On the one hand it was a very busy and productive weekend. On the other, it was a pretty lazy and relaxing weekend. Actually, it was both. Lazy, productive, and fun, all at the same time. Ahhh, it's a rough life.

Friday afternoon Stef and I went to NCG to see Borat. Yes, it's just as good as everyone says, and yes, you should go see it. This is definitely the funniest movie since The 40 Year-Old-Virgin (which I thought was the best movie of 2005), and will probably go down as one of the funniest films of the decade. Of course, those of you who don't enjoy naked man-on-man wrestling (or at least have the stomach to sit through about three minutes of it) might want to steer clear. What amazed me was that the theater was completely sold out... at a 2 PM screening. Borat was only showing on 800 screens this weekend, and it totally mopped the floor with The Santa Clause 3, which was on about three times as many screens. It's nice to know that quality does trump crap every once in a while.

Anyway, after the movie Stef and I hopped over to Kroger to do a little grocery shopping for my apartment. We wanted to make a nice dinner together that night, so we took our time and traversed the store several times as we picked up ingredients for our menu. It's amazing how much real food they actually have in grocery stores; it's not very often that I venture outside the frozen food isle. Anyway, we got a bunch of yummy (and healthy!) ingredients to make arugula salads and a salmon filet. Mmmm. The dinner turned out really well... and I helped (honest)! The whole thing was a lot of fun, and I think it would be cute if Stefy and I could make something of a tradition out of it and do this at least once a week.

Well, Saturday morning was definitely part of the lazy portion of the weekend. I slept in until about 10:30 after cashing in ridiculously early the night before at 10:30, so if I'm doing the math correctly, that makes for 12 hours in bed. Yep, ya gotta love that. I didn't drag around too much once I was up. Stef and I decided on the spur of the moment to drive up to Birch Run and Frankenmuth for the day. This is usually a trip I make with my mom and Dan after Thanksgiving, but since we'll be down in Ohio for the Holiday and since the weather was so gorgeous on Saturday, we decided to go a little early. Birch Run was a freakin' zoo. We hit the usual spots, but I managed to find a couple gems that I never knew were there. J. Crew was a big success, since they had all their guy stuff on sale. I picked up a couple groovy new ties for about $17 a pop (they were originally $40-50), so I was pretty pleased with those. Then a couple stores later we stumbled upon Banana Republic, where I found this really nice corduroy sport coat for $60 (it used to be a hundred). I thought a couple ties and a new jacket were a pretty fair deal for $100, so that made my day.

After our little jaunt through the outlet mall, Stef and I made our way into Frankenmuth. It was only about 5 PM by the time we made it to town, but we were already getting hungry for dinner by then. The line at the Bavarian Inn went really quickly, and we had a seat in less than an hour. Our dinner was wonderful, or should I say, wundervoll. I love my chain restaurants like PF Chang's, but it's amazing how much freakin' food you get for the same amount of money at a place like the Bavarian Inn. Our table was covered with all sorts of side dishes and salads and whatnot that come standard with the chicken dinners, and we barely even touched half of them. So yeah, it was a whole bunch'a yum in my tum at Bavarian Inn.

Once we were finished with our gut-busting chicken feast, we took some time to walk it off as we strolled through town. There were a few local stores that caught our eye, but neither of us bought anything. We eventually made it back to the car about 45 minutes later, and then decided to head home. Yes, without a trip to Bronner's. I think we just figured that neither of us ever buy stuff there anyway, so what's the point?

Stef and I made it home by about 8, and since I took a little snooze in the car, I had enough left in the tank to watch a movie when we got back to my place. We popped in The Virgin Suicides, which I had never seen before. It definitely has that Sofia Coppola feel to it (this was her first film), and on the whole I thought it was really good, if not a little depressing. I'm glad I finally saw it though. After the movie we flipped around the channels a bit and watched some TV, but that was basically it for Saturday.

My Sunday morning sleep-in wasn't quite as ridiculous as the day before. I got up by about 9:30 this time, and lounged around for a couple hours before finally getting cleaned up for the day. Stef and I took off for my dad's house at around 1 to spend the afternoon over there watching the Lions game. It was fun to hang out with the girls and watch some (mediocre) football. Heck, the Lions even won -- against a good team, to boot!

We came back to my place and just sort of lounged around and watched more TV after the game. It was a pretty low-key evening, but that was the perfect way to round out this busy/lazy/productive weekend. I hope everyone had a good one!