After the rather intense week-long meeting I hosted, it was nice to kick back this weekend.

We started off by attending the office Christmas party on Friday night in Raleigh, at an upscale Mexican eatery called Jibarra. (Contrary to what you might expect, it was actually fun, since all my co-workers are pretty cool.)

Saturday morning, we showed my friend Andreas around Chapel Hill. He and Erik (both SVG guys) stayed in our guest apartment for the week of the meeting, and Andreas stayed an extra day. We brunched at Weaver Street Market (the local organic community grocery/hangout for yuppies and hippies), then walked along Franklin Street (the main strip) to UNC campus. Andreas took snapshots of old buildings that caught his eye (and which, naturally, had previously escaped my attention). We browsed for used books and saw the local sites, dropping him off at the airport in mid-afternoon.

That evening, we hosted about 20 people for our monthly local atheist meetup, where the conversation turned largely on politics, as is pretty normal (when I’m around). The meetup is generally at someone’s house (much easier to do the ritual sacrifices that way), and this is our first time to host more than 2 or 3 people at our new place. Turns out one of the women, who we’ve known for a while, knew the previous owners of our house! She and M and I talked about Morocco, since she’s planning a trip there.

Then, on Sunday, M and I went to see a play in Raleigh. It was a Burning Coal production of Einstein’s Dreams, adapted from Alan Lightman’s novella recounting permutations of how time could have worked (but doesn’t). I like geeky plays like this… I loved Arcadia and Proof, and I hope to see Copenhagen and Fermat’s Last Tango. We topped the day off with a delicious Thai dinner at Sawasdee… our first visit to this quirky little restaurant. Boy, I sure wish Chapel Hill had better restaurants.

Okay, I confess that I also coded a bit and took care of some stuff for the new SVG logo, but on the whole it was my first relaxing weekend in a while. Oh, and I played some Zelda on my Wii!