Something for the Weekend

Mena & I've had a busy (but fun!) weekend. We flew to North Carolina for Anil's and Alaina's pre-wedding party. It was fun to see David and Adriana, who we don't get to see very often, along with Anil's parents and sister. We also got to meet a friend of Anil's from his Harrisburg days, and hear about the time (or one time, at least) that Anil spent $100 on a Prince CD that he already owned, just because it was in a pretty wooden box. [1]

But so as part of the trip, we also got to see Mena's family in Charlotte. We took a red-eye flight to Charlotte on Friday night, and arrived at 6:30am, then drove about 30 minutes to their house. Somewhat exhausted, we took a nap for about 3 hours, and then Mena went swimming in her parents' pool, while her grandparents watched from the shade. Mena took Annie in the pool with her, as well.

So when I got outside it was kind of a crazy scene: Mena, and her dad, and Annie in the pool; the theme from the Enchanted Tiki Room playing loudly on the speakers out by the pool; Augie locked up in the house, because he'd been barking too much.

But then, to top it off, Mena's dad said, "Turn on the fountains!" As an added touch, Mena's parents had some fountains installed out by the pool—they recycle the water from the pool & spray it in an arc from the brick fence back into the pool. And so, after they turned on the fountains, I took a picture that just seems to completely capture Mena's family:

All I'd need to do is to embed some audio into it that plays music from Disneyland, and it'd be a quintessential representation of Mena and her family.

[1] Which I can actually relate to, sort of. In college I had a phase where I bought a bunch of nicely-packaged versions of albums I already owned: the glow-in the dark version of Spiritualized's Pure Phase; the actually in-a-metal-canister version (Metal Box) of Public Image Ltd's Second Edition; etc.

All very pretty, and very useless, & which I just sigh about whenever I have to pack them in a box when we move.

And none of these cost $100, mind you, but then again, it's not really the price that's important—it's the fact that you're buying an album that you already own.