Christmas Trees

I am not the most emotionally stable person at the best of times, and the holiday season makes it that much worse. I try, but I'm not always able to be in good spirits. Christmas decorations do help, though! This tree was at the little cafe/bar across the street from our office. I don't normally participate in the Friday afternoon happy hour, but I did on Friday. I had one drink (a Bloody Mary), then got a Diet Coke for the road and headed home to Bob.

The second tree is in our common area at work. We had a "family lunch" at work on Friday. We're doing that about once a month, where one of the teams cooks lunch for the whole company. My team was on point last week; I made spinach dip (it was a big hit!), Aaron made tomato basil soup and Julia made vegetable soup, and Joey and Aaron teamed up to make grilled cheese sandwiches. Nicole made brownies for dessert. It was a great lunch and a lot of fun.

I think part of the fun was the interaction, i.e., the "short order cook" aspect. It wouldn't have been nearly as much fun if we had all just brought casseroles or something. I don't know what we'll do next time, but I'm sure we'll think of something interesting.

The third little tree was sitting on the kitchen counter at work. I don't remember it from last year, but it must have been on display somewhere, because it was apparently in the closet. Actually, for some reason I think this one started out as mine. I can't remember why, though. I just sort of vaguely remember feeling a little regretful that I had given it away, but I don't remember the circumstances.

I do have another little tree that I'll set up on my desk in my office this week. We never set up a tree at home until a lot closer to Christmas, since we will probably have a live tree. We leave it up until Epiphany, January 12th, so we don't want to get it too soon.

Later: I meant to mention that I kicked off the Christmas movie watching season with "Love Actually" on Sunday. Perhaps not the best thing to watch, since it always makes me cry, but in a good way. I also watched Men in Black 3, which didn't make me cry.

Thanksgiving/Birthday Weekend

I kind of like having my birthday around Thanksgiving. Sometimes my birthday is on Thanksgiving, sometimes it's a day before, or a day after, but either way it usually falls somewhere in the four-day weekend, which is nice.

My sister was going to her boyfriend's house for Thanksgiving along with her daughter and her husband, and my other sister, who lives in Denver, was going to her husband's family, and Bob had to work. So it was just my brother and his family and me. I was originally going to go over to his house, but since it was just the five of us, he asked my parents if we could go over there, and they agreed. They don't really want to go anywhere anymore, and also don't want to have a whole houseful of people, but it worked out all right.

We bought over all the food, and cleaned up afterwards, so they didn't have to do anything. We got to eat, and talk, and didn't stay very long, and it was really nice.

The rest of the weekend I just kind of did what I wanted. I got a pedicure on Black Friday, and did a very small amount of shopping. I went to Kohl's for the sole purpose of spending a $10 coupon that I had gotten in the mail, and I went to JoAnn and bought supplies for Christmas gifts using their Black Friday coupons, and that was about it.

I had lunch at Noodles & Co. with a free coupon that they sent me, got my free birthday Starbucks drink, got a free small sundae at Culver's ... that was a lot of fun!

On Monday Julia brought doughnuts in to work for my birthday, and about a half dozen of us went out to lunch. Dan bought my lunch. All in all, it was a pretty good birthday week!

Vacation

We went on a mini-vacation last week. Even though I never really worried about it before, I have been a little more cautious about posting that we're gone. I did post a few photos, though. We went to Lake Taneycomo, and stayed at the condo of a friend of Bob's, right on the lake. Bob fished and I slept, read, and knitted a tiny bit, not much. I mostly read.

I read a book a day:

Say You're Sorry, by Michael Robotham
The Vanishing Point, by Val McDermid
Face of Betrayal, by Lis Wiehl
Heart of Ice, by Lis Wiehl
Don't Breathe a Word, by Jennifer McMahon

They had a big, squishy, long leather couch, and I laid on it so that I looked out the sliding glass doors over the lake. I'd read until I got sleepy, then just fall asleep and take a little nap, then maybe wake up and read some more. It was heaven.

In the mornings I would sit on the deck with a glass of lemonade, and read out there, then when Bob came in from fishing, he would make me breakfast. Sometimes he would cook dinner--hotdogs or pork chops on the grill--and a couple of times we went in to town to get groceries. We went in for dinner a couple of times--once to Long John Silver's and once to Golden Corral.

That was pretty much the extent of the week--reading, eating and sleeping. It was perfect! I really had a great, relaxing time. Bob had some trouble with the boat motor, so he wasn't able to do as much of the kind of fishing he wanted to do, but it all worked out.





Today I am grateful for:

1. Getting a new phone at work
   
2. Finding a pattern that I want to stitch (I'll show it when I get a little bit done)
   
3. Leftover pizza for lunch (again!)
   
4. Getting to go on vacation
   
5. Lots of books to read!
   

A quiet Hallowe'en

Halloween was fun at the office. Dexter and Olive Oyl had matching outfits -- doggie skeletons with candy corn and treats floating around inside. Olive is sort of used to wearing clothes -- she has a little parka, and a couple of sweater vests in addition to the lobster Halloween costume she wore last year -- but I don't think Dexter ever had before. But he seemed to adapt pretty well.

I loved that when they made their rounds of the offices to get treats, it was like they were trick-or-treating. The only thing that would have made it better is if they would have had little plastic pumpkins to carry around in their mouths to collect their treats!

At the end of the day, Julia borrowed Dexter's costume for Ranger, since he and Dexter are about the same size. I would have liked to have seen him in it, but I wonder if he was as blasé about it as Dexter was.

Bob was working until 9:30, so I wasn't really looking forward to being at home alone. We don't get very many trick-or-treaters anymore. They must all go to parties or something. Still, I had originally planned to go eat someplace--I had a coupon for a free salad bar at Sweet Tomatoes--but I got an email from Pizza Hut advertising tht you could get 2 or more large 3-topping pizzas for $9 each, so I decided to do that. I ordered two pizzas online (one with sausage, pepperoni and mushrooms and one with chicken, onions and mushrooms), to pick up on my way home.

I stopped at Hobby Lobby first and got some embroidery floss (I'm cross stitching again, yikes! Another hobby slash obsession!), then picked up the pizzas and headed home. It was around 7:00 when I got there. There was one house down at the end of the block that was lit up like they were having a party, but not much else was going on. My doorbell didn't ring once, and I was, frankly, glad.

I sat upstairs in the bedroom with Dinah and stitched, then went back downstairs when Bob got home and had pizza with him. A nice, quiet evening, the best kind.



Today I am grateful for:

1. Leftover pizza for lunch
   
2. Indian Summer weather
   
3. Good friends at work
   
4. Good books to read (Currently the "Chet the Dog" series, about Chet and his person, Bernie Little, who run a small--er, "little"--detective agency together. The books are told from Chet's perspective, which sounds weird, but really isn't.)
   
5. Getting back into stitching
   

Busy Weekend

This weekend felt like it was crazy busy. I know it probably wasn't compared to a lot of other people (especially those with children), but it felt like it to me. It started Friday night. I got home at about 6:30, got online and ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut (sausage, pepperoni and mushroom) and reserved a movie at RedBox (The Avengers). Then we headed out to Quik Trip to get gas in Bob's car, went to Hen House to pick up the movie, and went to Pizza Hut to pick up the pizza. The order hadn't gone through correctly, so they had made a cheese-only pizza, and I ended up sitting there for 15 minutes, and Bob sitting in the car, while they made a new one.

It turned out to be a very enjoyable evening -- we had pizza, watched the movie, made popcorn, just had a really nice, relaxing night.

Then, on Saturday, we woke up to rain. I've been worried about my car. Sometimes (most of the time) it acts like it doesn't want to start, and sometimes takes a couple of tries. I was worried that it was something major/electrical. I have a friend at work who knows a lot about cars, and when I explained it to him, he said it sounded like it was probably just the battery, which was a relief.


So I started out getting my nails done, then went to Target to pick up a prescription, and when I got back in the car it wouldn't start the first time, so I sucked it up and went to Advance Auto Parts to have the battery tested. It was just sprinkling at the time, but by the time they had tested it (it was BAD), we'd gone back in and bought a new battery, and gone back out to install it, it was raining in earnest.

I stayed outside in solidarity while the technician was putting in the battery, but she was having trouble--the battery had leaked and welded the clamp to the battery post, and it wouldn't come off--and she told me go ahead and get back in the car. It just kept raining harder, and two guys came out to work on it, and she went back inside. It turned out that they had to cut the wires and put on another clamp (which they didn't charge me for), so it took forever, and I was soaked from standing in the rain, and still had errands to do.

Once the battery was in (and the car started right up!), I went to Price Chopper because Target didn't have the Sugar Free Oregon Chai concentrate that I needed, then went to Hen House to return the movie and pick up something for dinner, which ended up being cold fried chicken and a salad.

While I was there I picked up another Red Box movie (Snow White and the Huntsman), but Bob didn't home from work until almost 10:00, so I begged off and went to bed and left him to watch it alone.

This morning after he left for work, I got up and went to get my oil changed. It was past due, but I would have put it off except that we're going to Lake Taneycomo in a couple of weeks, and Bob needs tires, so I think we're going to take my car. I went to Valvoline Instant Oil Change, and it was pretty quick. Then I headed to Ulta because I had a $5 off $10 coupon and I needed conditioner, then to Petco in Olathe for cat food because no one closer sells the Eukaneuba dry food that Dinah eats.

They actually didn't have it, either. She eats the Weight Control type, but they only had it in 40 pounds bags, and even if I thought she'd eat it all eventually, I don't have any place to store it. So I got the weight control/hairball control type, and will mix it with the other that I have left. Hopefully it will be okay. I hate to change her food, since it seems to invariably cause problems, but I don't know what else to do.

Then I had to come home because I had forgotten to bring the movie to return. So I got that, went back out and returned it, went back to Quik Trip to get gas in my car, then came home and am now doing laundry. Bob will have leftover fried chicken for dinner, and I'm not sure what I'll have, but I'll find something.

Busy weekend!