I’d like to say Memorial Day Weekend was spent in lazy pursuit of relaxation, but it kind of wasn’t. We were at the neighbors’ on Friday night for dinner and drinks, and had a great time, but one extra-strong beer gave me a pounding headache Saturday morning.

I took on some freelance work last week, and so I found myself behind a computer for 2 of the 3 lovely days we were given; in retrospect I would rather have left the money on the table and gotten outside with my family. Even so, Jen and I celebrated our anniversary at The Food Market, a wonderful hipster restaurant in Hampden. The food was delicious but the bar tab for 4 drinks came to $50, which is Manhattan money, not Hampden money!

Sunday was more work for me while the girls went out to be social; later in the day we were invited back over to the neighbors’ for a more low-key cookout which was what we were all really in the mood for.

Saturday our neighbor stopped by to mention he’s getting a dumpster to haul off a bunch of brush from his yard; he figured he’d have room left over and wanted to know if I might be interested in filling it for splitting the cost. Given that I’ve had a pile of construction rubble sitting alongside the driveway since last summer, I thought this was a swell idea, and will spend part of this coming weekend happily hauling concrete.