Today I only really did work for about half the day. Then I went out to lunch and had some soup, and on my way back I bought a bag of trail mix, which I shared with Crazyface and a flock of sparrows. They ate ravenously. We all knew the storm was coming.

In the afternoon, we were going to spend a few hours marbling paper and then go to the holiday party. Instead, we started marbling paper only to find out that University was closing at 2. The holiday party, however, was still on because the food had already arrived. So, we marbled paper for about an hour and a half and then went to the party to scarf down some food before braving the commute.

The food at the party was delicious (they had a whole table of Indian food! including pakora!) and I didn't end up leaving until 4. Which is when I normally leave work, for the record. So I felt a little cheated out of the early closing, since it happened on a day when we weren't doing much work anyway and I ended up there for the whole day just doing fun things.

(Wow! Did you see that? I totally just managed to find something to whine about in a day at work where we pretty much partied the whole time. Wah, wah, call the waaaambulance...)

The managers were getting their phone trees updated today in case University is closed tomorrow. We are all hopeful that we'll have a surprise long weekend. The way the forecast looks, though, I suspect we'll have work.

It was mostly a lovely day, though. Here are some pictures of some of my best marbled papers:

I had made myself an insanely long to-do list for today, and I am not really even halfway through it, but I did run nearly all my errands and made both my phone calls. Phone calls are an accomplishment! I bribed myself to make the phone calls by promising a lunch out at the new Panera down the street, but when I arrived there the smell of the place reminded me of a high-school cafeteria for some reason, and my whole being recoiled while internally screaming "DO NOT WANT!" So I went to my favorite Thai place instead, which was awesome as usual. And it was lovely out today, almost 50 degrees, so clearly I chose a good personal day.

Part of the reason that I have not gotten very far in my to-do list is that the first thing on the list is Christmas cards. Those take a while. Mind you, they would probably take less time if I didn't stop between each card to play some Mah Jongg, but for some reason I find myself unable to focus on them in much the same way I had difficulty focusing on writing papers when I was in school. I have very nearly reached the S's of Doom, though. There are sixteen S's in my address book. Family is partially to blame for this, but I also have a large amount of S friends. I have a healthy W posse, too, so really when I reach S I am only halfway through my cards. BUT. This is still progress.

My browser keeps warning me that there is going to be a Ginormous Scary Winter Storm tomorrow, and you can tell that it's early in the winter and I haven't suffered enough yet because I am thinking "Yeah! Bring it on!"

Tomorrow I will barely have to work four hours before we all stop working in favor of a Fun Arts and Crafts Workshop. And then after that, the Really Big Holiday Party. After which I will tromp home through the Ginormous Scary Winter Storm. And at that point, it will be nearly Friday!

I was responsible and got my flu shot today. Now my upper arm is sore, but in that good, responsible sort of way. I also burned myself on a tacking iron pretty good. That is also sore, but in more of a "you idiot" sort of way.

Tomorrow I am taking a much-needed personal day from work. It is hard to convince myself to run errands after work when it is pitch-black by the time I leave the building. So, tomorrow I will run errands, do things around the house, and otherwise enjoy the eight-ish hours of daylight which coincidentally overlap my usual eight hours of work (which I spend in a windowless basement.)

I was asked to cat-sit again, in January, and I said I'd be glad to as long as it wasn't the weekend of Midwinter. Turns out they wanted me to cat-sit while they were at Midwinter. Drat. They say they may have another opportunity for me in March, though. Hopefully it won't be the same week that I'm planning to visit Sarah in Colorado.

Speaking of January excitement, it turns out that there is going to be a weekend poetry workshop, and I am really looking forward to it. Of course it also means forking over another large-ish chunk of money, but it's times like this that I'm glad I made the decision to stay here with my roommates instead of getting my own place. It means I don't have to say no to opportunities like this.

My computer keeps prompting me to restart every ten minutes because it has installed new windows updates and needs to restart RIGHT NOW, SERIOUSLY, IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT. The window that pops up only has options to "Restart Now" and "Restart Later" which is inconvenient because I really want to click something that says "I will restart when I'm GOOD AND READY, so LEAVE ME ALONE." A friend of mine at work is always telling people that they should never settle for "good enough" from their computers just because they don't want to bother the IT people. "Until they grow brains and make us their slaves, WE are in charge!" she says. Which is a pretty good line, honestly, but strictly speaking I am not convinced that this has not already happened, because I am getting irritated enough that I am going to restart the computer after all, because it really seems to be in charge over here.

And after I'm done doing my computer's bidding I think I will lay around and watch TV while eating truffles, because I am spoiled. Good night!

It's Tree Day! That is, the day that I go up to Allston to get my Christmas tree and then carry it back, a mile and a half, uphill both ways, and feel unreasonably manly about the whole thing. It was a little bit easier this year, and I suspect that has to do with the lifting I've been doing at the gym. Yay upper body strength.

Last weekend I was talking with a friend about the logistics of getting Christmas trees in the city, and she told me about one time that she saw several people together carrying one of those big ten-foot-tall trees onto a Green Line train. I am continually delighted by the way that the pedestrian/public transit lifestyle imprints itself on various holidays around here, and how different it is from the suburbs, where moving things around in a car is a central premise of life.

My favorite kid in the world turned two today. When she received a toy farm complete with animals, she adorably exclaimed "A cow! I love cows!" Me too, little one, me too.

Later, she curled up with me and had me drawing farm animals at her command, using her new magna-doodle. I draw an awesome horse, people. (And I should, seeing as it's the only thing I did during junior high.) I draw a pretty passable cow, too, but I only really practiced that during the last semester or so of grad school, and not nearly as diligently. Morgan says it looks like a cow, and that's good enough for me. (Dave says it looks like a cow too, just an underfed, unhappy cow. I can't really contradict him on that.)

After we had grown bored with magna-doodle art, she started yelling "AIYAYOO!" in my ear. "Oww, Morgan," I winced.

"Aiyayoo means 'I love you,'" Dave translated helpfully.

Awww. Happy birthday, little one.

Actually, the thing about getting my hair cut is that for some reason I always expect myself to look completely different afterwards. Like a different person, instead of like me with hair of a different length. Presumably most people get over this misconception around the age of ten, but because I am special that way, I am always trying to figure out new and stylish ways to get my hair cut, certain that it will change my life, and then afterwards I look in the mirror and think oh. Still me. Drat.

This is probably one of those times when I would write a longer post if only I had a laptop. But since my computer is on my desk, and my desk chair is just not as cozy as my bed, I am going to keep this somewhat short.

Over the weekend I decided that I needed three things: a new pillow, a hat with earflaps, and a haircut. The last two were things I realized when I was waiting for a train and a strong, cold wind simultaneously froze my ears and whipped my long, damp hair in my face. (Apparently blow-drying is just too much effort for me even in the dead of winter.)

So I got the first two things. The third I think will happen Saturday, but even now I am feeling sort of ambivalent about it. It has been a long time since my hair has been as long as it is now (just past my shoulders). It is long enough to French braid and I've had some fun doing that. But the vast majority of the time, I just throw it in a ponytail for the day, and what is the point of having long hair if you never do anything with it? It is just more work. And for the winter I think I will be happier if I can just tuck it all under a hat. I sort of wish it could just magically be long whenever I wanted to do something with it, but probably I should spend less time wishing for impossible things, in general.

For some reason, despite growing up in New England, I don't think I've ever had a hat with earflaps. Now I do, and my ears are very happy with this development, and that is about all there is to say about that.

As far as pillows are concerned, I have never really had any sort of high quality pillow. The best pillow I've ever had was one that I scavenged from my college at the end of one year, because other students had a tendency to ditch all kinds of perfectly good things for some reason or another. I still have that pillow, but even it is getting a little flat, and my neck has been giving me a little trouble lately, so I thought I might go spend a little money on a pillow that would last me a good long time. Long story short, I ended up with a fancy king-size hotel-quality pillow made of hypoallergenic fake down stuff, and it has a 20-year warranty, and it was half off -- more than half off, when I used a coupon I had. And it is awesome and cozy, and I made a pillowcase for it out of some flannel I got at the fabric store the other day, and it is all very comfy and exciting and that is why I am totally going to go curl up in my bed instead of blogging more.

I managed to sleep until ten both yesterday and today, which is strange for me. Usually on the weekends I find myself up at eight, a full two hours after I normally wake up, feeling like I've really slept in.

Last night I dreamed that the mafia had sent out a hit man to kill one of my friends, for unknown reasons. For some reason we knew it was coming, and so when he went to the grocery store, I and another friend accompanied him, and we killed the hit man before he could get to our friend. The feeling of my finger on the trigger was strangely satisfying, along with the knowledge that in a showdown I had been better and quicker, and that it had been a job well-done.

As we walked back to the car I vocalized what we all were thinking -- that they would send more people after him, that the mob would stop at nothing, that we would never feel safe again. I wasn't lamenting our actions, but rather that there was no way I could protect my friend -- I couldn't be there all the time; what if I turned my back at the wrong moment? I felt destined to lose him, no matter how hard I tried to avoid that fate.

The next day at work (which was a weird mix of work friends and college friends), we were nervously awaiting the inevitable arrival of more hit men, amidst whispered plans and guns laid out on a table. But when they arrived, they didn't go after their original target, but rather our other friend who had been part of the original showdown in the grocery store, and they didn't kill him, but instead dragged him away. When I reached for a gun from the table, this time my finger slipped on the trigger and I couldn't get a shot off, and as my friend disappeared into the dark car I knew that I'd failed.

During National Blog Posting Month (or, NAMBLA), I meant to surf around and read a lot of new blogs. In the last days of October I actually joined a lot of Ning groups, read a lot of blogs, and played with the Randomizer, but once November started I found that I was spending enough time in front of the computer just writing blog posts and reading the blogs I usually read, so I didn't end up finding as many new blogs to read as I'd expected.

Part of it is also that I'm very fussy about the writing style of blogs I read: if there is too much bad spelling or poor grammar and punctuation, a blog will turn me off even if its content is otherwise interesting. On the other hand, someone who is well-written will often keep me interested no matter what they are writing about. Since there is no Ning group for "writers who meet Amanda's exacting standards," finding blogs that I liked turned out to be a somewhat tricky endeavor.

However, by the end of the month I was regularly reading several new blogs, and from those there are two that I will definitely keep reading in the future: Randomness and Charlotte's Web. Randomness is written by Hope Roth, a Boston-area musician, and Charlotte's Web is written by Charlotte, a freelance writer from South Africa who is living in Germany. You all should go visit both of them, for they are very awesome.

So, I made it through the month, with just one meme, two posts where I really had nothing to say, two squirrel posts, two posts about dreams, two to-do lists, one website-breaking catastrophe, two posts involving hurting myself with scalpels at work, and one post about being sick. And way more cooking posts than I anticipated, given that I don't even have a category for that. Weird.

And on that note, I have some more cooking to do, because tonight is the rescheduled Soylent Green Night. But first I have to do some grocery shopping. What's a girl gotta do to get some sage in this town? (The two grocery stores within easy walking distance don't have any. Hmph.)

Thanks for reading and commenting, people. It makes this all worthwhile.

earlier -- later