How do you know it's a good weekend?

This is how:

It starts with a 20 mile bike ride with weather just cool enough that it takes you a bit to get really warmed up, and you never get hot even though you're peddling fairly hard.

You bake some really yummy bread, and have the first piece HOT with butter melting from the heat.

Then, later, as you're looking at websites trying to learn something about bicycling for very basic fitness, you realize that one of those fancy strategically designed bike saddles would look good on your bike. So you go to the Bike Store Where Everybody Knows Your Name and find a saddle that seems a really good fit, reasonably priced, and strategically designed. You try it out on a quick ride, during which your rear is thinking, "wow, where have you been all my life?"

When you come home, you plant some seeds in the planters on the deck, and watch the gold finches eat from the thistle bag feeder thingy.

You read a couple chapters of Reading Lolita in Tehran.

You go to grade at a local bookstore, and notice that the car next to you is sporting some GREAT bumper stickers (Something about Bush and "Osama bin Laden still has his job, do you?") and a Flying Spaghetti Monster decal just like the one on the BardiacWagon! (Okay, the grading part is optional, but at least some got done!)

After grading, you call a friend and go out for a good dinner.

The next morning, you have some of that fresh baked bread with butter and cinnamon melted into it.

Then, you get a call from another friend with an invite to come on a bike ride on a new (to me) trail, ride 22 miles, all relaxed and chatting with friends and having fun. And the whole time your rear is thinking, "oh, I love my new bike saddle!! Such strategic design! Such tactile pleasures!"

Along the way, you stop and have a sub sandwich while sitting and chatting on an old rail now trail bridge over a gorgeous river, and watch an immature bald eagle do its thing, flapping and soaring over the river. Then you ride some more, and before you turn back, you stop for the best malt (chocolate, extra malt) you've had in 27 years (yes, I know exactly where I had the last one this good, but alas, the place burned down), with a shopowner so friendly he comes out with a big pitcher of ice water to fill the bikers' water bottles before we leave.

The malt was so good, I swear, that my friends teased me for the next five miles about how big my grin was.

When you return to the trailhead, you see your first EVER Baltimore (or Northern) Oriole posing patiently for you while you bring out the rather spanking new, very light and cool binoculars you spent your tax return money on, and get a really good look, and so do your friends.

Of course, the perfect way to end this weekend would be relaxing on the deck, soaking in some (blocked by whatever sun screen I have around) rays. But I have to go to a reception thing shortly, and try to be polite to a minor on-air personality I've never actually heard of before. There will be hors d'oeuvres made by several folks who are incredible cooks, so it shouldn't be torture at any rate.

My friends, THAT is how you know it's a good weekend.