This last weekend activities consisted of experimenting on new recipes, developing fresh patches of hardened skin, learning some new spells, and resisting the urge to skinny dip.

The new recipes are for meatloaf (a bit overspiced), chicken-shrimp fried dim sum (a little too heavy on the ginger & garlic side), and bacem tahu-tempe (the only one that served up to my expectation). Got the bacem recipe from a feisty-yet-sweet HS friend who currently resides in Japan with her husband.

The hardened skin --on the finger tips, btw-- is certainly to no comparison to the number of new chords mastered. And now, I could play the chorus part of Brown Eyed Girl decent and fast enough for Ndoro Yadd to sing along to it. Learning to play guitar has become much of a new acquired addiction. ^-^

The new spells? Well, yes, I've watched HP3. It's shorter but sweeter than the previous two. Is the one liner movie review thrilling enough? hahaha. One thing, it seems that there has not been much interest people put on this witch & wizardy saga compared to the Ogre adventure counterpart. They've put Shrek 2 up (in its third week) on 5 screens while HP3 only on 4.

And finally, the skinny dipping. Nah, it wasn't to that extreme. I got invited to a picnic hosted by the parents of a friend's friend. Their estate includes a "mansion" and a private pond in the 100-acre land. Anyway, the picnic itself could be categorized as the highlight of my summer weekends so far. Activities included mix and mingling, volleyball matches, three-legged races, and water polo on the pond. The host & hostess served some very mighty salsa dip and chips, killer brownies, and nice nice shredded beef bbq sandwiches. Beverages included margaritas, Miller lite (straight from the keg), pops and bottled waters. For the, what feels like, 100-something Texas heat and 70% humidity, the cold beer surely acted as a refreshing anti-dehydration agent. Btw, I've got more sun burned tan aside from the unhealed ones from South Padre trip, which is just perfectly okay.

PS:
Condolonces to President Reagan's family. Requiescat in pacem