Hey, zelie - what are we going to do on our birthday?
Rainy here - haven’t been outside so I don’t know how cold it is, but it looks dismal enough to keep me inside until time for the Coach’s Show this evening. It’s at a new bar tonight - I’m disappointed because I really liked the steak quesidillas at the other place.
Swampy - you should be honored that the cats chose to sleep with you!
Just got back from taking the last of the relatives (Brother Tom) to the airport. Thanksgiving dinner was marvelous, everybody had a wunnerful time, and everybody was on very good behavior. That was Jake.
Brother Tom and I went to see The Ice Harvest yesterday. It was interesting but very dark and gory. I guess that’s to be expected from Billy Bob Thornton. I really really want to see Narnia and King Kong.
Glad the picus are recovered enough to make nummy sounding candy AND to the MMP.
I have done absolutely NO presents shopping yet. I wait till after potential bonus time for that cause my generosity depends greatly on the outcome.
It’s currently 74 delightful degrees here.
Carry on.
Tupug
Tupug, we saw that movie when we were in New Mexico this weekend. It wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. Oh well.
Back in Southern California, which is good. Las Cruces was fun, but it’s not where I’d want to live. We did enjoy spending time with BSMF’s parents. But home again is always a good feeling, isn’t it?
We just had a big ol’ thunderstorm here and it looks like more on the way. :eek: When those southwestern storms start they are mean.
Hot, sweaty donkeybear. That reminds me, time for lunch! 
I can’t think of anything that could possibly have made my Monday more than that image. Thank you.
I haven’t eaten anything today. I’m suddenly very hungry. Wonder why. Hot chocolate sounds really good, but I can’t get my favorite kind any more. I think they quit making it, which makes me very 
.
jayjay, have you ever tried craisins on spinach salad, with some toasted pecans and goat cheese? Bliss in a salad bowl, I tell you. It’s okay if you don’t like craisins, though. More for me and the bunnies. They do love their craisins. It’s like bunny crack. They’ll attack me for some craisins. Silly wabbits.
donkeybear, I think you should cut class. Just tell your professor I said it was okay. Take a mental health holiday. I think mental health holidays should be official, anyway.
rigby, I really think we’re twins or something. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed something to finish a project, couldn’t find it, went out and bought a new one, and then couldn’t find the rest of the project. It drives me nuts! But I know the solution to your problem–go buy a new pair of jeans, and then you’ll find the old ones! Easy peasy!
I just got an 83 on an assignment I thought I’d gotten 90-95 on, and my professor STILL won’t give the bloody paper back (even though she passed it off to another professor for him to copy, no problem), and it’s gray and dreary outside, and I’m hungry and I won’t eat today until 10:00 tonight, and I gained six pounds on my diet, and I feel stupid and boring and uninspired and a sucky, crappy, awful writer.
I’m sorry, that was horribly whiny. Please forgive me.
Im Canuckian, so my Thursday was just a regular Thursday, except it wasnt. i had a job interview, during work hours. I dressed in a super nice uniform and stuff for work, took my lunch at 11 (you try working 7-7 with your lunch at 11 am see how long your day is) did a fast change into a suit, had my interview and came back. Hungry too, cause the interview took my whole lunch hour minus the pre interview primping.
Well I didnt know some stuff, but did well on other stuff. I may not get this job but I feel good about applying.
The weekend was kind of strange. Friday I got stood up on a meet for coffee for the first time date, but I did it to him the previous week. Not on purpose either time, just we dont have cells and cant seem to get in contact properly. We are trying again for Thursday.
Then Little Saline and I went thrift shopping with my friend and her daughter, who is a few months younger than Little Saline. Well the baby girl, all 19 months of her just beat the tar out of my son repeatedly all weekend. Pulled hair, grabbed toys, bit him. My son cried and whined a lot. Fun. We ended up having a sleep over, where friend and I drank a lot of cheap “fruit flavoured” Boones Farm type wine beverage, and painted our toenails different colours. My son and her daughter babbled at each other in the morning until they woke me up and I got the babies up and fed. Because of the “wine” friend did not get up until it was too late to take babies for breakfast with Santa.
Saturday night I ended up babysitting her baby and her 6 year old. We watched a lot of Treehouse TV and also Muppet Show on DVD/.
Today I have to try to put up my curtain rod by myself. Im sick of hanging a sheet in my window and looking like an idiot.
Well Ihope you all have a fabulous week. How do I subscribe without a credit card?
I forgot the other yummy thing. Hubby surprised me by bringing home a Honey Baked ham. Ohhh yummmmm
I’m going to make soup with the hock next week, I can hardly wait.
I have a Christmas craft fair this coming weekend that i thought was two weeks away, so it will be a busy week.
Hubby is getting antsy, so I have to put on my chef’s hat.
Thanks to everyone for the good thoughts and words while we were sick. 
picunurse, I’m so glad to hear that you and the hubby are on the mend. Thanks for getting MMP started; it’s just not Monday without one.
The big “s” word is in the forecast for tonight. They’re predicting anywhere from one to four inches. Okay, for those of you where lowland snow is a regular occurrence, this is not a big deal. However, out here in the PNW people seem to have issues with driving in it. Part of the problem is the whole freeze, melt, freeze thing, which causes ice, not just snow on the roads. On top of that, even though snow is predicted, the road maintenance people just never seem prepared. The kids of course are gunning for snow, and a day off from school.
Thanksgiving was nice, ate way too much. The big shindig on Saturday night went very well. Plenty of food, plenty of booze, plenty of fun. We said good-bye to the last revelers at about 1:30 a.m. Yesterday, I was so tired I thought I’d take a little nap. My little nap lasted three hours. :eek:
I want to see The Ice Harvest . I like Billy Bob Thornton, and I like dark humor too. I’m a little weird, I guess.
I best get back to working. I don’t feel like it, but it’s what I’m paid to do. Imagine that.
Oh, there’s plenty of dark humor in the movie. Plenty of nekkit chesticles, too. I look forward to your take on it.
I adore dark humor. And John Cusack. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to see it this week.
The male GAP mannequins have penises! :eek:
There were a bunch of naked mannequins on the floor when I walked by at lunch. And the boy ones had a certain anatomically correct bulge. :eek: I guess it’s so the girl mannequins will like them…?
It’s only right. Girl mannequins have had nipples for a while now.
Not only do they have them, they’re usually enormous.
Lessee, what can I share? I made it through my Monday after a long weekend off work. The day actually went pretty fast for me, so that helped. I came home and got a pot of bean soup started - it’s smelling yummy in here. All the talk about candy and cocoa is getting to me, but I’m being strong. I only gained a pound this weekend, and I want to get back on the losing track. So no goodies for me for a while.
And that’s pretty much all I’ve got. I think I did my Turkey day wrap up in the last MMP, not that it was very exciting. No drama. Food was just meh and I didn’t take any leftovers. But the cheesecake was worth the drive. FCD and I have decided that we like the new boyfriend, even if he is a bit older than we’d like for our baby. The visit was short, but they were back in Orlando in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, so they missed the worst of the traffic. And she’s coming back for a week in January, so we’ll have her all to ourselves for a while.
Yep. That’s all. Gotta go check on the soup now.
Hi there! I’m back from Colorado. And Wednesday is my birthday…I’m turning 30 on the 30th, go figure. Whatever happened to “don’t trust people over 30”?
And I could write all about my visit to Colorado, but instead I’ll just c&p from my LJ…you guys can read it or not, as you wish! But this way I have to post in the MMP daily all week, so that’s good I suppose.
I am really tired and sore today…ugh. But happy to be back in Albany.
Of small planes and lost luggage (or, my trip to Colorado)
I tried to write this all in one, but I wanted to put all the details so I wouldn’t forget anything. This will be my memory of the trip, too. So here it goes, day by day.
Day 1
I woke up at 3:45 AM to get to the airport on time, and we got there by 4:30 easily. I kissed my SO, sent him home, and went through security, even having to remove my shoes. I got on the plane, which indeed was a very small one, with only two rows of two seats. I’ve only ever flown on jumbo jets, going internationally, so I’d never been in such a small plane. From Albany to Washington DC took about 1.5 hours – a very quick flight. My seatmate was the most intense newspaper reader I’d ever seen. Someone later mentioned he might have been afraid of flying, and that was why.
In Washington DC, I transferred to another flight and the guy at the new gate said, “Oh, the other flight never checked you in. Funny, that.” I should have known something was up then.
The second flight was on a slightly bigger plane. I sat next to one of the cutest guys I have ever seen in my life, with some kind of sexy foreign accent. I couldn’t place it because it’s hard to place an accent when you only exchange 3 sentences with someone. Still, it was nice to sit next to him. I watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was indeed very good.
They didn’t feed me on either flight, as they charge now, and I wasn’t prepared to spend $5 on a “snack box”. So by the time I got to Denver I was starving.
I arrived at Denver and waited and waited for my luggage. As I should have known, no luggage arrived. It must have stayed in Washington DC, when my flight changed and they didn’t have me checked in. I filed a claim, and called my aunt and told her I was here, since it was only 35-minute parking. They showed up in ten minutes or so.
Before we get on, I should break down the relationships.
My aunt – whom we’ll call Bala* – is my real aunt, my biological mom’s older sister and my adopted mom’s younger sister.
She lives with her best friend, Salma….they’ve lived together since before I was born.
They also live with my cousin, Anil, who married Salma. I think that’s enough detail for the LJ.
Anyway, Bala and Anil showed up to pick me up. I’d never met Anil before, and was a little hesitant and even creeped out as he had been really really happy to finally meet me…a little too much. So I was careful at first.
We immediately stopped off at a gas station not too far away as I was absolutely famished, and they had brought sandwiches. I finally got to hug my Aunt Bala, and also gave Anil a kind of half-hug. I was impressed right off the bat at how incredibly good-looking he was – I hadn’t gotten that from his pictures. He’s about 6’2” and towers over me at 5’5”.
Anyway, we ate some of the yummiest sandwiches ever, considering how hungry I was, and in the distance I could see the tall peaks of the Rocky Mountains lining the horizon. Quite beautiful, and quite different from the Adirondacks. When you look at the Adirondacks you can tell they are old hills, and have not been growing. The Rockies look younger and newer, and definitely sharper. The ground in Colorado was much more open, with much less trees. It’s much more dry there I take it, so only the sturdy and hardy trees grow there.
We returned home, and spent a couple of hours relaxing and waiting for my Salma Auntie to come home from work, as she was putting in a half day today. After that we drove to the casinos.
The drive to the casinos was up this steep mountain path. On one side the ground dropped away to reveal a truly awe-inspiring view of the canyons. It was absolutely gorgeous. Anil drove, and I sat up front, and enjoyed the view, and even took a few pictures.
They have casinos there without even having to put them on Native American Reservations. It was a great deal of fun, as they had 1-cent and 5-cent machines, which they didn’t have when I went to Mohegan-Sun and Foxwoods. I’d look at a 25-cent machine and think, “No way, too high-priced for me!”
That was a very fun evening. We literally spent 8 hours at the casinos. I was exhausted by the time we got home, but I had gotten to know Anil a lot better and had begun to realize my long-distance impression of him was very, very wrong. He really wanted to be my brother and everything that entailed, including taking care of me, protecting me, and doing everything he could to help me.
We finally got into bed at 2:30 AM, which considering I had also been set back 2 hours traveling west meant a very long day for me.
Hey, it’s still morning somewhere, right?
I can’t believe how busy I was today. Seems like everyone took Friday off with the plan to dump all their quote requests and purchase orders on me this morning.
Cats - our two new ones are becoming more friendly. Rascal, the older, will sleep on anyone’s lap now. And the skittish one, Toy, will actually sit still as you walk by her. Progress!
Anybody got any good turkey leftover recipes? Getting tired of the same old sandwiches.
No problem? I guess I could have taken pictures of me laying miserably in my bed, trying to fall asleep…
I did. Except I went to calculus. (swampy, don’t hit me!!!)
I wish I could be in your shoes. After how long it’s been since I’ve had the “s” word, I’d take 1 to 4 inches gladly.
You should go to Waffle House for pecan waffles! 
I’ve had luggage get lost before, and either you are the calmest person on the planet, or you’re completely skipping over the hysterical scene where you pounded on the counter, fell on the floor wailing and made demands that your luggage appear magically before you RIGHT NOW.
Was Mom there, or should we await the next installment for that?