I’m sure everyone will be relieved to know that the groom and his best man DID find their barongs, in Scarberia, on Saturday. They are both, in Philipino sizing, XXXX. No L. Just quadruple X. I think it’s like the Philipino equivalent of making a shirt for Godzilla.

Friday night was the pre-wedding hang-out party at the condo with my darlin’ , cousin , his fiancee, his fiancee’s 12-year-old nephew, , , and . We ate a lot of Thai food, including my journey back into the tasty world of noodles (not strictly part of South Beach, but hey), made a half-hearted effort at Lord of the Rings Risk, and got really into the Donkey Kong bongo games. So much so that the menfolk had to retreat into the bedroom whilst and I thumped and clapped our way through a variety of “rhythms”. I fell asleep before midnight, despite being the hostess, because I am an Old Woman living in a late-twenty-somthing woman’s body.

Saturday involved me, waiting around all freaking day at the condo for the delivery monkeys to arrive with my washer/dryer and dining room set. I burned through the last 200 pages of Marian Keyes’ “Watermelon” by 11am and then had to self-amuse in an almost-empty apartment for another three hours. I passed the time by returning my Rogers modem and cable box, watching “Malcolm in the Middle” and eating ice cream sandwiches left over from Friday night’s shenanigans (not one-hundred-percent compatible with a South Beach recommended diet). Then I got to watch the most incompetent guys on earth try to put together my stackable washer and dryer (and oh, how they failed – I have no hot water in my washer, the bastards), then I spent the balance of the afternoon assembling my $500 dining room set from scratch, as though it was freaking Ikea! Rage at the Hudson’s Bay Company is now reaching the unrestrainable mark, at which point there will be some really severe letter-writing to the upper-eschelons of the corporation regarding my washer/dryer debacle.

Sunday was the real family-stravaganza. First thing upon waking up, I cycled to Future Shop and brought home 100 feet of ethernet cable and a wireless connector for the Xbox *just in case* anything went awry with the wired connection. Which it did, since we couldn’t run it through the ducts, causing me to drill through a discreet corner of roommate K’s ceiling, down into JVL’s closet floor, and pull wire through a large quantity of fibreglass insulation (I now probably have “the pink lung, pop”). Eventually good triumphed over evil, and not only did I manage to use the existing cable, not even dipping into my 100 feet of new cable, which now needs to be returned, but JVL has an IP address and hook-ups and the downloadable “Jabba’s Palace” level of Star Wars Battlefront and everything Xbox Live! Now I want Xbox to buy the licence for “Dr. Mario” so that I can play “Dr. Mario Live!” over the internet with my peeps. I would be top of the pops, baybee.

At 3pm, just as I was settling into “Nancy Drew and the Clue in the Crumbling Wall”, Mom showed up to take us to Cait’s family pre-wedding barbecue. We stayed there until about 8pm, then drove to JVL’s Mom’s house and his mom, her boyfriend, and my Mom took us out for ice cream and waffles at Demetre’s Cafe (also not technically South Beach recommended). Then we went home, I cleaned my room and tried to make it essay-friendly, and thus the weekend concluded. The whole thing felt like it just flew by!

Today my boss is away from work, so I am going to meetings for her. I have to keep focused on the “three weeks to new job” thing. It’s like a little beacon of light at the end of the work tunnel.

Tonight: preview screening of “Batman Begins”! Woot!