even if it is about a serial killer. It's interesting and not gratuitous.
18. Mountains of clean clothes don't fold themselves any more than dirty clothes do and can be equally overwhelming.
19. Slipcovers are so named because they slip and they will be my forsworn nemesis until the end of time. Or maybe just my frenemy. 
20. Weekends are wonderful, whatever minutiae they entail, when I spend them with Ben.