Spent a lovely Valentine's weekend in Salem, here's your recap:

Friday we checked into the Hawthorne Hotel, which is highly recommended if you ever decide to sightsee around here. It's right downtown and very close to most of what you'd want to see. Didn't have any plans, so we decided to get a quick bite to eat and see a movie.

That movie wound up being Sideways, which I thought was pretty good. I was afraid that my general lack of wine knowledge would be a problem, but it wasn't. We saw this at the local Hollywood Hits theater, the "cheap" theater. We paid $8 a ticket. Not sure when that became cheap, but there you go.

Saturday dawned with the main plan to go check out the newly-expanded Peabody Essex Museum. The museum grew out of Salem's maritime history, with the bulk of the collection being either maritime-related or items picked up by sea captains and the like while on voyages. If you're interested in Asian art, or various forms of pottery get you going, it's the museum for you. There's also a pretty good collection of local furniture. We also took a house tour where we got to see a house from the 17th, 18th, and 19th century.

We didn't do too much else, though we had a very nice dinner in the hotel's restaurant. After seeing the movie I was too self-conscious to order the pinot, so I went with the shiraz. No complaints there.

Sunday saw us return home and pass a pretty typical Sunday. We wound up watching the Grammys, which was OK if a bit predictable. The all-star version of "Across the Universe" was pretty gruesome, but sales do benefit tsunami relief. The NARAS president was a little less irritating on the issue of downloading music, but still unbearable. It didn't help that he was put in towards the end of the night, which meant he got to be dead weight at what should have been the height of the ceremony.

Two things I didn't know about Jamie Foxx until last night: he has a tattoo on the back of his head and he is a reasonably good musician. He'd have made a better halftime entertainer at the Pro Bowl than former American Idol finalist Jasmine Trias. Jasmine Trias! I can't believe anyone thought it was a good idea to let her sing on national TV again. Ugh.