I've been hearing a podcast ad recently that always makes me think of you people: a guy says something like, "I tried a muffaletta. Turns out, I like olives!" So I guess we know what AmEx thinks is the defining characteristic of a muffaletta.....

I'm in Virginia! Left at 5 this morning and just got settled into the hotel now at 11:30, so I do not have enough mathiness left to know how many hours on the road. Looking forward to seeing the fam tomorrow.

Yay friends and poolside and agreeable nurses!

Indeed. It sounds like a much smoother trip than the last one.

I want him to enjoy some off leash time but after an initial sniff around for the best place to pee, he mostly wants to sploot next to me.

I generally have to stay in motion myself to get the dog to run around. He'll run with the dogs, but if I sit so does he.

Yeah, if I'm paying over $500 for a ticket, the end of the sentence had better be "to Paris/Athens/London."

Agreed. At least the 500 something was for 2 tickets. But it will be refunded.

Everytime I hear that ad, Jesse, I think of y'all. Muffalettas, indeed.

Had a nice Mother's Day dinner with the family, including Smitten Kitchen's olive oil chocolate cake. S made ribs! So yummy.

I took Mom on a day trip into Memphis to see a planetarium show and have a fancy holiday lunch. We tried out a new-ish restaurant, Char, which I would highly recommend to anyone visiting or passing through. It may have deposed Automatic Slim's for best shrimp & grits I've ever tasted, though I'd have to try the latter's again to be sure.

Coincidentally, I picked up a half muffaletta from Elwood's Shack on our way out of the city. It wasn't as tasty as I'd anticipated, I make them better at home despite not having the authentic bread.

We also ran afoul of a bridge closing, which resulted in a little under an hour's crawl in heavy traffic to cross the old I-55 bridge everyone was being rerouted to. I'm a bit proud of how not-stressed I was through the whole situation. (To be fair, I have an easier time with unavoidable frustrations than I do with ones that are clearly the result of bureacracy or idiocy...)

My mom and stepdad are on a 2-week vacation in Colorado and Utah, because it is impossible to slow my 77-year-old mother down and there is hiking to be done. So, celebrating Mother's Day is postponed until they get back.

Instead, Tim and I had lunch with my dad and then helped Dad set up his very first smartphone (god help us all). He got an Android phone, but I'm starting to think we should have just bought him an iPhone so that when he calls for help with the phone, I can look at mine and know what he's talking about, because I have no idea how to navigate an Android.

Lunch was great, though; I had avocado toast with fresh crabmeat and pickled onions, and I want to eat that every day now. I also had some kind of tequila-based cocktail with pomegranate juice, which was very tasty.

We're home again, jiggity jig, after a delightfully as-planned weekend in LA. No curveballs at all.

And I got to see Phil the Gambler and my friend Rio.

JZ was still very exhausted by the time we got home, though and crawled into bed at 6pm, and Matilda crawled into bed with her.

Now I have roughly a dozen Important Tasks That Must Be Done to catch up with, but mostly I'm looking forward to 10 whole days of being at home.

Yay for delicious shrimp and grits and fun Mother's Day plans.

From a ways back, I'm glad your sin is unscathed, Laura, yikes!

Also yay for tasty pomegranate cocktails.

And super yay for an unhutchmess weekend in LA for the Zmayhems.

I'm going to dye a dress today. I've never done this kind of thing before, but the video makes it seem pretty straightforward. It's a cute white dress, but I look dreadful in white, so it's getting dyed purple-ish.

I'm going to dye a dress today. I've never done this kind of thing before, but the video makes it seem pretty straightforward. It's a cute white dress, but I look dreadful in white, so it's getting dyed purple-ish.

I know Jilli has done a lot of dress dyeing.

I'm glad this round of travel went smoothly, DavidS and JZ.

I hosted a couple of friends for Eurovision over the weekend. Sangria (sparkling rosé and strawberries) is dangerously easy to drink. But it seemed appropriately fizzy and fun for the event.

Neat, Calli. I hear Hannah Waddingham was a delight.

The enpurpling went beautifully! Drying now.