Como se dice "brunch" en español?

One of the greatest aspects of living in a small city is that all of my friends live within about 20 minutes of each other, at the most.  This makes getting together for last minute events easy, fun and frequent.

Two of my best CIEE buds, Annie and Valerie, came over yesterday for some sweet brunch action.  We cooked up some chicken and spinach (is it weird I've been missing spinach lately?) with lots of spices, onions and garlic, and then made a goat cheese and walnut salad.  The weather was beautiful outside, so, rather than the original plan of watching a movie while eating, I cleaned up the patio furniture and we had a delish, sun-filled lunch.

I never really spend any time on our patio.  Not sure why, really.  Well, I mean it's been crap weather for the past few months, but I think I'm going to try and venture out there more.  We normally get direct sun from 11 until around 3 or so.  Pretty much the only drawback is that the plastic chairs out there get dirty really fast, so you always have to clean them.  I guess another drawback could be that one of our elderly neighbors that lives above us likes to look out her window and keep track of our apartment's happenings.  So much for a no-line tan, I suppose.

Anyway, so we got all the food outside and enjoyed our meal in the warm and refreshing sunlight.

Val, Annie and myself.

(I know the picture looks super posed, but I just put my camera on the window sill and set it to take dozens of pictures, so we were just eating our meal, conversing per usual.)

After our meal we moved things inside (the sun had moved away) and set up my computer to watch the hottest movie of 7 months ago: Black Swan.

I thought it was brilliant.  I normally try my best to eschew whatever the current fad is, but I have to say, the movie was really impressive.  I don't want to give anything away (for the five of you out there who haven't seen it), but the friction between good vs. evil (white swan vs. black swan) was projected in the most intriguing way.  It starts out as the typical internal struggle, then quickly gets projected outward onto one of the other characters who embodies the "black swan" ideal.  Eventually the main character couldn't even tell the difference anymore between herself and the other character.  Very interesting. (Shannon: Let me know when you're around so we can debrief, please)  I'm not exactly excited to see it again, but I would definitely recommend it...to some people.

Natalie Portman did an unbelievable job with all the dancing and acting.  I can't imagine how much training she had to go through.  I've never really been a big fan of Portman, but I have to say she moved up a few steps in my opinion.  I'm sure she'll be glad to hear it, haha.