Are you ready?

Well, the rest of last week was fairly uneventful. Hung out with Elsa and Marie on Friday night after going to Jillians with the guys from the lab. Jillians was kind of a strange place...half sports bar and half Chuck E Cheese. If nothing else, the clientele was in the same age range as us. This could not be said for the Northworks grille around the corner that is clearly aiming for a more "seasoned" customer. I'm not sure I would go back to jillians again but the beer was OK and they have huge TVs tuned to nothing but sports so I could probably get used to that. Saturday morning, Elsa Marie and I went to IHOP for some pancakes and eggs. I got corn cake pancakes again that were as heavenly as ever. After that I went home and helped my dad hook up some of the stereo set-up for the new media room. It necessitated us taking a trip to the mall. This was something of a frightening experience at first. What had always been the natick mall is now the *ahem* Natick Collection. The architecture inside is really amazing to look at. Very open and full of light with some faux folliage thrown in for good measure. With a Tiffany's, Louis Vuitton, and an Apple Store...it is a shrine to conspicous consumption like you have never seen. We really only had to go to Sears and radio shack so we didn't exactly look our Sunday best but the nice thing was that we didn't look out of place. One might think with such high-brow drastically overpriced retailers you would see more ritzy clientelle. Alas not, the same crop of slovenly american shoppers persists even amongst the $300 hoodies. The highlight was the older gentleman in the white bermuda shorts, white undershirt, and black socks to his knees...at that point, in comparison, I could have been Cary Grant on the red carpet. Sunday, of course, was filled with FOOTBALL. Patriots played at 1 and they demolished the Jets. My fantasy team also did well, amassing the most points of any team in the league. That being said, Sunday was the most unproductive day I've had in quite some time...it was great. More to come on those fronts and a movie review for tomorrow. Patrick OUT!