Now that was a good weekend. Busy, but good.

Friday night was my office's holiday party. Matt hates office parties, and I'll admit they're not my favorite kind of gathering, but I was going to have some friends attending, and I figured, since I am a manager this year, I really should at least make an appearance.

So I went by myself. Luckily, Penny was in a great mood, so I didn't have to feel guilty about leaving Matt alone with the Saddest Baby Ever.

I was a little disorganized, though. I made dinner, so I wouldn't go to the party on an empty stomach and fill up on junk food. I put the dinner into the oven, and then checked the cookbook. "How long does this bake for? ...Until about five minutes after I leave. Great." So I had buffet food for dinner after all.

And then, halfway to the party, I thought, "Wow, the lights out here seem awfully bright tonight. What gives?" I went to adjust my glasses, only to realize... I'd left my glasses at home. Oops.

Not that anyone would have noticed. The thing about going to an office party with my officemates is... Well, the drinking kind of starts well before the party officially begins. There's always great potential for embarrassment.

Names withheld to protect the guilty.

So few people actually turned up that I think every single person got one of the door prizes. (I got a glass candy dish that's actually fairly pretty. I'd like it better if it weren't for the angels on it, though.)

I actually made out at the White Elephant exchange, too - I came home with a ducky bath set (duck-themed scrubbies), which is perfect for Penny. (The joke's on me, though - it's been in a smoker's house for about two years, so they smell nasty.)

Anyway, it wasn't the party of the season or anything, but I had a pretty good time.

This is me with Heather, who's going to be my "diet buddy" next year.

Also Friday, just before I left for the party, Matt got our brand new DSL modem hooked up and functional. Broadband finally! WHOO!

(I spent signifiant portions of Saturday and Sunday downloading free and legal music. I must have grabbed somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 songs, mostly Chinese and Middle-Eastern, as mood-music for writing.)

Saturday was the moon cookie party. I timed it poorly, though. Jeremy and Elizabeth left Saturday for their vacation, and Braz and Emma were dropping them off, and Kris was working... Still, we had my brother and his wife, and my old friend Mila and her mom, and the Hickses.

Mila and her mom.

K.T. and Kevin and Jess were a near-miss. Friday, Jess and Kevin both turned up with colds, and K.T. regretfully cancelled, lest the germs be passed on to Penny. But Saturday morning, she told me that Jess seemed much better, and she never had broken a fever anyway, so I told her to come anyway.

(Sunday, Jess was sick again. So Matt and I are kind of waiting for Penny to turn up with it, but it does sound like a simple cold. Nothing to be too fussed about, especially as Penny is pretty calm about being sick most of the time.)

Moon cookies in the making.

Once again, I forgot things. Sam walked into the kitchen and said, "Can I help?" and I said, "Sure. Get the butter out of the bags and get out two sticks, plus two tablespoons." (I know it sounds like a lot of butter, but one batch of dough makes about 4 dozen big cookies.)

Sam picked up the bags, rustled them around a bit and said, "There's no butter in here."

...Oops. I think what happened was, when I went to get the butter out of my fridge at home, I couldn't find it, so I assumed I'd already put it in the bags with the dry ingredients and forgotten, when in fact, I simply hadn't found it (after we got home, I discovered it lurking on the wrong shelf entirely, hiding behind the milk.) Well... shit.

I raided my mom's fridge and found exactly two sticks plus two tablespoons of butter. Whew. The gods understand the importance of moon cookies. But I sent Matt and Sam to the store to get two more boxes of butter, to replace what I swiped from Mom, and so we'd have enough for a second batch.

But that was the only crisis. We had fun making cookies and talking up a storm, and my dad had fun watching the babies (he volunteered early on for babysitting duty). Penny earned some major, huge pony-points from my dad, actually, just before we left. I got out her jacket and showed it to her, and she ran straight to Dad. The subtext couldn't have been clearer - "Grandad! Don't let Mommy take me home!"

But we had a lot of fun there, too. And Penny began a third generation of the moon cookie tradition. Not so much in the making - she's still too young for that - but certainly in the eating. She loved them.

Did someone mention cookies?

Sunday was much more relaxed. We mostly sat around the house and did laundry and tried to keep up with Penny. Unsuccessfully, of course, but we managed to keep her from killing herself, which is about all that can be hoped for.

So it was a good, good-good weekend. I took about a million pictures (in addition to all the music I downloaded), and I'll have something up in the photo album soon.

--Liz