I'm at the cusp of 30,000 miles on my car. I purchased it on January 6, 2003 with 6 miles on it. I need to replace all four of my tires this week before they make that decision for me as an emergency on the side of the road. But this isn't about my car or my tread. Rich and I had a very pleasant weekend together. He was getting over being sick and I was getting over being sick of work. But we came together and formed an ingenious plan of sitting around, reading comics, sleeping in late and generally being lazy. It was the best valentine gift ever.

Rich coined a term (or we did it together) of "empty hours." In our relationship, being that we live in different cities approximately 100 miles from each other, we spend a fair amount of our time travelling to be together or spending our time together en route to other projects. So we don't have a lot of time together when there is not a stop watch ticking off the hours until one or both of us have to leave. There have been times when we've spent more time in the car each way than we have awake at the destination.

So when we have an opportunity to spend several "empty hours" together - hours when we don't have any real plans or the biggest commitment we have that day if finding lunch - those become little gems. And this weekend was choke full of empty hours for us.

We went to bed at 11pm and didn't wake up until 10am the next day. We played video games and puttered and went to the grocery store and sorted laundry and it was absolutely fantastic. We wandered around the mall with no real objective and came home with only a few random purchases.

So when I go back to work and the hours are crammed with activity and there seems to be so many things that need to get done and never enough time, I can think back on my weekend and how I was much happier to be under the covers with the Puddin' than in the cold rain of an outdoor event or basking in the glow of a computer screen.