hooking

Today was a good day. I wasn't on the schedule for work, because Susie and I had requested it off to go to a work conference in White Bear Lake. We requested it off, promptly forgot ("Why did Mary give me an extra day off this week? Oh, well....SCORE!!!!) and never signed up for the conference. We've also been having a stretch of gorgeous summer weather here, the kind like we always used to have back home but NEVER have here....sunny, low 70s, low humidity. We remembered about the conference on Monday, and you could sign up to attend the day of, but I refrained from doing so, thinking that I could really use a "real" day off after all the wedding craziness, especially if the weather held. Wednesday night's weather forcast was for another gorgeous day. "I don't think I'm going to make it to the conference," I told Greg. "I'm going to hook....you should, too."

"Hooking" is our term for skipping work, you know, playing hooky. At least once a week (usually more often) we will wake up to the alarm and one of us will ask the other, "Wanna hook today?" To which the other always answers "yes," but then proceeds to get up and get dressed. Real hook days are few and far between. Our last hook day was March 1, which was an even better weather day than today. On that day, we had a huge snowstorm, and for once I actually had the day off. Greg got sent home from work early due to the snow, and we went out to lunch and then took Oscar for a long walk in the snow. I guess that was kind of a hook half-day, and actually not hooking at all for me, but it still felt like it. Another time the summer before, I was really sick with a migraine in the early morning, so sick even that Greg stayed home in case I needed to go to the doctor, but then the medicine kicked in and I felt fine by 11am, so that was kind of a hook half-day, too.

The hooking festivities started last night, when we went to the 10:45 showing of Harry Potter, ensuring that we wouldn't be home anytime before 1am. Then, we didn't go to sleep until almost 3. Stayed in bed forever this morning, woke up and went straight to lunch (we always eat hook-day lunch at Green Mill or Baker's Square, today it was Baker's). Then a long leisurely walk with the dogs, a little biking, some reading out in the sun, and that was our day. Nothing that special, but great because of the weather and what we should have been doing instead.

So there it is, the story of our happy little hook day. We also made a hook day date for the day of the first snow of the year in the fall. Everyone needs a hook day every now and again, don't they? (I know you'll appreciate this one, Jessie....as much fun as we had at the work conference in Duluth making rude gestures at Lynne on the mirror on the ceiling of the DECC, I know you appreciate a good hook day as much as me!)