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Last year: Matt and I will finish putting the bed together this evening, and then we'll finally be able to offer overnight guests a room of their own! |
But I didn't. Alas.
I hope you all had good holidays. I sure did!
Saturday evening, we went to two different parties, and Sunday we spent being divinely lazy. Christmas morning, the cat woke me up at 4:30, but I was too sleepy to even make Matt put him in the garage. So I dozed from 4:30 to 7, being awakened every so often by the cat. At seven, Matt rolled over, blinked at me, and said, "Merry Christmas, sweetie!"
We both got a lot of really great presents - and there's more still to come. (That's the only bad part about this holiday for me: the post office has really dropped the ball. We're still waiting on three packages that we know of from friends and family, and three other packages with things we've ordered for other people.)
Matt got me a really cool clock - it's printed on the face of a CD, and the numbers are all binary. (It's a geek thing, I guess.) He also got me a USB floppy drive for when I buy my iBook next month. Braz and Kris got me a heated massager, which I think I'm going to really enjoy. (My calves have been killing me from limping for the past two weeks...) Jill sent us a mini-Cuisinart, perfect for chopping vegetables and such, and an Emeril cookbook! Whoo-hoo!
There were other things, too - lots of other things, but I didn't really want to list every single gift. I have been dying to tell everyone one of the presents I got for Matt, and now that he's opened it, I can: I got him a plot of land on the moon. Hey, c'mon, it's a great present! Especially if you can deliver it with a schmaltzy line like, "I would give you the moon if I could..."
After we opened our presents, I started making mashed potatoes, which I'd promised to bring to dinner. It's a good thing, too, because K.T. called just as I was finishing up to say that for reasons unknown, the turkey had finished cooking two hours earlier than usual (she disbelieved the "popper-thing" and tested with another thermometer, and indeed everything was fully cooked!) and so could we come over a bit early?
Matt and I piled everything into the car, and headed over to the Hicks'. We exchanged presents (Ooh, the 25th anniversary edition of The Princess Bride!) and had a really fantastic dinner. After that, we watched the Muppet's A Christmas Carol, because K.T. had never seen it.
We got back home around six, and spent an hour and a half making phone calls to our families. I know I talk a lot, but I think my brother leaves me in the dust. I spent about forty-five minutes talking to him and his wife alone! (I really need to get one of those cell phones with free long distance...) Matt talked to his family, and about eight, we headed over to the Brandt's, to "do Christmas" with them.
I think I had expected to be ever so slightly bored and disappointed with Christmas this year - this was the first Christmas I've spent without either my parents or Matt's family. But I was reminded once again that good friends are family, and I was thankful to have them.
Not that the holiday was picture-perfect.
Matt's transmission continued to behave badly, and when we tried to take it to a shop on Saturday, we were told that shop didn't do transmission work. That left us to take his van to the only transmission shop in Williamsburg - an uncouth place which screwed him over pretty badly a couple of years ago. We weren't happy about it, but there was no other choice. Of course they were closed Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and when Matt talked to them Tuesday, they said they were probably going to close early because they were shorthanded. So there's no telling when Matt will get his van back. It's a good thing I'm allowed to drive again.
As I said, we're waiting for a lot of things from the post office. Yesterday, we were anticipating a small stack of packages to have made it through just after Christmas, but all we got was a single package-pickup slip in our mailbox, which frustrated us to no end, since we're expecting six packages, and all the previous packages have simply been left on our doorstep. I'm going to head over to the post office around mid-morning to pick up this package, and hopefully some more will arrive this afternoon. Think happy thoughts for us...
And last but not least, my finger - the one I jammed back in September and which never stopped hurting - has been stiff and painful in the mornings. For the past three nights, I've woken up around three in the morning from the pain caused by my trying to close my hands into fists as I sleep. I'm really going to have to see a doctor about this, as soon as my foot is mostly healed. (My fear, though, is that there's nothing they can do for it, and I'll just be stuck with this pain until it goes away on its own. Worse yet is the worry that this is an early onset of arthritis, brought on by the trauma of the jam. The finger definitely isn't broken - it never even bruised. Ah, well, nothing to be done until I see my doctor.)
It snowed last night - the first sticking snow of the year for us! If only it had come two days earlier, I could've had a white Christmas! (Matt points out that we've got plenty of packages still to come, so maybe we can pretend it's Christmas as we open them.)
At least the office is pretty quiet today. Since my office had both Monday and Tuesday off, practically everyone is taking this whole week off, giving them a 10-day holiday (the 23rd through the 1st) for the price of only three vacation days. Not a bad deal. If I could afford to spend three vacation days, I might have done it, myself. Oh, well, there are worse things than spending a few days in a quiet, fairly relaxed office environment.
Hope you had as good a holiday as mine, or better! Now it's time to start getting ready for the new millennium! (Gosh, I hope I spelled that right...)
Word of the Day: uncouth - strange, awkward, and clumsy; vulgar or rude in speech and conduct
- The Cartoon History of the Universe, Part 1 by Larry Gonick
Current Projects:
- Figuring out what to do with all this turkey soup!
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