AROUND HERE LATELY

how on earth is it thursday already and where did this week go!? well hey, here's a bunch of miscellaneous nothings so we're all caught up on things. yeah? should we throw in all the crappy photos my phone has taken? why not! nothing but the very best in photo quality for this blog! highest standards in the business i tell ya.

well first of all, are the tutus. huck's sweet friend biet had herself a birthday last weekend, and we were so honored to get invited to come help her celebrate. it was a brilliant ballerina theme + all the kids got tutus. huck was a good sport about it. oh who am i kidding, he was beyond into it. it was like the fluffiest, super-est super hero cape of his life. there was a lot of zooming and swooshing going on... sound effects... fists of triumph + fury... he was already wearing a denim vest i found in the girl's section at gap kids, so, you know. go whole hog, man.

sooooo, i gave myself some new piercings, again. i don't know what my problem is. well, i do know what my problem is, my problem is i'm impatient. and stupid. i finally got my tattoo situation figured out. it's all set! i'm totally ready! now i just have to decide when. and do i get a babysitter? obviously i get a babysitter. and who gets to be my special plus one? who will come with me + document my stupidity for all of time + posterity? this is a big honor, isn't it? it can't be just anyone, it's a little like choosing a maid of honor, i figure anyway. i mean, i guess it could be my husband... i'll need to pray on this. when you're feeling antsy you probably organize your closet. potato-potahto. someone's going to ask so i'll tell you now: i use a solid gold earring that i've washed with soap + water, and then i just shove it on in. brute force. stupid. once it's through i put on the earring back and then i keep it really, really clean. i know. i've done it six times now (all but holes one and two, plus hole five twice over), and no infections yet! don't take this as a you-should-too, though, because you shouldn't. i actually had to stop with the second post halfway through to go help huck start up a show on netflix. so, go to a professional. i mean, i don't regret it, but what kind of bad example would i be if i said as much? my friend caroline shared a tip with me--dr bronner's baby soap. really great on fresh piercings. (also it's easy on the eczema) thumbs up, bronner! they're healing quite nicely, thanks for asking! guys, i'm such an idiot.

but i like 'em.

moving on!

huck and his penguins. ohh, huck and his penguins. it's gonna be a real good summer for huck + his penguins in the penguin room at the zoo. you stop noticing the smell pretty quickly, is the good news. huck would stay in there for hours if you let him.

brandon continues to be ruggedly good-looking and terribly hard-working and henry's favorite person in the world. he was out of town for some management training all last week, and every time huck + i would come home from wherever we'd been he'd ask, "will daddy be home nowwww?" these two boys + their nightly gummi worms + their spirited renditions of that ridiculous hunting scene in the croods ("eep! avenge me!"). they're pretty great buds. it's an honor to be the one doing all the nagging when they're wrestling on the floor + knocking things over.

what else, what else.... oh! madison square eats! madison square eats is going on right now, it runs all may, every year. it's one of my favorite things to do in the city. i took these photos the last time we were there. they're mildly crummy. 

robertaaaaaas!!

let's wrap this up.

we'll end on this note. 'tis the season for 100% humidity and this year i'm ready for it. i got the kind of hair right now that looks unkempt on its best of days, so when the mist comes out, together we reach such epic levels of mop head, it's complete anarchy on my head. all i can do is embrace it. so i'm embracing it. last week i kissed my flat iron lovingly and wrapped her in her cord for a nice, long summer nap. ain't nothing she can do about this mess. see you in the fall, nerd! 

see how exciting things have been? also i bought apples today!  

that's the holbrook update, over and out.

MONDAY

entirely unrelated photo of my stinkin adorable child wearing my glasses? check.

today i gave myself the day off for good behavior. i mean if anybody deserves it, it is probably not me.

i hadn't intended to "take a day off," whatever that means, but brandon had decided to work from home this morning and i had a post office run to make, so i pulled on my denim one piece jumpsuit (it makes me look like a mechanic), left my boys in their jams, and snuck out the door to the post office. it was so sunny out! and almost warm, it was perfect mechanic jumpsuit weather. (any day that starts with a denim jumpsuit is bound to be a good one, is the moral of this story.)

i took my sweet time at the post office. you guys, it's just that i really love the post office, i do. i like those automated machines. i like memorizing the order of the buttons to push and seeing how fast i can clear through the menu. no i would not like extra insurance! i don't know, it scratches all my itches. 

and then i got myself a little drink and plunked myself down at the crepe place for a ham and gruyere. i played candy crush a little bit, okay? it was fantastic.

i walked home really slowly. i'm normally booking it to just about everywhere we go because walking faster than everybody else makes me feel like a super hero, and because normally i'm pushing a stroller, and something weird happens when i'm pushing a stroller, i can't explain it. but it was just so sunny. i could feel it bouncing off the top of my head. and my whole body felt heavy--in that good way, you know--where you feel grounded and calm. i read all the movie posters at the movie theatre, i smiled at puppies out on their daily constitutionals, i caught my reflection in the shop windows--hey, jumpsuit! it was grand. i enjoyed myself rather immensely. 

i got home and brandon was taking a call in the bedroom and huck was watching a pixie hollow movie. see, we've gone clear past peter pan and on into the peter pan ancillaries over here. actually, the pixie hollow movies aren't half bad, if maybe a little melodramatic, though huck had long since lost interest and was creating a giant boulder of play dough at the table, each color bleeding into the next like eons-old layers of sediment. i pretended my laptop full of emails didn't exist,  plopped onto the couch and put my feet up, and then actually got super engrossed in this movie. you guys, the winter woods and the pixie dust tree, this is drama. i was into it. and the point of this is, i noticed toward the end of the movie when the autumn forest was un-freezing itself that my heart rate had been completely normal, like, all day. relaxed. i was feeling relaxed. and i laughed because the last time i felt relaxed i think i was in uteri? no no, anyway, it's been a solid year plus since i've felt relaxed and it was sort of the hugest. i think the craziness of all of everything is draining out my fingertips and it is hells bells on fire good.

see also: easter candy. 

(oh and this old video i found and then died a million times watching.)

so next i decided to take myself on a date to see the grand budapest hotel because i was on a roll. and why not? that movie was insane. quite literally perfect. and then when i was laying down with huck at the end of the night, taking notes into my phone of all the cool things he wanted to do with me tomorrow (picnic in the park? check. peppa pig? oink), i thought to myself, yep. there it is. good to have ya back, life. let's go get some sunshine. 

LADIES WEEKEND IN THE CITY

i've had my head in the clouds all this week, thinking all sorts of things about women. what it means to be a woman, what women need from themselves + from each other, and other womanly things. womanity should really be a word. 

i grew up with a bucketful of cousins + aunts at my disposal + as such never cared a fig for having real friends. my family were my friends, as real friends as friends could ever be. there were easily a million of us lovins living practically down the street from each other in arizona where we grew up + it wasn't until fairly recently that i started to feel like i might need the kinds of friends in my life that these women had always been for me, and it wasn't until fairly recently that i understood just how difficult a task that actually is. it's hard to find friends that double as family when your friends aren't already family to begin with. is the obvious statement of the year. that kind of friendship takes years + years + years to develop. i've only been at this business a short little while, and i like me some immediate results, you know how that goes.

i think what it comes down to is, as a woman, for me, i find that women often let me down. mostly this is my fault. overly high expectations, of course. one has no business expecting from friends what i want to expect from my friends, mostly because i didn't have good examples of friends as friends growing up, i had family. so i put myself in the position where i let women let me down. doesn't it seem like too often we're unnecessarily dishonest with each other? afraid to commit, afraid to be raw, afraid to be vulnerable? so there's just me, as open and obvious as a one-paged book, repeatedly being a dork and feeling dorky about being a dork. but this weekend was a good reminder for me that there are other dorks out there that are already mine. and it's all right.

riiiiiight. but this is a post about chinatown. over the weekend i got to play host to three of my, seriously, eleven aunts. jen + stacey are my dad's youngest sisters, nikki is married to my dad's youngest brother, stacey is four month older than me + jen + nik are both brandon's age. it's crazy, right? nik unfortunately missed the bulk of our naked childhood in the desert, though she's gone on to become one of my most wonderful + dearest friends. jen, i just love jen. jen has a zest + curiosity for life that is so inspiring. and stacey! me and stacey, man... we were inseparable as kids. having stacey in my living room after so many years of not having stacey in my living room, it was kind of a moment for me. sort of an exercise in continuity, if that even makes sense.

in any case, we went to chinatown on saturday and you know what? don't do that. save chinatown for a monday. 

we stopped in at the fish market because that's always a good time, and while we were there a lobster made a break for it and toppled out of the lobster bucket and onto the sidewalk right in front of me + huck, + huck's eyes. wide as saucers. he looked horrified + amazed + afterward i could tell he'd grown at least two inches taller from the experience. it was like he'd learned a thing or two about the world.

we ate dumplings at our favorite dumpling place for lunch + then wandered into little italy for cannoli, and cannoli! i've never loved cannoli but that's because i'm dumb. have cannoli always come in all these flavors? it doesn't feel terribly legit to say this, but anyway, you should get the tiramisu. "you'll love it."

"some woman is gonna want me to do it to her and i'm not gonna know what it is!"

apparently this is, like, *the* place for cannoli. who knew? i guess most of the restaurants + bakeries in little italy buy their cannoli from la bella ferrara, so if you go straight to the source you'll get them cheaper, or something, who knows if this is true, but this part was funny: as i was across the street taking that photo up there of the shop for future reference, a woman stopped me on the sidwalk and excitedly asked, "is there an actor from the soprano's over there?!?" day made.

brandon got these two shots, and ain't they purty? 

the end.

p.s. jen is a writer (she writes fiction!) and she wrote a little about the trip in her author's blog HERE. we were on the same wavelength this weekend big time, jen.

WINDSDAYS AND WEDNESDAYS AND OTHER BLUSTERY THINGS

my wednesday yesterday was a really good wednesday, as far as wednesdays go. having a good wednesday is just such a treat, you know? it's not like anybody's guaranteed a good wednesday. i find my best days usually happen on a thursday anyway, so a good wednesday is really just a nice bonus, is what it is.

i had my weekly wednesday sitter yesterday afternoon and i used it to sneak off for a really fun date with a really rad lady to plot out some fun new things, and then my editor called, and it wasn't half bad! it wasn't half bad! i'd been dreading that call in that kind of way where you relish the dreading, because how neat of an opportunity it is to dread a call from an editor over some nonsense book you're writing? we talked strategy and editing and we're going in a fun direction with it--a good direction, a focused direction--and it got me really excited, the sweaty kind of excited though where it's like, oh crap kind of excited, and also now i finally know how to describe the dang thing when somebody asks about it, which is no small miracle. it's about being a queen, naturally. now if only someone could tell me how to describe my blog when people ask me about that. "ummm, i blog about... me?" that one never sounds terribly satisfying.

to kill the last of the hour i had to myself before the sitter had to go, i wandered around aimlessly in a very rainy upper west side dusk. my thoughts were just going everywhere, so i balanced my umbrella between my shoulder and chin and walked really, really slowly while typing an entire new chapter into my iphone down columbus between 71st and 67th. and then i took a photo of myself to immortalize that very moment,  the moment i wore a gray sweater on columbus avenue while looking at my phone instead of where i was going, because that never happens. ;) and then brandon called and said he and huck were waiting for me at our favorite greek place, and i swear to you the birds sang in the trees. it was just, it was just silly, is what it was.

after that existentially magnificent greek dinner, where the rain was tap-tapping just the right way onto our glass windowed seating area, and after the last of the dining room chairs i ordered for so cheap it'd make your eyes roll showed up on time and looked just like i wanted them to, i had to look at brandon and just laugh. i have all the diet coke in the fridge a girl could want. i have devastatingly great boy-men who drive me bonkers in the best way, my hormone fog had cleared that morning, a fog that i've noticed has gotten lighter + easier to see through with every month that passes. i mean, when the good days roll in like this you just gotta grab onto 'em and say so.

in closing i will tell you a true story about today that is going to take this post in an entirely new and vastly more treacherous direction. 

basically the weather out is satanic. the winds are berserk. 19 degrees with a windchill of maybe five, and 25 mile-per-hour winds with gusts up to 50, FIFTY YES FIFTY I TELL YOU. so we were walking to play school, i was pushing huck in the stroller, we'd got to this one spot that was making a kind of wind tunnel effect and it was blowing so hard i actually could not take a single step forward, all i could do was push hard into it and hold my ground and hope it would blow down soon enough that both of us could breathe again + keep on walking. so i'm pushing right? then comes a gust. easily 50mph, and yes that kind of wind can push your stroller backwards onto you. the stroller knocked me clean over + rolled over twice (once over me and my bashed in knee cap), and then we were pretty much dragged five feet down the street while i held on to the stroller for dear life and shouted, "it's okay huck! it's okay!" while he screamed bloody murder. i couldn't even breathe, the wind was blowing so hard and so ice cold, i could barely even open my eyes. luckily a cab happened to be driving past at that exact moment carrying a very burly dude in the back seat. the driver slammed on the breaks while i was basically parasailing down riverside drive against my will, they both leapt out together and caught us before we could scrape our way too much farther down the street. they essentially carried all of us in a big pile into the first apartment building lobby we could find, and then they were gone! poof! i didn't even get a good look at their faces as i thanked them, they were gone before my beanie was out of my eyes. thank you, kind strangers! there in the lobby i did all the checks for broken bones, and we were fine. totally fine! my hands literally have never been that ice cold in my life, it hurt like the dickens as they thawed out. the wind was so steady that the doorman couldn't even get the door open once we were finally put back together, and he weighed 275 pounds! well, that's what he told me, that doesn't sound believable does it. he was probably six foot five though. what do i know?

luckily, huck was strapped in securely at the time with the handlebar firmly in place, so aside from being phenomenally terrified he was otherwise completely fine. (those bugaboos are flubbing amazing and i said a major prayer of thanks that we didn't take the umbrella stroller that morning.) and luckily too when the stroller fell over it knocked the brakes into place, which i'm sure slowed us down at least a little bit? ... anyway. 

and that's my exciting story for the day.

A NEW ONE FOR THE BURGER CULT

while we were away taking portland by storm, all our friends started raving about this burger place we'd never heard of on the west side of town. so on saturday we decided to take ourselves down there to investigate. i was a little bit more excited than necessary on account of i take my burgers pretty seriously, as we all know. 

new york is doing that thing right now where it's thinking about becoming springtime but it's not totally committed all the way, so we get a warm-ish day followed by a cold-ish day, and then a warm-ish day, and the snow does its best to melt but it can't really, and so things just get grosser and slushier ... but it's okay, i'm okay with it. it's kind of a fun, frustrating time to be alive, march is. the weather is a yo-yo, we're all a yo-yo, you get a sunny day and all of instagram is all "HEY IT'S SUNNY!" and then the next day it turns cloudy and instagram is all "aw, blurp. here, look at my cat." it's fun. human nature! and... nature! what is the point of this blog post so far? (now that i'm finished writing this thing and giving it the once over i can assure you, it only gets worse from here.)

so, this first photo is of a really impressive pile of dirty snow. i'd just like for this visual reminder of what march looks like in the city to exist on this blog for forever, or for at least until i decide to edit it out, cause sometimes i do that. i also think 60 degrees might be the perfect amount of degrees. i just want it to be sweater weather for always, don't you?

beeteedub i want you to note i have five cup holders on my stroller. this is not an excessive amount of cup holders, it turns out. surprising, but true. i use them all. one of them acts as a garbage can. 

here's another quick side step now: a few rad commenters in the accompany giveaway last weekend requested that i write some more about the companies i come across that champion the ethical + handmade, so i'm doing that right this minute. scroll if you must! scaramanga uk sent this beautiful leather satchel as a gift, it's really just a lovely bit of beat up leather, i've really loved it to death. scaramanga bags are all handmade, from leather tanned using a semi-vegetable method (fewer dangerous chemicals, check), they work with many small-scale suppliers and family-run producers in traditional artisan + craft based industries using traditional materials, methods and skills, the owner of the company goes to india himself on buying trips + always takes the time to visit the families of his suppliers. so add them to your list. you can read more about them HERE. thumbs up. now, burgers.

okay wait, inadvisable tangent coming first. a few weeks ago a friend i follow on instagram wrote a post on her blog about where mommy blogs fall short. i agreed with her on lots of it and said as much in a comment, and then the more i sat and ruminated on it, the more i came around to it from a different angle all together. now, this is a really inadvisable tangent, i wrote it planning all the while to erase it but then, hey! so here we are. the way blogs have changed and evolved is interesting to watch. sometimes it makes me feel sad that being really personal in blogs is becoming rarer and rarer, but i think it is too nuanced an issue to ever peg on blogs becoming businesses alone. i have my theories. i've always fantasized about killing the blog. someday i will, i'm sure. in the last year that's gotten much louder for me, which i've realized is because i was telling myself i should feel worried about things that, it turns out, i don't really need to worry about. this blog is very, very personal to me. it always will be. it's also a place where i get to pursue the things that excite me, that is so neat. some people collect stamps, some people run for, like, hours. whatever. i like thinking about getting dressed. i like decorating my house. i like looking at pretty things. i like promoting cool people making cool stuff. i also like writing. ain't nothing wrong with it. i think we all have a personal responsibility to ourselves to engage in the things we do like, and not engage in the things we don't like. i have fun doing this. i'm a proud blisness owner. (blog business? roll with it.) as huck gets older--hell, as i get older--and as certain spots in the blogger/reader relationship become ... stranger ... and, well, louder ... it definitely gets harder to put anything too valuable or sensitive in here. it is what it is. but so long as i'm writing this blog, it'll get raw, and it'll get personal. it'll also get sponsored. obviously there's a balance. i've been putting all my raw + personal in a book right now instead of in here, while still keeping pace with the posts about brands i'm excited to be working with, so sure, it can get lopsided. i knew it might. but it'll right itself eventually, and i won't worry about it anymore. i always feel bad when people express their unhappiness with me, but it turns out i can't make the whole internet happy. it was silly of me to feel so strongly that i could, or that i should, in the first place. i make me happy. i make my family happy. and this makes me happy. if the internet makes me unhappy, it's cause i'm doing it wrong. i was doing it wrong. it's like what we say all the time at our house: you gotta be the boss of your own poops, henry holbrook. so, i am. i am releasing the rest of the world's poops from my toilet. hey should we talk about cheeseburgers now? seems like a good segue?

gotham west market! so. gotham west market is a market under this sprawling apartment high rise called gotham west. it sounds so obvious when you say it like that, but somehow that wasn't at all what i was expecting. it's in hell's kitchen, all the good food is in hell's kitchen. the market is a bit of a mecca of aaaaall the hipster things--it's also got a ramen shop, an artisanal coffee shop ("you can't spell artisanal without the anal," which is good to know since i can never remember how to spell artisanal the first time around), and a book shop in the middle selling all sorts of kinfolk--but brandon and i saw that it was good anyway, amen. anyway, we went there, we ate, we wandered around the city, we tried to buy huck a helmet and failed twice, it was a pretty good saturday actually. and the burgers were pretty decent. the sweet potato fries were really decent. praise be to the burger gods. 

"be the lone sweet potato in a basket full of russets!" i don't know, that orange fry was real motivational to me in the moment.

he makes me real happy, too.

the end.

STUFF

these are the days! good crap!

and now, this is a post all about what all we've been up to lately. 

well first of all the entire house got sick. it was mild but it lasted forrrr-evvvv-errr. my insides are just now beginning to function properly and i won't regale you with the details except to say that the laxatives aisle and i have become real good friends and enemas are not as scary as you might think. and see? what is wrong with me!? there is some human condition where you get sick and suddenly you just really need to tell everybody on social media all about it. what is that. 

stomach bugs happen to be my anxiety trigger. if it's not pms and i have anxiety, that's why. (did you know matt lauer and joan baez are also emetophobes? good company, fist bumps, matt). so that's why all of last week and on into the weekend i was a complete nervous wreck. my brain went straight up fritzy. i am feeling much better now, thank you, primarily because my insides have started working again? p.s. this article on anxiety.

this is hands down the worst blog post i have ever written. hey let's change the subject!

if it's 3pm and it's not raining, i am walking. every day at 3pm a yellow lab comes tearing down the street from out of nowhere. i hear him coming and then there he is, full speed ahead, he catches his tennis ball, and goes ripping back the way he came, nd that's how i know it's time for me to put down the laptop and get outside and chase my own tennis ball. i get so much thinking done on these walks. this time in oregon has been good for my book, but it's been especially good for my soul. 

sometimes i desperately need a brain break from the writing and i take pictures using the self-timer on my phone. all this practice and i'm not getting any better! it's really strange. 

it's probably for the best.

we really miss brandon. i try and call him in the afternoons so i can hear his voice and rattle on and on about all the things in the world, because when he face times in the evenings huck completely bogarts the phone and i don't get a word in edgewise. he laughs this throaty, grunty laugh when brandon calls and gets all pumped up. ya gotta turn on ya manliness for ya daddy, you know. then he takes his dad all over the house to show him stuff. they play trains together, they take baths together (brandon is safely removed from potential splashes, looking down from on high), they even go potty together. "daddy, want to watch me poop?" "yeah, buddy!" they usually stay on the phone together until the battery dies, and then huck wails from somewhere in the house, "daddy! he go!" sometimes brandon face times during dinner, or when we're all out to lunch at baja fresh. we just set him on the table, propped against the tobasco sauce or what have you, it's become really normal at this point--just the four of us here in oregon plus the disembodied head of my husband. it's like he's there with us! the future is now! 

one more moss shot because whatever.

OF THINGS THAT ARE MOSSY + HAPPY WEEKEND

all in all it's been a really lovely week. 

i got a sitter a couple nights ago and snuck off to see saving mr. banks and the secret life of walter mitty and cried the entire way through both. walter mitty, in particular, is amazing. the plane sequence, though!

i lucked into a real good writing groove. i got so much out, it felt like i really cracked it open. which of course means that next week i will suck and decide that i'm a hack and that i'll have to give back the advance and call it all off. (this happens about every three weeks or so, on average.) 

i won THE most satisfying level of candy crush last night. and then found a moment of rare emotional clarity (as well as a few minutes of free therapy) from a modern family episode? blue note cards.

i walked in on my dad building a rocket ship in the garage with huck out of the cardboard box his new desk came in. he'd fashioned a palette out of a flattened 12-pack of pepsi and was in the middle of painting a giant green space alien on one side while huck ran around "catching spiders" with a fishing net. hang on, photographic evidence:

yep.

(at some point i miiiiiight be persuaded into hauling the real camera out for things like this.)

in a moment of whatever-ness i went into the bathroom today and re-pierced the third hole in my right ear that i'd DIY-pierced in that very same spot in that very same bathroom in a similar moment of whatever-ness when i was 17. i'd let it close up when i was in college and i'd missed it ever since. and so. i wrote earlier this week that middle school natalie was having her resurgence this month, and i guess now we've graduated on into high school natalie. making the same dumb decisions over the same bathroom sink, fourteen years later. how's that for symmetry!

i went out for a walk yesterday to see if i could force some interesting thoughts into my head, but instead all i did was wonder about doorknobs. doorknobs! first of all, doorknob is a wonderful word. and secondly, when did we get so many doorknob options? and why? how does one decide these things? think about it, some turn, some you push, some you squeeze with your thumb, how do you know what will make you happy? and when did it become the norm to have a doorknobs the shape of elephant trunks? what a weird idea. a half mile or so from my parents' home is this sprawling new development made up of identically different homes, all vaguely crafstman looking, all completely devoid of any life forms. it is interesting to note that i did not see one other living person while i was out. at 4pm. no sign of life anywhere. i do think i am not cut out for that kind of thing.

then i met these odd two trees and texted them to brandon, who wrote back and said, "i feel embarrassed for the first one, and a strange need to kneel down and worship the second."

brandon is funny.

but!

i did have a rare moment last weekend where everything in my life started to make sense. i have this pinterest board i'm obsessed with that is made up of nothing but forests in the middle of nowhere. lord of the rings type crap. it doesn't make any sense to me but it makes me absurdly happy. so we were driving around the back ends of town, where all these tiny farmhouses live positively dwarfed by these enormous fir trees, smoky chimneys and foggy grass, and then there it was, i could see it. brandon and his lumberjack beard chopping down wood for the fire, my love of scratchy wools and wood grains and pebbled leather, crackling fires in the fireplace and enormous pots of soup. i saw it all and for the first time i could see me there too, very clearly. it made me wonder if my someday farmhouse in the middle of the trees is coming up sooner than i expected, which made me wonder if maybe i am getting old. but there will definitely need to be a pick up truck, that much is certain. betsy the flying potato the second. and a goat, probably. but we're not there yet. new york isn't quite finished with me and i'm not finished with her, though i'm in a lot less of a hurry to get back there as i expected to be. i have my theories.

lastly, huck has been bathing in a bathtub that is bigger than his whole bedroom. 

and that is all. have a lovely weekend!