I have traveled a little bit more than normal this summer. It’s not been so much that I understand why I have felt like I really haven’t been around at all, but that’s what it’s felt like. I usually feel like I have plenty of time to see friends and do things, but this summer I really felt like I’ve barely been around and haven’t had a chance to hang out with friends or even be a good friend to people who are going through some stressful life things some good, some bad.

At any rate my travel is finally over, so I’m trying to squeeze in some good friend time before summer runs completely away from me in a few more weeks. I can’t believe it’s pretty much over already. My husband had his annual trip to Vegas for DefCon this weekend, so it gave me a chance to devote myself to spending some time with friends. It was also a very nice summer weekend in Baltimore, so I got to spend some nice, quality time outside as evidenced by the thousand bug bites I now have.

Saturday I pretty much spent with my friend Lindsey mostly running errands, but that meant we both got stuff done while getting to hang out. We hit the farmers’ market in the morning, and enjoyed some delicious biscuit sandwiches from Blacksauce Kitchen for breakfast. I’ve been going back and forth about whether we should adopt another cat to keep Scout company since Charlotte died last December and Scout still seems super lonely. I worry about getting another awesome cat like Charlotte was and about how Scout would react to us introducing a new cat, which is the main reason we haven’t done it yet. Of course there’s also the issue that we’ve been gone most of the summer, so it wasn’t a good time. Now that things are settling down it’s something I can seriously consider. Lindsey convinced me we should go to the SPCA in our neighborhood and look at the cats. Who doesn’t want to look at adorable little kittens. I knew I wouldn’t be coming home with one since Paul wasn’t there with me, so I said ok. I did really like one of the kittens a lot, but even if he winds up getting adopted before I have a chance to get him I’m sure there’s another kitten out there for me. After the SPCA we hit up the mall and Target. I’m also in the market for a new cell phone so I got the chance to check out some phones in person to see which ones I wanted to do a little bit more research on before making my decision.

We wound up grilling out for dinner and enjoying a nice dinner out on my patio. I pretty much never use it even though I would like to spend more time out there when the weather is nice. Mostly we’re lazy and spend too much time in front of the tv, but also there are a million mosquitos out there and I never want to get all bit up. Even with putting out a citronella candle and wearing bug spray I’m still covered in a ton of bug bites. We of course ended our evening with a walk to The Charmery for ice cream.

Sunday I started off the afternoon at my friends’ Heather and Julie’s place. Julie is getting ready to head back to Seattle this week, so they had some friends over lunch. As usual they had lots of delicious food, and it was fun to spend a few hours with them and some of their other friends.

I headed straight from there to my friends’ Dan and Erin’s house for a BBQ they were having. They live out in the county in the ‘burbs so they have a nice big house and backyard. It was fun to spend some time hanging out with a bunch of friends there as well. I stuffed my face full of way more food than I needed to eat. We also played a lot of backyard games. I am still awful at corn hole. I did better in my first time playing Spike Ball, though I don’t think anyone would be drafting me for their Olympic team if there were such a thing. It was another lovely summer evening, so it was nice to be able to spend a lot of time outside. I’m pretty sure whatever parts of my body weren’t covered in bug bites from Saturday night got bit up on Sunday. I’m sure I’ll look like I have some sort of pox.

It was a wonderful weekend full of friends, food, fun, and beautiful weather. I wish summer weren’t almost over so that I’d have plenty of more time to do it again.