Hello my dears. I hope you all survived V-day; it was fascinating looking through the on-line journals and seeing how different people's reactions were. I actually managed to forget how much I dislike this holiday in the excitement of planning for and throwing the party -- which is, of course, part of the point.
The party went pretty well. It was a very eat-and-talk kind of party; not as much dancing as I might have liked, but the talking was so pleasant that I can't really complain. Part of what was neat was that Ingrid flew up from L.A. for it -- she was my roommate six years ago, and she originated these parties. She brought a heart- shaped chocolate cake inscribed "Massacre '99" -- very cool. And yummy. With her and Alan (who flew down from Portland) and Mort and Kcat (who just moved here from Chicago) and of course me and Cliff and Sherman and Owen, it felt very very Chicago. Neat!
I'm not going to depress you all by describing all the delicious food you missed...I'll just note my favorite, the zabaglione, a thick rich custard (that we almost didn't make), served with Ellie's poached pears. Utter heaven. I've never had it before, but now I know to seek it out...
Yesterday was a fairly mellow day. Puttered until 3-ish, then Heather and Karina and I went shopping, which was very therapeutic. There's a store near the Rockridge BART called Crossroads which has very nice used clothing; I picked up a thick black cardigan (very practical), a dark red Christmas skirt in a heavy silky fabric, and the killer piece, this greeny-black straight skirt in a light chiffon, slit up past the knee on both sides. I forget I have good calves until I put on a skirt like this. Woohoo! :-)
Then we came home, ate leftover party food (which I'm also eating for lunch as I type this (Karina's peperonata with mozzarella on thick bread), and watched _How Stella Got Her Groove Back_, which was a good movie (with Whoopi Goldberg, who I adore). Then we talked some more, and then I went to sleep.
Karina's leaving today, going to Utah. I'll go out and meet her on Saturday (staying through Tuesday morning). I'll miss her, but it'll also be nice to have a chance to catch up on my work; I feel guilty ignoring her when I'm at work all day and she's come from so far away, but I have *so* much piling up. My brain is just fizzling with all the things I have to do...it's nutty. I wish I had an internal bulletin board that I could stick post-it's all over. (See, as I said that, I remembered that I forgot to take my Synthroid this morning. Dang.)
Tonight, the new issue of Clean Sheets (hey, y'know, it's no longer utterly terrifying facing the update each week. I'm pretty sure I can do it, and even pretty sure it'll take less than three hours, unless something goes majorly wrong (knock on wood). That's progress, right?). And maybe I'll catch up a bit on e-mail (yes, Columbine, I know I owe you stuff). Tomorrow night I plan to study up for my proofreading test (which is Friday morning). Might study for that Thursday night too, if I think I need it. We'll see. If not, I'll start doing homework again. Got the c++ compiler problem fixed, so I can actually get started on that class. (I have until the end of this month to decide if I'm sticking with it).
Okay, this is all very chatty and random, so I think I'll go and try to do something more coherent/productive. I have a whole twenty minutes of my lunch break left, after all. Surely I ought to be able to finish something useful in that time.