Whoa.

When I was a kid, my mom used to let me stay up late to watch some TV show on Thursday night, because the next day was Friday and, geez, who cares if you're tired on a Friday??

When I was in college, I'd applied that logic to semesters ... In January, I'd be in bed by 11 p.m.; by May I was lucky to make it there by 4 or 5 a.m. Why sleep when I could be going out, or doing homework, or watching TV? After all, I had all summer to catch up.

Now ... I'm just trying to find a way to rationalize why I'm going grocery shopping at midnight. On a Sunday. When clearly I have to work at 8 tomorrow. And there's no catching up. Sigh.

Rationalization 1: Thursday and Friday, I took care of beaucoup de wedding stuff, including getting a veil, getting fitted for my dress, buying gifts for the bridal party, putting together final touches on the guest list, and making sure everything else was in line. Check.

Friday night, Erin needed to get out. So we did.

Rationalization 2: Saturday, we woke up late (see rationalization 1) and spent the rest of the day doing laundry, cleaning, and then going to the Gallery Walk.

Rationalization 3: This week leaves no time to do anything but work and pack -- I'm going to Ohio, after a long week of putting together Living Well, and finalizing the fall edition of Oshkosh Magazine. Yikes.

On a side note, this month's Gallery Walk was the best one we've been to yet -- and yeah, that says a lot:

>>Great Estates, this furniture store downtown, had Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol impersonators, as well as wine, cheese puffs, Pixie Stix (the foot-long kind), meatballs, Ho-Hos and Twinkies, and, get this ... Tang.

>>The building that housed the Exclusive Company and is now vacant had three young artists who had their work on display. I know two-thirds of them and can attest to their coolness factor, but I'd no idea the art was so good. Plus, the best part was, as they're like, 20, they attracted a huge number of young adults and older teens. We stopped by twice (once to see the work, once to bring friends by to check it out), and both times it was packed with the hip(ster wannabe) set; complete with the artsy glasses, cuffed, pressed dark jeans and magenta polo shirts.

I didn't care -- they were blasting Arcade Fire, a stand-out band in my life, circa 2005.

>>And Decor and More had really cool charcoals by Tanya Hribal (I believe is her name), who we'd featured in Saturday's LifeStyle section. I was quite jealous Ohio didn't have anything like this for my peers and I to display our work.

Lucky! (In Napoleon Dynamite's pleading voice.)

And, to top it off, I re-met (yes, it's a word) our neighbors across the street. I'd briefly said hello to them a couple of weeks ago, but this time I got to meet their foreign exchange student and hear more about the last few they had.

Which means ... Erin and Dave went on Gallery Walk ... And talked to people who aren't just employed at The Northwestern.

This is HUGE.