Dec 22: Closed the office after a fairly harrowing week of emergencies, etc. and decided to prepare for Christmas at my mom's house. We got out the tree, set up the lights, and watched Scrooged. There was a lot of passing out and low energy, so not the most festive day, but probably necessarily restful, all considered.
Dec 23: Andrew came up and met me at my mom's house. Since he's Jewish, I have started insisting that we have our "Christmas Eve" dinner at Chinese restaurants in his honor, even if it's not really Christmas Eve and other restaurants are open, and he ultimately probably doesn't care. But hey, Chinese food is always good, right. We hit Xing's Panda Palace, which is actually awesome. They have these health plates of just steamed veggies and meat or tofu. I think I'm in love. They also have a gallery of ornamental chopsticks and gigantic koi fish in an appropriately huge aquarium.
Dec 24: Our version of Christmas, take one.
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| Proof that I am (1) thoughtful and (2) unable to spell pancakes |
Dec 25: Babootie time with my dad. Andrew came back to stay with me for the rest of Christmas break. It's kind of an interesting twilight area for both of us, due to the distance. I'm glad in a lot of ways that circumstances have postponed our eventual living together, since I think that is one of the biggest steps a couple can take, and too many take it far too lightly. That said, because we live so far apart, staying over means that we don't quite have our regular morning routines or private areas and still feel accountable to our roommates for any messes/noises/distractions the other causes or access to our full menagerie of possessions, but that maybe we both have some of our stuff at each other's places and feel some accountability for taking care of ourselves beyond what guests would. Anyways,we inhabited the limited space together well, and I even managed to get a decent amount of sleep. It was nice to have that much regular time to spend together and/or do our own things without that sense of time crunch that can come with weekends-only.
Dec 26: No work for me, so Andrew and I had our first official day off together for a decently long time. Andrew set up his trainer and did some spinning in his insanely bright shorts and new jersey. Instead of the original plan of watching Rocky while he was training, he finished up and we went to see My Week with Marilyn. Michelle Williams is brilliant (and amazingly curvy for her usual frame) in the role, incidentally. Definitely worth a see. In the evening, I hauled Andrew to The Blue Moon Ballroom, where he was a lead in their Crash Course - East Coast Swing edition. I read the book I've been neglecting for months until my phone started to lose battery power.
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| Team kit- Captain America Edition |
Dec 27: Back to work. I had an emergency consult wander in. Her problems were far beyond my depth, which was marginally stressful as I ran back and forth from the room to pssst to my mom "ok, so I told her X, but ___" So I was quite ready for the day to wrap up when Andrew picked me up at about 4. We gloriously went TO THE CHRYSALIS DAY SPA to get the massages I'd purchased for Xmas (making us yuppies - broke yuppies, yes, but yuppies!) I only get one or two massages in a year and a massage is useless to me unless I feel the need to scream "ok, ok, I'll tell you where the weapons are, please just STOP!" I had a different kind of soreness the next day than usual, so I call it kind of a win. Also I drooled in the quiet room for a good period of time. An interesting contrast of pain and relaxation, getting a deep tissue massage at a spa.
Dec 28: Intense morning of hearings beginning with waiting through a protection order hearing with a disturbing paranoid schizophrenic who was in custody at the time for violating the prior order and kept accusing his wife of being sent by the US government to kill him, etc. Danced off some of the uck with Nate, in the karate studio that used to be a church... love that venue. Then in the evening, I dragged Andrew back to The Blue Moon to fill in as a lead for the waltz.While there, I ran into two old friends from Uandme days whom I hadn't seen in years. I gave them both my card, which made me inordinately happy.
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| Part of my ongoing effort to give Mr. (W)right diabetes |
Dec 29: Got most of my work caught up and started on some notice of withdrawal I promised I could handle for Leslie if I had time (to be billed as a paralegal, but hey, at least it was billed... to people who we are likely not representing because they don't get our bills or pay...meh, details!).Drowned in paper and felt pretty AAAAAAAAHHHH by the end of it all. I have to say, it made me feel a lot happier about those three agonizing years in law school. Paralegal work is stressful!! Dragged Andrew back to the Blue Moon for a crash course in salsa, and ended up filling in as a lead, myself. Shockingly, I had a blast, and felt really comfortable leading a dance I rarely do. A couple of women said they could really see me working well as a collaborative lawyer, etc. given how patient and clear I was when sort-of-teaching. Not sure they'll remember my name, but I feel like I'm fulfilling my pre-swearing in mandate to go out and do things I love as the preferrable means of networking.
Dec 30: Got those durned notices of withdrawal handled and we closed the office a little bit early, thank goodness. Dragged Andrew back to the Blue Moon, but this time for his first ever zumba lesson (making us, as Matt aptly pointed out, his middle-aged parents).I had a stupid-good time and he seemed to enjoy it as well, despite or because of the excess estrogen in the room at the time. He was of course the only guy other than Marcus.
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| Ooooh baby, showin' us some GAMS!! |
Dec 31: We got up early to go to the ice skating rink, where they were offering free admission and rentals. It was swarming! About fifteen minutes into the skate, they turned off the overhead lights, pumped up the techno music and put on some black lights and flashing ones... so the closest I will be getting to a New Year's Eve party started up at about 9:30 a.m. and somehow I'm ok with that. After wandering around town attempting to find gas that was neither "a rip off" by some internally defined personal sense of outrage or "a huge long wait," we went to my Dad's house to de-Christmas the house. He took us to dinner and dessert and then we went home and watched the totally un-New-Yearsy Spinal Tap and went to bed early. We are rockers
Jan 1: Resolution Run, baby. Every year there's a run around Lake Padden followed by a massive Polar Bear Dip. We went for hte first part. I'd been tempted to do the dip too, but I woke up in the full throes of a chest cold and figured that would be ill-advised. So we circled Lake Padden and called it good. Then went to see Hugo, which is an amazing film that actually used all of its 2 and change hours to positive effect (shocking!) We checked out a new Chinese Buffet, which was pretty appropriately massive and eclectic - and they had wanton soup which Andrew had just been saying he hadn't had in a long time and wanted to. Then we rented Bridget Jones's Diary, since Netflix didn't have it (perpetual let down is Netflix these days) and it is technically kind of a New Year's Film.
Jan 2 One more Monday off.Andrew finally had to go back to get ready for his first quarter as a fully matriculated graduate student (!!) We had breakfast and he put my new turtle shaped bicycle bell on my bike and drove away. I manned up enough to replenish my completely tapped reserve of groceries and then called it a day, not wanting to handle the inevitable holiday mess of laundry and vacuuming and sorting left at my house. Just to belie my status as a grown-up, I fled to my mommie's house and spent the day on her couch, while she and her boy-toy, David charged in and out with big heavy boxes. As previously mentioned, I work at a treadmill desk. Until recently, this "desk" had just been a plank set across the treadmill with a laptop on top. David made a far more attractive and more permanent desk this last month and it has inspired him, so there will be a tread-desk at my mom's house now as well.
Anyways, the treadmill desk idea for David began approximately yesterday and has now manifested with a new treadmill, the computer desk entirely gone, and a new flat screen monitor. It will be interesting to see how it works out, now that the option of sitting at the computer upstairs has been eliminated. I take no responsibility for however this might turn out.
Jan 1: Resolution Run, baby. Every year there's a run around Lake Padden followed by a massive Polar Bear Dip. We went for hte first part. I'd been tempted to do the dip too, but I woke up in the full throes of a chest cold and figured that would be ill-advised. So we circled Lake Padden and called it good. Then went to see Hugo, which is an amazing film that actually used all of its 2 and change hours to positive effect (shocking!) We checked out a new Chinese Buffet, which was pretty appropriately massive and eclectic - and they had wanton soup which Andrew had just been saying he hadn't had in a long time and wanted to. Then we rented Bridget Jones's Diary, since Netflix didn't have it (perpetual let down is Netflix these days) and it is technically kind of a New Year's Film.
Jan 2 One more Monday off.Andrew finally had to go back to get ready for his first quarter as a fully matriculated graduate student (!!) We had breakfast and he put my new turtle shaped bicycle bell on my bike and drove away. I manned up enough to replenish my completely tapped reserve of groceries and then called it a day, not wanting to handle the inevitable holiday mess of laundry and vacuuming and sorting left at my house. Just to belie my status as a grown-up, I fled to my mommie's house and spent the day on her couch, while she and her boy-toy, David charged in and out with big heavy boxes. As previously mentioned, I work at a treadmill desk. Until recently, this "desk" had just been a plank set across the treadmill with a laptop on top. David made a far more attractive and more permanent desk this last month and it has inspired him, so there will be a tread-desk at my mom's house now as well.
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| It symbolizes the rat-race/hamster wheel of modern office work |
Anyways, the treadmill desk idea for David began approximately yesterday and has now manifested with a new treadmill, the computer desk entirely gone, and a new flat screen monitor. It will be interesting to see how it works out, now that the option of sitting at the computer upstairs has been eliminated. I take no responsibility for however this might turn out.
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| Completely random, but blessedly absent from the holidays |
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