It's that time of year again, the time for end of the year business. A little year review, a little year preview, and a little wild celebration. :)
Generally speaking, I try to take at least five minutes to think about the year that was. Did I learn anything new, did I make any historically important discoveries, do I feel as though forward progress was made, have I gotten any closer to becoming an actual grownup instead of an aimless wanderer?
Sadly, there were no important historic discoveries in my 2007, but in all fairness, I wasn't really looking for anything either. I guess you could say that I've learned a thing or two. I've learned that if you make a big ridiculous proclamation in your drunkenness on New Year's Eve because you're a) drunk and b) sad, there's a good chance it was a little bit of an overreaction and sticking to it all year because you're just that stubborn might look a little silly in retrospect. However, I've come this far so I'm going to go ahead and stand by the No Men in 2007 rule as a sound decision that has helped my spiritual and emotional growth immensely. :)
I've also learned that if a friend is getting married in December and the weather is going to be any kind of threat, it's better to follow my instincts and just pick the earlier flight. Work will understand.
As far as forward progress and the quest to become more than an aimless wanderer, that remains to be seen.
And now we move on to 2008. I have high hopes for 2008. I'm trying to break my usual habit of making a ridiculously long, Bridget Jones - like list of ways I'm going to improve myself, things I'm going to do, all in my quest to achieve balance and the ever elusive "inner poise". And then by approximately February 1 it becomes too overwhelming and I just give up. From now on I'm making a general proclomation of what the year is going to be about and then I'm going to do my best to stick to that general goal. This year's goal is "Making Decisions in 2008." This will be the year that I stop waffling and decide things. I'm not sure what things I'll decide per se, but mark my words, decisions will be made. I'll be sure to keep you posted on the status of the decision-making. :)
Well, that little exercise felt good. Now I just have to make it through the rest of my work day and get ready to ring in the New Year the best way I know how: with my friends, an alcoholic punch, Chinese food and some champagne!
Happy New Year!!
Monday, December 31, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Happy Day After!
Well, I hope everyone had a good Christmas! I had a good day, although Christmas doesn't feel very Christmasy when I'm not with my own family. Still though, a nice day. Christmas Eve I went over to Sacha and Toni's for a delicious dinner of ziti and meatballs with apple pie for dessert! It was yummy. Afterward we played Rock Band (of course) and determined that Wallace the bunny needed a little something extra, so Tuesday morning I whipped up this little sucker and here you have "Wallace the Christmas Bunny" :
Christmas Day Sacha and Toni took me along with them to Toni's parents' house for dinner and festivities, which was lots of fun. Good food, amazing desserts (which I probably should not have eaten) and it was a good time had by all. And then, we went and played some more Rock Band (seriously, does it sound like that's all I do when I'm here? I'm sure it's not)
I received many excellent gifts this year from many excellent friends, though I started to notice a theme.
I think if this year's collection of Christmas gifts had a title, it would be, "Jessie, You're a Girl and We'd Prefer You to Kindly Start Acting Like One By Wearing Makeup and Other Girly Things."
OK, maybe I don't actually think that's the message they were trying to send, but look at all this cool stuff I got! I will be extremely hot in 2008. The perfume is "Lovely" by SJP and it smells so unbelievably good I just can't stop taking the top off the bottle and inhaling it. I'm impatient to have something special to go to so I can wear it (New Year's Eve, anyone?). I just smelled it again after typing that sentence :)
Christmas Day Sacha and Toni took me along with them to Toni's parents' house for dinner and festivities, which was lots of fun. Good food, amazing desserts (which I probably should not have eaten) and it was a good time had by all. And then, we went and played some more Rock Band (seriously, does it sound like that's all I do when I'm here? I'm sure it's not)
I received many excellent gifts this year from many excellent friends, though I started to notice a theme.
I think if this year's collection of Christmas gifts had a title, it would be, "Jessie, You're a Girl and We'd Prefer You to Kindly Start Acting Like One By Wearing Makeup and Other Girly Things."
OK, maybe I don't actually think that's the message they were trying to send, but look at all this cool stuff I got! I will be extremely hot in 2008. The perfume is "Lovely" by SJP and it smells so unbelievably good I just can't stop taking the top off the bottle and inhaling it. I'm impatient to have something special to go to so I can wear it (New Year's Eve, anyone?). I just smelled it again after typing that sentence :)
Alisa also brought us all some fabulous Shakespearean Insult Gum (well, the gum was not so fabulous, but the insults were). Here's an example:
In case you can't read it, it says "Thy breath stinks with eating toasted cheese" It's from Henry VI. There were many others, "How foul and loathsome is thine image" from The Taming of the Shrew. I could go on and on, but I'll stop. It's probably not practical to buy a whole bunch of these little things when the gum is terrible and all I'd really want to do is rip open the packaging and see what's inside, right? Lousy practicality.
I have decided to take a momentary break from knitting socks while I try to figure out how to end the ones for my mom. I'm having knitter's block (is that real? It is now) so the second one is just sitting there, on the needles, waiting patiently to be finished, while the first sock is sitting in purgatory waiting to be ripped back a little and refinished. I've still got nothin'. Who knew it would be this hard? Instead at the moment I'm knitting the Chevron Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. This book is literally one of the best purchases I've ever made. I think to this point I've made over half of the items in the book and there's nothing in it I can say I would never make. That's a good purchase.
The pattern calls for two different colors of Koigu that you alternate every two rows. The yarn I'm using, however, is Cushy Color Sport by LynnH, in Mary Ann Green and Bonnie Blue. I've actually had the yarn for a couple of years, but I've been waiting for just the right project. So far I think this is turning out very pretty, although it's definitely not for me. Not exactly a color combination that I would wear, but a lot of people would and you know I prefer knitting gifts anyway. I did find it completely incomprehensible that the only size 5 needles I have are double points, but I'm definitely too cheap to buy any more (plus I'm so sure I have them! I know I bought them for a class I took once! Where are they?!?!), so I'm making due with my makeshift straight needles for the time being. Oh well. At least I found matching hair ties to use on the ends so they're a matching set.
Anyway, my internal clock is still completey messed up from waking up at 4am on Monday morning, so I think it's about time for me to go to bed in an effort to try and get back to normal. I thought I had it all under control after staying up late on Monday night due to the Rock Band as well as the Spanish karaoke my neighbors were engaging in until approximately 1 in the morning. Apparently not.
Monday, December 24, 2007
This is how early I was up today:
Yes, that is the sun rising. On the East Coast. After I had already been awake for almost two hours. I'm going to totally crash at about noon, I can just feel it. :)
On the plus side, it looks as though the gross rain we had yesterday may have gone far toward getting rid of some snow...which is good for commuting to work purposes, but slightly less great for White Christmas purposes. Can't have it all, I guess.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Nothing Too Exciting
Well, as it turns out, when you have a really good, outrageous story like the one I had a few days ago it's tough to find something to follow it up with. So, this will probably be a letdown, consider that your warning. :)
As a bit of follow-up, once I actually made it to the wedding festivities on Friday night, everything went smoothly. The rehearsal dinner was lots of fun, I'm pretty sure we didn't sleep at all on Friday night (but that's sort of what you sign up for when you stay with the bride the night before the wedding, right?). Saturday was kind of a blur with the salon, getting ready, the actual ceremony, the pictures, the limo, the reception...it always goes so fast! I've been looking at pictures almost continually and I still can't believe how fast it was. I had a great time, enjoyed some cocktails (several, even), danced like a rock star, closed out the reception and even hit an after party. Good times. Here's a picture of Marie and Me, all bridesmaided up.
Anyway, after I got back I pretty much felt like a zombie for 4 days. Turns out that not sleeping for three or four days in a row will catch up with you and it won't be pretty when it does.
I kind of feel normal again, after going to bed at like 9:00 for teh last week and spending my weekend sleeping and knitting. I did accomplish the knitting of two hats as Christmas gifts for my bosses this week, but I of course forgot to take pictures of them. Take my word for it, they were pretty cute. And well received. I am now working on finishing the socks for my mom. I have actually finished Andrea's socks, but I've been carrying them around for the last week not sending them out (sorry, Andrea!). My plan had been to stop by the post office last Friday morning in between dropping my mom off at work and driving to Midland, but we all know how that turned out. Then this week we had a bunch of people on vacation and it kept snowing (25+ inches in a week! Yikes!) so I didn't make it to the post office. I have high hopes for this week, however. It'll happen, I know it!
Anyway, here is a photo for you, of my mom's almost finished socks. The color is garbage in the photo, they're much darker in person. I can't get a much better picture of the pattern, but at least you have an idea. The top part needs revising because it looks bad and is hard to get over your foot, but I don't want to do ribbing so I need to come up with a plan B. I'm sure I'll figure something out.
You know, on second thought, that color is pretty true. I think the screen on my camera may be going. Which is less than ideal, I don't really want to buy a new digital camera.
Last, after work on Friday I went to see National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I liked it, I went in not expecting much except to be entertained for a couple of hours. Mission accomplished! I think it's a good holiday movie for the fam, you'll have a good time. At least, I know my family is going to see it on Christmas and I know they'll have a good time.
Ok, Merry Christmas everybody!
Monday, December 17, 2007
I Couldn't Make This Up If I Tried
This past weekend was Amy and Todd's wedding. It was beautiful and romantic and fun. This post is not about their wedding. That's coming, but just not now. Now there is a story so ridiculous you'll probably think I'm lying when I tell it, but I promise you that's not the case. As the title suggests, I am simply not creative enough to fabricate a story like this.
My schedule for the weekend was as follows:
Thursday: leave work early, fly to Detroit, have some holiday fun with the fam
Friday: head to Midland in the morning, help Amy get ready for the big day
Saturday: Wedding
Sunday: Back to hang out with the fam for a bit before flying out of Detroit at 5pm
Anyone who tracks the weather can probably see where this is going. And now the tale begins...
Thursday morning I woke up, packed all my last minute belongings and was on my way. Got on the bus, no problem. Got on the blue line, no problem. Got to Government Center, saw the ridiculous amount of people on the platform, thought to myself "this can't be good" and decided to walk the last three or four blocks to work (typically I take the green line a couple stops, particularly when it's cold and I'm carrying luggage). Upon approaching the corner of Tremont and Boylston (where I usually get off the T) I see a collection of fire trucks and ambulances. This is because two trains had crashed into each other. This really has nothing to do with the rest of the story, it just goes to show how my morning was already on shaky ground. I got to work with plenty of time to spare (and even made a CVS stop on the way). I signed on to nwa.com to check in for my flight and see that next to my flight status it says "Cancelled." This does not make me even remotely happy. They had scheduled me for a flight out of Boston at 6am on Friday morning, but I wanted to get there THURSDAY! I had plans! I do not like it when my plans get messed with. There was an option to choose from more flights, so I clicked that and there was one leaving at noon, another leaving at 2:30. Both of those were a go, and they were on schedule. If I picked the noon flight, I would have had to leave work right then and I felt bad about that so I picked the 2:30. This would prove to be a monumental mistake.
I left work, got to the airport, through security, to the gate in record time. The sky was still clear. Right up until I sat down at about 12:45 and it started snowing. Within 20 minutes it was snowing very very hard. The plane coming in from Detroit landed safely and the ticket agents assured us that they were working to get us on the plane and off the ground as quickly as possible. We boarded the plane somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-2:30. The pilot told us we just needed to wait for the wings to be de-iced and then boom, we were off. We then proceeded to wait at the gate for two and a half hours for the de-icing trucks to get to us. They finally did, and we made our way out to the runway. Just as we were excited to be taking off, the wind blew so hard we couldn't see out one side of the plane and they couldn't tell if the wing was still clear enough to take off. The pilot announced that we would go back to the gate and de-ice again. We pulled up to the gate and the pilot once again came over the loud speaker. The tower had decided that it was not practical, given the weather, to try and take off again. The flight was cancelled. We had now been on board for over 3 hours. The pilot assured us that a ticket agent would be outside when we got off the plane to help us with booking a new flight.
This was not the case.
Finally, when I got to baggage claim and hadn't seen a single Northwest employee, I went into the baggage claim office to inquire about this aforementioned helpful ticket agent. The woman in there looked at me like I was insane and said, "no, you just call a number and book yourself a new flight." I resisted the urge to strangle her and asked politely for the number. She told me to find myself a piece of paper and something to write with (so helpful) and told me the number. I went outside the ticket office, called the number and was promptly told, "Oh, there is no way to get you out of Boston tomorrow. Everything is totally booked." I'm not ashamed to tell you that at this point I had a complete and total meltdown. I was standing in the middle of baggage claim, on the phone with this woman, crying so hard I could barely talk and reaching a level bordering on hysterical when I said to her, "My friend is getting married in Michigan on SATURDAY. I am in the wedding. I HAVE to be there. YOU HAVE TO GET ME THERE." Meanwhile, thoughts of missing Amy's wedding and ruining her day by being one bridesmaid short are spinning through my head along with flashbacks of the nightmare I'd had a few weeks before in which I was physically prevented from making it to the wedding. This did not help the crying. I started pleading with the woman on the phone, "Can't you get me into Cleveland or Chicago or somewhere CLOSE? If you can get me close I can get the rest of the way there." The woman explained that everything in the Great Lakes area goes through Detroit. The only way she could get me to that wedding was if I could fly out of a different airport. There was nothing in Providence. Nothing in Manchester. Finally, she found me a 12:30pm flight out of Hartford, CT on Friday. I do not have a car, which she was pretty unsympathetic about. She suggested I just call a friend and get them to drive me on a work day. She did not understand why this was not a reasonable choice. However, failure was simply not an option at this point. I told her to book the flight and I would figure out some way to get there.
I got my bags and boarded the first rental car shuttle bus that pulled up to the terminal. I rode this Enterprise bus with a very nice little family from Australia who had an adorable baby and kept giving me concerned looks because I was the crazy American girl who couldn't stop crying. We got to Enterprise and I asked if they had anything available even though I didn't have a reservation. They said they did. I asked if it was ok for me to rent the car in Boston and leave it in Hartford. The guy said I could do it, but they don't really do one-way rentals so there would be a $200 drop fee in addition to the rental charge. I had a mini heart attack thinking about how much this would cost me, but I told him I didn't really have a choice. This extremely sympathetic and friendly man told me that National car rental does do one-way rentals, so I should call them and see if they have anything available before I committed to this Enterprise thing. He gave me the number, and sure enough they had something for me. The woman said the rate would be $160. I said, "That's fine. Hold it for me, I'll be right there!" I got back on the Enterprise shuttle bus, headed back to the airport. And proceeded to get stuck in the snow on Route 1. I'm happy to tell you that we weren't stuck for more than a few minutes before the driver managed to get us unstuck. I got back to the airport, hopped on a National shuttle bus, and made it over there. I walked up to the counter, found the woman I had spoken to on the phone, and....
...paid $280 for a rental car that I would have for less than 24 hours. To be perfectly honest with you, at that point money was no object. They could have charged me $700 for that car and I would have taken it. Nothing was stopping me from getting to this wedding. I went out to the parking lot, selected a Pontiac G6 from the choices available (because it had the least amount of snow on it). I got in the car, got it started up, a little man from National helped me clear it off, and I couldn't get it out of the parking space. My little friend got in and rocked the car back and forth until he was able to get it out, I jumped in and was on my way.
I should tell you that at this point I had been almost continually on the phone with my mom and with Amy, keeping them updated minute by minute on my progress with getting to Michigan. I was upset, I was crying, I know for a fact it was impossible to understand at least half of what I was saying. I kept thinking about how I was ruining Amy's wedding and I hated the snow. Once I got my rental car, however, I started to calm down. I thought to myself, if nothing else, I am now in control of my own destiny. I have this car, I can get where I need to go.
Or so I thought.
I drove to Winthrop and as I was making my way into town, I noticed a flashing blue light. A very bright flashing blue light. A blue light that you can't miss. A blue light signaling that there was a parking ban on the streets because of the snow. Which meant I'd have to find a parking space in a lot somewhere. However, because basically all of Boston had shut down several hours previously and I'd spent 7 hours trying to get on a flight, get in the air, get a rental car, etc. there were no spaces to be had. Beyond that, I couldn't even get on my street if I wanted to. The plows hadn't made it that far yet. At this point I tried to call Sacha to see if I could park by his house and sleep on his floor. However, Sacha is a swim coach who had practice and was unable to take my call. I tried to call Toni who was supposed to be in town to ask her the same question. However, Toni was currently in her car experiencing what it's like when a snowstorm makes a 6 hour drive a 12 hour drive so she was clearly unavailable. I tried to call Suneil, who did not pick up his phone (not unusual). I am once again getting desperate and crazy, and to add to my long list of issues, the wipers on the rental car kept getting covered in ice so that I couldn't see out the windshield. I pulled into a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot (thankfully cleared, not full of cars, but also not an option to leave the car). I cleaned the wipers, checked my cell phone and saw that my mom had called. I hadn't spoken to her since about an hour before when I said I was actually getting a rental car and I'd call her when I was safely back home. I explained to her the situation that I was now in, and my thoughts on it which boiled down to this, "I just want to go home and have a really big drink! And I want my mom!!!" As you can see, I revert further and further back into childhood as this story goes on.
I decided at that point that I would just drive to the Target that's about 5 minutes away from my house because at least I could sit there for awhile until I figured something out. I got to Target and at this point my cell phone pretty much died. That ended up not quite being the crisis situation it could have been because I have two cell phones. One for work, one for personal use. I switched to my work phone while I continued to cry to Amy at this point. But then, using this phone I had a bright idea. I would swallow what very little pride I had left and call my boss. I got her on the phone and gave her my whole sob story and finished with something incredibly dramatic along the lines of, "And now I have nowhere to go!" She told me to calm down, to go into Target and wander around or get something to eat and she'd come to get me, I could follow her to her house, put my car in her driveway and sleep there that night. I thanked her profusely, apologized for being so pathetic that I had to call her, and went into Target. Where I called Amy back and proceeded to cry in Target. I mean, what's the use of dignity, anyway? :) I apologized for stressing her out two days before her wedding, but Amy was suprisingly and admirably calm through all this. She said she was totally fine, I wasn't stressing her out, she just felt bad for me. Honestly, one of us freaking out was probably enough.
Fairly soon my kindhearted boss came to retrieve me and I followed her to her house. By this time (approximately 9pm) the snow had stopped and the roads were fairly clear. We made it to her house without incident, she sent me upstairs to take a shower and put my pajamas on while she did a little shoveling of snow, she fed me dinner, gave me some wine and talked to me about things other than air travel which helped me to calm down. I didn't sleep much (big surprise there) and then in the morning she made me pancakes and eggs, let me borrow her GPS unit and got me on my way. I think it's safe to say I have one of the nicest and most understanding bosses ever.
I was off on my way to Hartford at this point, shortly before 7am on Friday. It took a little over two and a half hours to get there, which wasn't too bad considering we'd gotten 10 inches of snow in 5 hours the day before and I was driving during the morning commute. I dropped the rental car off in sunny Hartford, caught the shuttle to the terminal and got myself up to the ticket counter. I'm guessing it was because of the special circumstances and the booking of my ticket over the phone, but I was unable to do the e-check in. I got the attention of a ticket agent, gave her my confirmation number and ID and she set about looking for me in the system to print my boarding pass. It took a good 15 minutes for her to find me. 15 minutes in which I had what felt like a minor heart attack thinking I would not get on yet another flight to Michigan. Luckily (can you really say 'luckily' at this point?) they found me and I was good to go. It was pretty astonishing how many people flying out of Hartford were completely unfamiliar with the 3oz containers in a plastic bag rule. It took forever to get through security. Of course, I showed up two and a half hours early for my flight, so I wasn't that concerned about it. When the TSA guy asked me if I had any liquids in my bag and I said no, he breathed a sigh of relief and said, "oh thank God." I'm pretty sure he wasn't having the greatest day either.
I got on the plane, got into Detroit, got my bags, got to my parents' house, got ready, packed up the car and managed to make it to Saginaw just in time for the rehearsal dinner at 7. At which time I had a big drink and finally started to relax. Looking back I still can't believe all the things that went wrong and almost prevented me from making it there. Wow. I can't believe I didn't pick the noon flight on Thursday, I could kick myself.
There was a short time when I thought I wouldn't be able to get back to Boston on Sunday due to the snow situation in Michigan and the ice storm that was supposed to be hitting the East Coast. In the end we took off an hour late, got slowed down twice in the air, landed an hour and a half later than scheduled in Boston, had to wait 20 minutes to get off the plane because the jetway broke, and the bags took a really REALLY long time coming off the carousel. In other words, it was practically a perfect flight in comparison.
And now I am back, still totally sleep deprived, and in desperate need of a way to stop having flashbacks from Thursday that cause massive anxiety, but all in all I'm just happy to be here.
If you can top that story, please don't tell me. I don't need anything beyond this experience to make me nervous when flying in the future. I'm nervous enough in general. :)
My schedule for the weekend was as follows:
Thursday: leave work early, fly to Detroit, have some holiday fun with the fam
Friday: head to Midland in the morning, help Amy get ready for the big day
Saturday: Wedding
Sunday: Back to hang out with the fam for a bit before flying out of Detroit at 5pm
Anyone who tracks the weather can probably see where this is going. And now the tale begins...
Thursday morning I woke up, packed all my last minute belongings and was on my way. Got on the bus, no problem. Got on the blue line, no problem. Got to Government Center, saw the ridiculous amount of people on the platform, thought to myself "this can't be good" and decided to walk the last three or four blocks to work (typically I take the green line a couple stops, particularly when it's cold and I'm carrying luggage). Upon approaching the corner of Tremont and Boylston (where I usually get off the T) I see a collection of fire trucks and ambulances. This is because two trains had crashed into each other. This really has nothing to do with the rest of the story, it just goes to show how my morning was already on shaky ground. I got to work with plenty of time to spare (and even made a CVS stop on the way). I signed on to nwa.com to check in for my flight and see that next to my flight status it says "Cancelled." This does not make me even remotely happy. They had scheduled me for a flight out of Boston at 6am on Friday morning, but I wanted to get there THURSDAY! I had plans! I do not like it when my plans get messed with. There was an option to choose from more flights, so I clicked that and there was one leaving at noon, another leaving at 2:30. Both of those were a go, and they were on schedule. If I picked the noon flight, I would have had to leave work right then and I felt bad about that so I picked the 2:30. This would prove to be a monumental mistake.
I left work, got to the airport, through security, to the gate in record time. The sky was still clear. Right up until I sat down at about 12:45 and it started snowing. Within 20 minutes it was snowing very very hard. The plane coming in from Detroit landed safely and the ticket agents assured us that they were working to get us on the plane and off the ground as quickly as possible. We boarded the plane somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-2:30. The pilot told us we just needed to wait for the wings to be de-iced and then boom, we were off. We then proceeded to wait at the gate for two and a half hours for the de-icing trucks to get to us. They finally did, and we made our way out to the runway. Just as we were excited to be taking off, the wind blew so hard we couldn't see out one side of the plane and they couldn't tell if the wing was still clear enough to take off. The pilot announced that we would go back to the gate and de-ice again. We pulled up to the gate and the pilot once again came over the loud speaker. The tower had decided that it was not practical, given the weather, to try and take off again. The flight was cancelled. We had now been on board for over 3 hours. The pilot assured us that a ticket agent would be outside when we got off the plane to help us with booking a new flight.
This was not the case.
Finally, when I got to baggage claim and hadn't seen a single Northwest employee, I went into the baggage claim office to inquire about this aforementioned helpful ticket agent. The woman in there looked at me like I was insane and said, "no, you just call a number and book yourself a new flight." I resisted the urge to strangle her and asked politely for the number. She told me to find myself a piece of paper and something to write with (so helpful) and told me the number. I went outside the ticket office, called the number and was promptly told, "Oh, there is no way to get you out of Boston tomorrow. Everything is totally booked." I'm not ashamed to tell you that at this point I had a complete and total meltdown. I was standing in the middle of baggage claim, on the phone with this woman, crying so hard I could barely talk and reaching a level bordering on hysterical when I said to her, "My friend is getting married in Michigan on SATURDAY. I am in the wedding. I HAVE to be there. YOU HAVE TO GET ME THERE." Meanwhile, thoughts of missing Amy's wedding and ruining her day by being one bridesmaid short are spinning through my head along with flashbacks of the nightmare I'd had a few weeks before in which I was physically prevented from making it to the wedding. This did not help the crying. I started pleading with the woman on the phone, "Can't you get me into Cleveland or Chicago or somewhere CLOSE? If you can get me close I can get the rest of the way there." The woman explained that everything in the Great Lakes area goes through Detroit. The only way she could get me to that wedding was if I could fly out of a different airport. There was nothing in Providence. Nothing in Manchester. Finally, she found me a 12:30pm flight out of Hartford, CT on Friday. I do not have a car, which she was pretty unsympathetic about. She suggested I just call a friend and get them to drive me on a work day. She did not understand why this was not a reasonable choice. However, failure was simply not an option at this point. I told her to book the flight and I would figure out some way to get there.
I got my bags and boarded the first rental car shuttle bus that pulled up to the terminal. I rode this Enterprise bus with a very nice little family from Australia who had an adorable baby and kept giving me concerned looks because I was the crazy American girl who couldn't stop crying. We got to Enterprise and I asked if they had anything available even though I didn't have a reservation. They said they did. I asked if it was ok for me to rent the car in Boston and leave it in Hartford. The guy said I could do it, but they don't really do one-way rentals so there would be a $200 drop fee in addition to the rental charge. I had a mini heart attack thinking about how much this would cost me, but I told him I didn't really have a choice. This extremely sympathetic and friendly man told me that National car rental does do one-way rentals, so I should call them and see if they have anything available before I committed to this Enterprise thing. He gave me the number, and sure enough they had something for me. The woman said the rate would be $160. I said, "That's fine. Hold it for me, I'll be right there!" I got back on the Enterprise shuttle bus, headed back to the airport. And proceeded to get stuck in the snow on Route 1. I'm happy to tell you that we weren't stuck for more than a few minutes before the driver managed to get us unstuck. I got back to the airport, hopped on a National shuttle bus, and made it over there. I walked up to the counter, found the woman I had spoken to on the phone, and....
...paid $280 for a rental car that I would have for less than 24 hours. To be perfectly honest with you, at that point money was no object. They could have charged me $700 for that car and I would have taken it. Nothing was stopping me from getting to this wedding. I went out to the parking lot, selected a Pontiac G6 from the choices available (because it had the least amount of snow on it). I got in the car, got it started up, a little man from National helped me clear it off, and I couldn't get it out of the parking space. My little friend got in and rocked the car back and forth until he was able to get it out, I jumped in and was on my way.
I should tell you that at this point I had been almost continually on the phone with my mom and with Amy, keeping them updated minute by minute on my progress with getting to Michigan. I was upset, I was crying, I know for a fact it was impossible to understand at least half of what I was saying. I kept thinking about how I was ruining Amy's wedding and I hated the snow. Once I got my rental car, however, I started to calm down. I thought to myself, if nothing else, I am now in control of my own destiny. I have this car, I can get where I need to go.
Or so I thought.
I drove to Winthrop and as I was making my way into town, I noticed a flashing blue light. A very bright flashing blue light. A blue light that you can't miss. A blue light signaling that there was a parking ban on the streets because of the snow. Which meant I'd have to find a parking space in a lot somewhere. However, because basically all of Boston had shut down several hours previously and I'd spent 7 hours trying to get on a flight, get in the air, get a rental car, etc. there were no spaces to be had. Beyond that, I couldn't even get on my street if I wanted to. The plows hadn't made it that far yet. At this point I tried to call Sacha to see if I could park by his house and sleep on his floor. However, Sacha is a swim coach who had practice and was unable to take my call. I tried to call Toni who was supposed to be in town to ask her the same question. However, Toni was currently in her car experiencing what it's like when a snowstorm makes a 6 hour drive a 12 hour drive so she was clearly unavailable. I tried to call Suneil, who did not pick up his phone (not unusual). I am once again getting desperate and crazy, and to add to my long list of issues, the wipers on the rental car kept getting covered in ice so that I couldn't see out the windshield. I pulled into a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot (thankfully cleared, not full of cars, but also not an option to leave the car). I cleaned the wipers, checked my cell phone and saw that my mom had called. I hadn't spoken to her since about an hour before when I said I was actually getting a rental car and I'd call her when I was safely back home. I explained to her the situation that I was now in, and my thoughts on it which boiled down to this, "I just want to go home and have a really big drink! And I want my mom!!!" As you can see, I revert further and further back into childhood as this story goes on.
I decided at that point that I would just drive to the Target that's about 5 minutes away from my house because at least I could sit there for awhile until I figured something out. I got to Target and at this point my cell phone pretty much died. That ended up not quite being the crisis situation it could have been because I have two cell phones. One for work, one for personal use. I switched to my work phone while I continued to cry to Amy at this point. But then, using this phone I had a bright idea. I would swallow what very little pride I had left and call my boss. I got her on the phone and gave her my whole sob story and finished with something incredibly dramatic along the lines of, "And now I have nowhere to go!" She told me to calm down, to go into Target and wander around or get something to eat and she'd come to get me, I could follow her to her house, put my car in her driveway and sleep there that night. I thanked her profusely, apologized for being so pathetic that I had to call her, and went into Target. Where I called Amy back and proceeded to cry in Target. I mean, what's the use of dignity, anyway? :) I apologized for stressing her out two days before her wedding, but Amy was suprisingly and admirably calm through all this. She said she was totally fine, I wasn't stressing her out, she just felt bad for me. Honestly, one of us freaking out was probably enough.
Fairly soon my kindhearted boss came to retrieve me and I followed her to her house. By this time (approximately 9pm) the snow had stopped and the roads were fairly clear. We made it to her house without incident, she sent me upstairs to take a shower and put my pajamas on while she did a little shoveling of snow, she fed me dinner, gave me some wine and talked to me about things other than air travel which helped me to calm down. I didn't sleep much (big surprise there) and then in the morning she made me pancakes and eggs, let me borrow her GPS unit and got me on my way. I think it's safe to say I have one of the nicest and most understanding bosses ever.
I was off on my way to Hartford at this point, shortly before 7am on Friday. It took a little over two and a half hours to get there, which wasn't too bad considering we'd gotten 10 inches of snow in 5 hours the day before and I was driving during the morning commute. I dropped the rental car off in sunny Hartford, caught the shuttle to the terminal and got myself up to the ticket counter. I'm guessing it was because of the special circumstances and the booking of my ticket over the phone, but I was unable to do the e-check in. I got the attention of a ticket agent, gave her my confirmation number and ID and she set about looking for me in the system to print my boarding pass. It took a good 15 minutes for her to find me. 15 minutes in which I had what felt like a minor heart attack thinking I would not get on yet another flight to Michigan. Luckily (can you really say 'luckily' at this point?) they found me and I was good to go. It was pretty astonishing how many people flying out of Hartford were completely unfamiliar with the 3oz containers in a plastic bag rule. It took forever to get through security. Of course, I showed up two and a half hours early for my flight, so I wasn't that concerned about it. When the TSA guy asked me if I had any liquids in my bag and I said no, he breathed a sigh of relief and said, "oh thank God." I'm pretty sure he wasn't having the greatest day either.
I got on the plane, got into Detroit, got my bags, got to my parents' house, got ready, packed up the car and managed to make it to Saginaw just in time for the rehearsal dinner at 7. At which time I had a big drink and finally started to relax. Looking back I still can't believe all the things that went wrong and almost prevented me from making it there. Wow. I can't believe I didn't pick the noon flight on Thursday, I could kick myself.
There was a short time when I thought I wouldn't be able to get back to Boston on Sunday due to the snow situation in Michigan and the ice storm that was supposed to be hitting the East Coast. In the end we took off an hour late, got slowed down twice in the air, landed an hour and a half later than scheduled in Boston, had to wait 20 minutes to get off the plane because the jetway broke, and the bags took a really REALLY long time coming off the carousel. In other words, it was practically a perfect flight in comparison.
And now I am back, still totally sleep deprived, and in desperate need of a way to stop having flashbacks from Thursday that cause massive anxiety, but all in all I'm just happy to be here.
If you can top that story, please don't tell me. I don't need anything beyond this experience to make me nervous when flying in the future. I'm nervous enough in general. :)
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Random Boston Stories
Today, for your reading pleasure, I have stories of things very Bostony. Well, probably city in general, but mostly stuff that stands out to me for one reason or another as being different from where I spent the first 25 years of my life.
First, as I have now lived here for about a year and a half and ride public transportation every day, I've definitely noticed that I see people who remind me so strongly of someone I know back home that it led to the "Everyone has a Boston Twin" theory. It's pretty amazing. I won't go through the whole list or anything, but hardly a week goes by where I don't think to myself, "wow, that person looks/walks/acts/dresses exactly like _______." It's a fun little game I play when I don't have a book with me and I'm not pretending to sleep on the train so people won't talk to me. A large part of my energy goes to trying to make sure people don't talk to me on public transportation. That's the main reason I don't knit in public. There are some crazy people riding the train and I don't really feel like I need to draw that much attention to myself. Not to mention there just isn't any room during rush hour and I don't want to get punched in the face.
Second, last night I was walking to the train and I was stopped at a light when this person came up to me and tried to make me take a magazine on which the main headline was "Is the Devil inYour Laptop?" They guy attempting to dupe me into taking this magazine then launched into an explanation of how Bill Gates is training terrorists to take over this country and that all these shootings and acts of violence committed by teenagers seen in the news are because Bill Gates is programming their minds with video games and it's all a very carefully and elaborately planned coup. I think he got pretty mad at me when the light changed and I just shook my head, said "no thanks" and walked to the station. He called after me, "are you kidding? Don't you see what he's doing? He's training soldiers!" I was lucky enough to dodge his companion on the next corner trying to give out the same materials. This story leads me to...
Third, within the last year they started publishing a second subway newspaper in Boston. There's always been the Metro, which you can get off a stand for free as you're walking into the subway so you have something to read on the train. As you can imagine, you always find these things laying around because heaven forbid the person who takes and reads the paper actually put it in the garbage. That's just asking too much. Anyway, not the point. I can't remember exactly when this started, but at this point it seems like an eternity ago, a second paper called Boston Now started appearing. Only Boston Now comes with people who stand at every entrance, exit and sometimes inside the stations. They practically shove the paper in your face and shout "FREE BOSTON NOW, GET YOUR FREE BOSTON NOW!" They do not like to take no for an answer, and now a portion of my energy that went toward ensuring that nobody talks to me on public transportation has to be diverted into trying to avoid these Boston Now people. It's a tricky commute, I'm telling you.
Fourth, this afternoon we had a bit of excitement. At one point in the afternoon the Boston Police Department blocked off the street outside my office and surrounded a silver Explorer. At this point, we obviously needed to get to the bottom of this. Turns out that it was an operation in which they were recovering a stolen car (the Explorer) and apprehending the thief (the driver). They had like 5 police cars and a box truck deal to put the suspect in. It was pretty cool.
So there you have it. This is the most interesting thing I could come up with. :)
First, as I have now lived here for about a year and a half and ride public transportation every day, I've definitely noticed that I see people who remind me so strongly of someone I know back home that it led to the "Everyone has a Boston Twin" theory. It's pretty amazing. I won't go through the whole list or anything, but hardly a week goes by where I don't think to myself, "wow, that person looks/walks/acts/dresses exactly like _______." It's a fun little game I play when I don't have a book with me and I'm not pretending to sleep on the train so people won't talk to me. A large part of my energy goes to trying to make sure people don't talk to me on public transportation. That's the main reason I don't knit in public. There are some crazy people riding the train and I don't really feel like I need to draw that much attention to myself. Not to mention there just isn't any room during rush hour and I don't want to get punched in the face.
Second, last night I was walking to the train and I was stopped at a light when this person came up to me and tried to make me take a magazine on which the main headline was "Is the Devil inYour Laptop?" They guy attempting to dupe me into taking this magazine then launched into an explanation of how Bill Gates is training terrorists to take over this country and that all these shootings and acts of violence committed by teenagers seen in the news are because Bill Gates is programming their minds with video games and it's all a very carefully and elaborately planned coup. I think he got pretty mad at me when the light changed and I just shook my head, said "no thanks" and walked to the station. He called after me, "are you kidding? Don't you see what he's doing? He's training soldiers!" I was lucky enough to dodge his companion on the next corner trying to give out the same materials. This story leads me to...
Third, within the last year they started publishing a second subway newspaper in Boston. There's always been the Metro, which you can get off a stand for free as you're walking into the subway so you have something to read on the train. As you can imagine, you always find these things laying around because heaven forbid the person who takes and reads the paper actually put it in the garbage. That's just asking too much. Anyway, not the point. I can't remember exactly when this started, but at this point it seems like an eternity ago, a second paper called Boston Now started appearing. Only Boston Now comes with people who stand at every entrance, exit and sometimes inside the stations. They practically shove the paper in your face and shout "FREE BOSTON NOW, GET YOUR FREE BOSTON NOW!" They do not like to take no for an answer, and now a portion of my energy that went toward ensuring that nobody talks to me on public transportation has to be diverted into trying to avoid these Boston Now people. It's a tricky commute, I'm telling you.
Fourth, this afternoon we had a bit of excitement. At one point in the afternoon the Boston Police Department blocked off the street outside my office and surrounded a silver Explorer. At this point, we obviously needed to get to the bottom of this. Turns out that it was an operation in which they were recovering a stolen car (the Explorer) and apprehending the thief (the driver). They had like 5 police cars and a box truck deal to put the suspect in. It was pretty cool.
So there you have it. This is the most interesting thing I could come up with. :)
Monday, December 10, 2007
Finally!
So finally, after all this time I've had this thing-which-shall-not-be-called-the-name-I-don't like, they have made it possible to just have a profile picture uploaded from your computer instead of the overly complicated put one on the internet, paste the web address here, but good luck doing that because you're clearly not smart enough to figure out how to make that work. I was clearly not smart enough to make that other way work. But this is my profile picture du jour (myspace, facebook, etc). So in case you forgot what I look like (or are stumbling upon this for the first time and reading it) here I am. And yes, I know that's pretty small, so here I am again:
I had an action packed weekend (not really). I got up bright and early on Saturday because I had to go into the city to get my "hair did" and on Saturdays the bus runs much less frequently so it was quite a process to get there. Anyway, I was up and ready at 8:30 on Saturday morning, which is a very unusual thing for me, and there's a knock on my door. It was a couple of gentlemen looking to replace some windows in my apartment. Windows that "will be replaced within the next week" since August. I mean, I guess way to go on getting them in just befor-er at the beginning of the cold weather so everything is sealed properly, but seriously? Does it really take 4 months to get some window guys together? I'm not even going to count the fact that these windows were going to be replaced before I even moved in. A year and a half ago. Anyway, beside the point. These guys were perfectly nice and I was happy to have my windows replaced, but if I had not already needed to be up for this hair appointment, I would have been mighty unhappy about the door knocking at 8:30am on Saturday.
Yesterday I cleaned my apartment (no one is more surprised by this than I am), did some cooking and got totally hooked on this British TV show called MI-5 that I saw in the Watch Instantly section on netflix. This is a GREAT show, part of my belief system that everything is better with a British accent...and the main guy (at least for the first two seasons) is the guy that played Mr. Darcy in the most recent version of Pride & Prejudice. He's pretty unbelievably good looking, and he looks even better with short hair and a wardrobe from this century. He's quickly rising up into the ranks of the Cutest Men Ever. See?
And in the ongoing saga of Andrea's socks, here is the progress on the spiral:
Now, I know you're not thinking that in a week I've knit like 20 rows total, and you're right! One complete sock and one almost finished sock! The end is in sight!
And now I'm off to finish whitening my teeth in two hours. This stuff is pretty cool, and it's not hurting my teeth, which is pretty amazing. My teeth are pretty sensitive. The trick now is to try and avoid anything that could stain them between now and Saturday. On second thought, maybe this could've waited until Wednesday or Thursday... oh well
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
A Compromised Rant
Do you ever have a day when you're going about your business, life as usual and then suddenly, for whatever reason (or no reason at all) you're just frustrated, cranky, antisocial and the only thing you want to do is go home, put on your pajamas and not talk to another person for fear that you might unleash the fury on them? Today is that day for me. The trigger for this was when I had to go up to the front counter when "that guy" came in. "That guy" who is ALWAYS rude, ALWAYS mad about something, thinks he is entitled to get WHATEVER he wants and is seemingly incapable of solving any problems or issues that arise in any other way than getting hopping mad and yelling at people. The one good thing I can say about this guy is that his group is moving out of our building and it can't come soon enough. His encounter with our office today only involved me for about 30 seconds, but his whole presence here put me in a bad mood and my stomach is in knots just thinking about it.
I can admit that I'm probably unreasonably upset about this stupid guy and I should be able to just let it go, but I don't really see that happening. I went about reading other people's blogs about happy things to try and calm myself, went to ESPN to read up on the amazing trade the Tigers just made (yay!), checked out articles by my favorite writers, caught up on my TV and entertainment news, checked out stuff on facebook, all to no avail. I've also noticed that once I'm mad about one thing, pretty soon every other thing that makes me mad comes into focus and I become an anger ball (thank you, Playing By Heart). So I decided that I would unleash the fury into the void that is the world wide web. However, I feel bad about doing it. I'm pretty sure there's very little that I should actually complain about/get mad about/etc. Now, since I know myself well enough to know that I'm never going to become a completely easy-going, troubles roll off my back kind of girl, I thought I could at least temper the ranting with a few positive things.
Thing that makes me smile #1: I get to partake in the wonder of delivered groceries today. I know I've mentioned this before, but I'm not sure I was able to impress upon you how great of a thing I think home delivery is for groceries. You don't have to carve out a section of your day to wander through the supermarket with its headache-inducing lighting, loud people, and carts everywhere. You do have to carve out a time to be at home for the delivery folks to bring your stuff, but you can just pick a time when you would be home anyway and it's not inconvenient. You also don't have to lug them around yourself, the nice delivery people bring them right up to your door, put them down in your kitchen and all you have to do is put everything away! It's great! And it's really not that expensive, particularly when you start factoring in the convenience. And, if you're me, the fact that you don't have a car so you can only buy as many groceries as you can haul around with you walking, on the train and on the bus. The delivery guys can carry way more than I can.
Crazy rant #2: Last year my office put me in charge of decorating for the holidays. I put together what I thought was a pretty nice presentation, I spent a lot of time on it, it was carefully planned and in the two weeks following, people were up in arms about how terrible we were and anti-Christian, blah blah blah blah blah. So we took part of it down and while people still continued to complain, it got better. This year we decided to go minimalist. A couple of nice wreaths, some garlands. Festive, but not offensive (I hope). I will tell you that time got a little bit away from me this week and the decorations have not made it up quite yet. They're going up tomorrow. All week we've had people calling and walking in to ask where the holiday decorations are, when are we putting them up, what are we putting up, we better put something up because the building looks very dreary. I would like to know why these people have so much time on their hands to be that concerned about it. I know there will be complaints as soon as the decorations go up that there aren't enough/someone is offended/we're ruining Christmas. I shouldn't take it personally, but it gets tough not to after awhile. And in the meantime it totally destroys my Christmas spirit.
Thing that makes me smile #2: I'm getting my hair done this weekend! I love love love to get my hair done. I look forward to the day when I can legitimately become one of those little old ladies who goes to the hairdresser every week to get her hair done and knows everything aobut her stylist and even talks about her/him as though they were the closest of friends. It's so relaxing and refreshing. And this weekend I'm getting both a cut and a dye, which is even better. I'll just sit and relax and it'll be great. And my hair will be freshly darkened for Amy's wedding, which I'm pretty excited about. I'm telling you, dying your hair dark becomes an obsession. And I'm never convinced that it's dark enough.
Ok, well this little experiment isn't working as well as I thought. It was for a minute, but then something else came up that set me off all over again. So I think I'll just leave it at that and hope that the end of the week will turn out better than the beginning.
I can admit that I'm probably unreasonably upset about this stupid guy and I should be able to just let it go, but I don't really see that happening. I went about reading other people's blogs about happy things to try and calm myself, went to ESPN to read up on the amazing trade the Tigers just made (yay!), checked out articles by my favorite writers, caught up on my TV and entertainment news, checked out stuff on facebook, all to no avail. I've also noticed that once I'm mad about one thing, pretty soon every other thing that makes me mad comes into focus and I become an anger ball (thank you, Playing By Heart). So I decided that I would unleash the fury into the void that is the world wide web. However, I feel bad about doing it. I'm pretty sure there's very little that I should actually complain about/get mad about/etc. Now, since I know myself well enough to know that I'm never going to become a completely easy-going, troubles roll off my back kind of girl, I thought I could at least temper the ranting with a few positive things.
Thing that makes me smile #1: I get to partake in the wonder of delivered groceries today. I know I've mentioned this before, but I'm not sure I was able to impress upon you how great of a thing I think home delivery is for groceries. You don't have to carve out a section of your day to wander through the supermarket with its headache-inducing lighting, loud people, and carts everywhere. You do have to carve out a time to be at home for the delivery folks to bring your stuff, but you can just pick a time when you would be home anyway and it's not inconvenient. You also don't have to lug them around yourself, the nice delivery people bring them right up to your door, put them down in your kitchen and all you have to do is put everything away! It's great! And it's really not that expensive, particularly when you start factoring in the convenience. And, if you're me, the fact that you don't have a car so you can only buy as many groceries as you can haul around with you walking, on the train and on the bus. The delivery guys can carry way more than I can.
Crazy rant #2: Last year my office put me in charge of decorating for the holidays. I put together what I thought was a pretty nice presentation, I spent a lot of time on it, it was carefully planned and in the two weeks following, people were up in arms about how terrible we were and anti-Christian, blah blah blah blah blah. So we took part of it down and while people still continued to complain, it got better. This year we decided to go minimalist. A couple of nice wreaths, some garlands. Festive, but not offensive (I hope). I will tell you that time got a little bit away from me this week and the decorations have not made it up quite yet. They're going up tomorrow. All week we've had people calling and walking in to ask where the holiday decorations are, when are we putting them up, what are we putting up, we better put something up because the building looks very dreary. I would like to know why these people have so much time on their hands to be that concerned about it. I know there will be complaints as soon as the decorations go up that there aren't enough/someone is offended/we're ruining Christmas. I shouldn't take it personally, but it gets tough not to after awhile. And in the meantime it totally destroys my Christmas spirit.
Thing that makes me smile #2: I'm getting my hair done this weekend! I love love love to get my hair done. I look forward to the day when I can legitimately become one of those little old ladies who goes to the hairdresser every week to get her hair done and knows everything aobut her stylist and even talks about her/him as though they were the closest of friends. It's so relaxing and refreshing. And this weekend I'm getting both a cut and a dye, which is even better. I'll just sit and relax and it'll be great. And my hair will be freshly darkened for Amy's wedding, which I'm pretty excited about. I'm telling you, dying your hair dark becomes an obsession. And I'm never convinced that it's dark enough.
Ok, well this little experiment isn't working as well as I thought. It was for a minute, but then something else came up that set me off all over again. So I think I'll just leave it at that and hope that the end of the week will turn out better than the beginning.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
A Stroke of Genius
It's official, I'm pretty amazing. Just in case you were in doubt before. So as you may recall, I was/am knitting these socks for Andrea (right now she's reading this, shaking her head saying "oh geez, what now Jessie? I'm never gonna see these things, am I?) but I didn't really like them. I showed them to her over Thanksgiving and she said she thought they were fine and she looked forward to wearing them. I continued on with the knitting of them, but the longer the cuff got, the more awkward and cumbersom it became and the less I liked even looking at it, let alone working on it. Then today I had a stroke of genius (hence the title). The reason I wasn't a fan was because it was just too much. Too busy, too eh. So I thought to myself, simplify! I came up with this:
One full round of the Bamboo Stitch, and then a spiral of it up the rest of the cuff. One spiral from the front of the sock, and one from the back. Anyway, it might be hard to get the general idea since there's only half of one side finished, but I have high hopes. Let me just tell you, the picture in my head is pretty great.
The other thing I did today was to make myself a hat. Remember the hat that Grace made? Well, I completely fell in love with the yarn (which I think I talked about a couple days ago...but I'm too lazy to go back and check) so I bought several hanks, and this one is the hat I made for myself. My favorite color combo, brown and light blue (the colors actually look better in real life, but you know, cameras, lighting, etc). I should have taken into account the fact that my head is enormous and added a few stitches to it, but it works as long as I don't need for my hair to look great or anything.
My photography skills are exemplary. :)
In Which I Even Amaze Myself
Several things about yesterday that remind me just how cool I really am:
1. I walked to the post office to mail Grace's mittens, and I didn't bother changing out of my heels because I figured, I can walk, no problem (internal alarm should have gone off right there). Well, I didn't quite take into account the icy slush that was everywhere because Boston doesn't really believe in clearing sidewalks so they're not death traps. I managed not to fall, but I came pretty close at least 3 times. The icy slush was probably not helped by the fact that I'm very clumsy in general and I should always know better than to go outside in scary heels when the weather is not good.
2. I finally got to the post office (a block away), went to mail the mittens and realized that I didn't have Grace's address with me. And I couldn't get her on the phone. So really I went all that way for nothing. It's a good thing I was sending my Christmas cards and some netflix movies back, although there's a mailbox right outside my building that would have worked just fine. Obviously, I still haven't mailed the mittens.
3. On the way back from the post office I stopped to grab lunch for my boss and myself (me? I think it's myself... I know my mom will correct me if I'm wrong) at Au Bon Pain and they have all these little stacked packages of mixed nuts and lemon drops and the like at the cash register. While I was paying I managed to knock not one, not two, but three packages of mixed nuts to the floor. I'm pretty sure the cash register lady thinks I'm a huge freak. She's probably not wrong. :)
4. Back at the office, one of my coworkers tried to cram 25 pages into the electric hole punch, THEN read the note saying to only punch 10 pages at a time. By then he couldn't get the pages back out so I tried to help him. He held down the machine while I pulled on the paper. I pulled and pulled and finally pulled so hard that the paper came out at such a speed that I accidentally punched myself in the face. Hard. I don't have a bruise or anything (thank goodness) but I do have a nice little red spot on my cheek (it's still there, this happened around 4 yesterday).
5. Getting off the bus later that night, walking down my street (this time I did have my sneakers on) and almost fell on my bottom AGAIN. I caught myself, but man! I should not be allowed outside in bad weather. It's just not safe!
I'm almost afraid for today...
1. I walked to the post office to mail Grace's mittens, and I didn't bother changing out of my heels because I figured, I can walk, no problem (internal alarm should have gone off right there). Well, I didn't quite take into account the icy slush that was everywhere because Boston doesn't really believe in clearing sidewalks so they're not death traps. I managed not to fall, but I came pretty close at least 3 times. The icy slush was probably not helped by the fact that I'm very clumsy in general and I should always know better than to go outside in scary heels when the weather is not good.
2. I finally got to the post office (a block away), went to mail the mittens and realized that I didn't have Grace's address with me. And I couldn't get her on the phone. So really I went all that way for nothing. It's a good thing I was sending my Christmas cards and some netflix movies back, although there's a mailbox right outside my building that would have worked just fine. Obviously, I still haven't mailed the mittens.
3. On the way back from the post office I stopped to grab lunch for my boss and myself (me? I think it's myself... I know my mom will correct me if I'm wrong) at Au Bon Pain and they have all these little stacked packages of mixed nuts and lemon drops and the like at the cash register. While I was paying I managed to knock not one, not two, but three packages of mixed nuts to the floor. I'm pretty sure the cash register lady thinks I'm a huge freak. She's probably not wrong. :)
4. Back at the office, one of my coworkers tried to cram 25 pages into the electric hole punch, THEN read the note saying to only punch 10 pages at a time. By then he couldn't get the pages back out so I tried to help him. He held down the machine while I pulled on the paper. I pulled and pulled and finally pulled so hard that the paper came out at such a speed that I accidentally punched myself in the face. Hard. I don't have a bruise or anything (thank goodness) but I do have a nice little red spot on my cheek (it's still there, this happened around 4 yesterday).
5. Getting off the bus later that night, walking down my street (this time I did have my sneakers on) and almost fell on my bottom AGAIN. I caught myself, but man! I should not be allowed outside in bad weather. It's just not safe!
I'm almost afraid for today...
Monday, December 03, 2007
Holy crap it's December
I feel like I took a nap for a minute, woke up and it's December. I'm still waiting for the start of summer! This is a problem. It's more of a problem because Amy's wedding is right around the corner, Christmas will be hot on its heels and the suddenly BAM! it'll be 2008. I'm so unprepared. I am looking forward to the change in year, however. I prefer even numbered years to odd numbered. I pretty much prefer even numbered everything to odd numbered anything. I can't really explain it, I just feel more balanced. I have no idea what to do about Christmas presents and I'm pretty confident that I'll totally forget about them until like the 22nd and then it'll be panic button time (that's what happens every year). I start out in January telling myself that when I see something that I think someone I know would really love, I'll buy it and then hold onto it for their birthday or Christmas or whatever. I think this is a brilliant idea in theory, but the execution is still pretty elusive. Oh well, I guess it's not really supposed to be about the presents, is it? I think I'm all set for Amy's wedding, I'm just excited and nervous (weddings always make me nervous, I'm not sure why. I become a ball of anxiety until the actual wedding has taken place and it's picture time. And it's not like I have any reason for this, I've never been married. Figure that one out).
I had a jam packed weekend of excitement. OK, maybe not, but keep in mind it doesn't take a lot to keep me entertained. On Saturday Sacha called and said that he had just purchased Rock Band for XBox 360 and would I like to come over and play it? Rock Band (for those of you who may not know) is a video game that comes with a guitar, a drum set and a microphone. You can have a person playing each instrument (or singing) and then you play actual rock songs and get scored on accuracy. It's incredibly fun and highly addictive. We played it for 12 hours. No, I'm not exagerrating. When I went to sleep on Saturday night I was dreaming of little Rock Band notes running through my head. I can't wait to play it again. :) It's a very good thing that I don't have Sacha's entertainment system because I'm pretty sure nothing would ever get done around my house (well, even less than what gets done now). Unfortunately for the boys, they decided to give me the microphone at one point and that was pretty much a disaster. I love to sing, but I have a tragically horrible voice (anyone who has seen me do karaoke can attest to this). It doesn't really bother me, but they had to listen to me for like 3 hours. They might develop an inner ear problem, but I did warn them so I refuse any responsibilty for it.
Sunday I just watched movies and knit a pair of mittens for Grace. I think I'm coming down with a cold (thanks, Sam) and my plan had been to spend my whole weekend in bed letting my immune system do its thing (alas, the Rock Band), so Sunday that's pretty much what I tried to do. I believe I watched 3 and a half movies (the half was South Pacific, that's one of those movies I only watch up to a certain point and then I imagine the ending I would have preferred in my head. I have several movies I do that with). One of the movies I watched was Waitress which I had from Netflix, that movie was very excellent. I definitely recommend it! It made me want to eat what I believe was the Bad Baby Pie... rent the movie and find out what I mean. I'm seriously considering looking for a recipe. Which would lead to cooking. Whoa.
Anyway, about the mittens. I've never actually made mittens before, but I figured I can read and follow directions (mostly) so I could probably figure it out. I found a pattern online somewhere for bulky mittens (because I was knitting them out of Malabrigo Chunky, which I'm having a little love affair with at the moment) and read it and proceeded to think that it was a little bit silly so I used it as more of a reference guide to my own pattern. The finished result is this:
Which I hope will fit the intended recipient, despite a slight disagreement between us on the size of her hands. She thinks she has these giant beastie hands and I think she has hands quite similar to mine, just a little bit longer (because not everyone was "blessed" with short, stubby fingers like me) and probably narrower. So I made some mittens that are just a little bit too long for me and I imagine they should fit her. Time will tell, I have to mail them out today so I probably won't know the actual sizing until the end of the week.
On a completely unrelated topic, in an effort to avoid rush hour on the T Friday night I decided to go check out Enchanted right after work at the theater a block away. I. Loved. It. It was so cute and fun and it's one of those that I could just watch over and over. I wouldn't have thought this was possible, but Patrick Dempsey's cuteness factor went up even further after watching it. That's tough to do.
Finally, this weekend brought with it the return of my knitting notebook so I can finally finish the projects that I had already started. I left it at Toni's a few weeks ago and I feel like I've been without my security blanket. But all is right with the world now!
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