This was a good, if somewhat busy weekend. Saturday we headed to the Carolina Renaissance Festival with Phil and Jamie and spent a very nice day there eating, shopping, and hanging out. (Thanks again to Michelle and Jeff for kind assistance with the tickets!) None of my dressing-up-for-ren-faire clothes fit me currently, so I had to go dressed as a pregnant normal person.

The Tree Man was there again, although rather less tall and imposing than in previous years. He was still pretty cool.

Jag, after much deliberation, bought a new leather hat for hiking and general wear, since he’s very prone to sunburn year-round. I thought he looked much more dashing in some of the more pimped-out selections, but was forced to admit that he’ll get much more practical wear out of this one than a hat decorated with a leather rose and a green feather and with one side rakishly pinned up.

The Living Statue lady was there again (I assume the same person as in previous years), in a more classical white-marble mode than before. Jamie bought a leather rose for her as we headed out of the day, and she very graciously accepted the gift.

We caught the tail end of a very cool carillion performance as well. This is one of the two mobile carillons in the US; think 35 bronze church bells rigged up on a trailer, with someone playing them via a keyboard that’s operated pretty much by pounding with your fists and some foot pedals for the larger bells. It was very cool. The web site for more info is www.castinbronze.com.

I think I was in serious nesting mode today. After a somewhat crappy morning caused by a scheduled outage for Jag’s job (sometimes I wonder if it’s good or bad that we’re both in IT), we moved some more of my crafting stuff out of the nursery and spent a while cleaning up the office and shredding piles of old bills and stuff.

After baking a batch of chocolate chunk cookies this afternoon (I bought the bag of chunks by accident, but I think I prefer them to chocolate chips!) I made a double batch of pizza dough, froze half, and used the rest to make what was definitely my best pizza ever. Along with a simple homemade sauce, it had Italian sausage, red bell pepper, red onion, artichoke hearts, and goat and mozzarella cheeses. The house still smells like this pizza and even though I’m completely stuffed from dinner, I still want another piece. It was amazing. We won’t be able to do dinners like this for a long time after the Bean arrives, so I am definitely appreciating that we have the time to do this kind of thing now.