t w e n t y e v e r y t h i n g

Weekend Recap

As I have previously whined about, I spent Turkey Day NOT in New England for the first time in my nearly 25 years of life. I'm not a fan.

I have always been a firm believer that holidays are meant to be spent with one's crazy family. Aunts are supposed to wet their pants in a fit of laughter or set their hair on fire. Funny home videos are supposed to be dragged out of the closet and slides from one's parents hippy cross-country road trip are the evening entertainment. This is, of course, helped along by the copious amounts of Asti and beer.

I am proud of myself for holding it together and not having a temper tantrum breakdown on Thursday morning. I slept through most of the morning and woke up in time to throw together a salad, shower and drive to Woman Boss' house for dinner. I will admit that I had a very fun time. It was Woman Boss and her husband and two couples who met while working at the WhizBang. There was a lot of laughter and general merriment. I had a genuinely good time. However, it didn't really feel like Thanksgiving - just a good time with some friends.

I left right as the sun was setting and promptly placed myself on the couch with my down blanket and curled up for a relaxed night. I had completely forgotten that Grey's was on - and it was an extended episode! That definitely helped to lift my spirits.

On Friday, I worked. It really was a total kick in the pants. No Thanksgiving in Connecticut AND I had to work. It definitely was one of the longest days ever in the history of mankind (me exaggerate? NEVER). Or at least it felt that way because of the fun night that I had in store for me. As further evidence of how wonderful he is, Ben bought tickets to the Nutcracker at the Kennedy Center for Friday night as a means of cheering me up. We got all dressed up, drove downtown and enjoyed a lovely evening at the ballet. The production was amazing - really beautiful and fun. I cannot believe it was my first time at the Kennedy Center in the six plus years that I have lived down here. Seriously, it's a shame.

After the show was over, we drove up to the Jaleo in Gallery Place for tapas. And it was delicious - mussels, asparagus, cheese, sangria, portobello mushrooms ... so tasty. It really turned out to be a picture perfect evening. I wouldn't have changed a thing about it.

The next morning we went for coffee at this cute little cafe and hit up the Kensington farmer's market. Afterwards we went to Brookside Gardens in Wheaton and walked around. It was a gorgeous day and the gardens reminded me a lot of home (in a good way).

I finally made my way back home Saturday afternoon and that is when the Thanksgiving gloom set in. I totally fed into it and spent the majority of the afternoon mopey and sad. That is, until I found Love Actually on the tv and then decided to give myself something pleasant and positive to obsess over.

So I registered for the Avon Two Day Breast Cancer Walk in Washington, DC on May 5-6, 2007. For those of you unfamiliar with the walk, it's a two day, 39 mile walk to raise funds for breast cancer research and support. Thirty-nine miles. In two days. Yikes.

It's something that I have wanted to do for years but never committed myself. So I bit the bullet and did it. It's going to involve a lot of training and hardwork, and I honestly cannot wait for it. I work best when I have a goal and something concrete to work towards. It should be fun.

When I registered for the walk, I committed to raising a minimum of $1,800. I set a slightly higher goal for myself. I hate asking people for money, but this is a really incredible cause. So if you have a minute or can spare an extra $5, $10 or perhaps more, please check out my link above. I'd really appreciate it.

And now, it's Monday, and I am back at work. And obviously not working too hard considering I just wrote this entry.

A belated giving of thanks...

Things I am thankful for:

• My family, while often crazy, I don't know what I would do without them.
• My friends. Time and time again, you're exactly what I need. To laughter, some tears and many. many great memories.
• A certain person who has been wining and dining me.  Wait, what are you doing out of the kitchen?! ;-) Thanks for many great times and here's to hopefully many more.
• My three crazy roommates. Life is so much better when you have someplace that you enjoy coming home to. Fart, poop. That is all.
• The fact that I have bosses who will invite me to their Thanksgiving dinner when I am orphaned by my aforementioned family.
• And in no particular order: Caffeine free Diet Coke, traffic-less days, Aveeno Intense Relief Hand Cream, game nights, Amalah, Gin & tonics, WINE, snow, HOV, laugher, smiles, Roman, wall-sized closets, high quality designer leather goods, my Blackberry, Grey's Anatomy, fauxvo, wedding hijinks, the lovely ladies of Delta Gamma, Amazon, MAC, quiet times, gas fireplaces, sleepovers, salmon ...

It's a love/hate thing, mostly love...

At least most of the time. My extended family really does have the capacity to make me want to explode with anger/disbelief one minute and fall on the ground laughing the next.

On this note, apparently my cousin Katie thought it appropriate to go on MySpace and show mine and Ben's profiles and pictures to her parents and my grandmother. My 80-year-old grandmother! I am thanking my lucky stars that I have a functioning brain and don't have anything on there that I wouldn't want someone, say my 80-year-old grandmother (not to mention future employers), to see. Gah.

These are the sorts of situations that scare me. See, I've never brought a guy that I've dated home... and there is damn good reason for that. One Thanksgiving Aunt Theresa set her hair on fire and then proceeded to almost pee her pants from laughing so hard. It involved her doing the family's patented potty dance on her way to the bathroom with the smoke from her smoldering hair wafting behind her. Did I mention that my mom's maiden name is Sprinkel? How appropriate.

These laughing fits strike at the most inopportune moments and locations. Say Macy's while shopping for suits for my grandfather's funeral or at the Olive Garden during a group lunch. And the Sprinkel pee pee dance is not the worst of it. My relatives are guaranteed to say exactly the things that you wish them not to. And then, there's the stories...the remember whens accompanied by the appropriate old home video to go along with it. The thought of it all just makes me cringe.

But, at the same time, I love my family. I love how many crazy aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, first cousins once removed - I have. I love how close we are - how often they all get together - that all of the female relatives have standing Friday lunch plans. That my grandmother is a true matriarch and is WORSHIPPED by all of us.

A week from today will be my first Thanksgiving ever away from home. While I'm over the initial disappointment (okay, devastation), I'm still a little sad that I won't get to drink Asti with my Auntie Sa Sa or sit at the kids' table (where all of the kids are over 21) or make the whipped cream with my cousin Katie. There will be no turkey coma in a recliner or trip to Aunt Joyce's for the second round of desserts for the day. I know that times change - traditions change - families change. I guess I just wasn't ready for it to be this year.

Happy happy birthday

I must wish Sarah Bosken a happy birthday. The girl is turning 22 - this is beyond my realm of comprehension. I. am. so. old.

Wishes for the happiest of birthdays to the most youthful of the Dreamcastle residents.

Homemade cocktail sauce, people!

This whole Daylight Savings thing where it's DARK when I leave the office is really getting a bit annoying. Not only does it make traffic about a million times worse, but it makes following directions (i.e. reading street signs) and navigating through downtown DC much more difficult.

Wednesday night I went and picked up Ben from work, or I should say, I tried to. The first pass was unsuccessful as I managed to be in the wrong lane and the idiotic tourists/cynical heartless locals wouldn't let me over, and thus I couldn't turn on Independence and wound up going over the 14th Street Bridge. Anyone who has ever driven in DC knows how simple it is wind up in Virginia without even batting an eye lash. Out of nowhere, you find yourself on a bridge and then you're seeing signs for the Pentagon. It's a major hazard of driving in this area. The problem with the inadvertent state border crossing is that it's only easy on the way out of the city. While it's so easy to wind up in Virginia, it's hard as hell to find your way back into the district. I swear - the highway system in Northern Virginia seems to have been designed by someone on an acid trip - the roads twist and turn and follow no logical path. The mixing bowl? Jesus Christ. Who thought that was a good idea?!

Anyways, I tell Ben that it might be a good idea if he metro-ed out of the city to either Virginia or his place up in Maryland because really, I might never make it there to pick him up. 395 North was a parking lot, so was the Whitehurst. He stood strong, and I regretfully realized that I would have to be adventurous and make my way back into the city for take two. 

Anyways, I take 110 North towards Rosslyn (my starting point), decide on a whim to take the Memorial Bridge because I think it takes you somewhere back behind the monuments. Side note: my co-worker Abby this week came back into the office after an event downtown. Her quote in reference to getting lost in DC, "Thank God for monuments." And it's really true.

In what can only be described as a miracle, the Memorial Bridge put me right back on Independence going in the correct direction and in a mere 10-15 minutes, Ben was climbing into the car. Things like this never happen to me. One wrong turn in rush hour can mean another hour stuck in the car. It was a miracle, an honest-to-God miracle, and I was so proud of myself. Woohoo.

So I feel weird writing about Ben since he reads this, but whatever, I will just for the reason that I WANT TO MAKE YOU ALL JEALOUS. This boy can cook! And I don't mean he can boil water and open a jar of spaghetti sauce and sprinkle some parmesan on top. I mean he can make salmon with a dill horseradish sauce without a recipe while at the same time making impromptu homemade cocktail sauce like a culinary MacGyver. It's really amazing and a lot of fun to watch.

We had a fun and relaxing evening. It was a lot of fun. I went over there for a bit last night to watch the Office and Grey's. Seriously, how awesome is it that Jim likely is going back to Scranton? Thank God! And MerDer? It's about damn time. I was going to slap that girl upside the head if she told him no. I was really glad that the Chief seemed to realize the error of his ways in reference to Adele. The whole Burke - we're a team- thing was strange. Definitely a bit odd. Though maybe it was supposed to contrast with Cristina seeming to be at her breaking point in telling Bailey why she erased her name. One thing that really annoyed me was the Alex and George thing. I found the open handed fight scene to be hysterical. The annoying part was that, instead of telling George about Callie in a friends - hey, you should know - sort-of way, he did it maliciously as a response to George giving him a hard time about his clothes. I always figured that Alex had a dark and twisty side - but I really realized how hurt he must have been as a kid last night. It seems that whenever he feels the slightest bit threatened or made fun of, he immediately has to lash out and make the other person feel even worse than he's feeling. It should be interesting to see what happens with him and Izzy next week.

Wow, that was enough of the "I'm far too invested in this television show - I swear I do have a life" rundown.

It's now Veterans' Day. I am at work. I have been here since before 7 a.m. this morning. I am also typing this damn blog for the second time seeing that the first got erased because of a computer glitch. I might be growing crankier by the moment. However, to keep my spirits high, I continue to remind myself that Rumsfeld resigned and the democrats now control Congress. Ehrlich is outsted. On the polictical front, life is good.

Where did I go?

absolutely nowhere. While it may seem that I have fallen off the face of the planet, I've been exactly where I have always been. I have just been, well, lazy. And I apologize for neglecting the good ol blog.

A quick recap of what has been going on in my life:
-About a month ago I decided to start doing the South Beach Diet again. I've lost about 18 pounds or so. I only have about a zillion more to go, but it's a decent start.
-I've been spending some time with a charming and wonderful man who has been wining and dining me. Brace yourself - we go on dates. Real life, actual dates. And he's a great cook but lousy with directions.
-I'm no longer going home to CT for Thanksgiving. This caused a mini-mental breakdown last week as at the time, it was the worst thing I could imagine. I have pulled my overemotional and dramatic head out of my ass and realized that the world will not end if I don't spend a holiday with my family. We typically have about 20 or so relatives over to our house for Thanksgiving every year. Some of them are from my mom's side of the family, some from my dad. We drink Asti by the magnum and generally have a really fun time. Once, my Aunt Theresa set her hair on fire. For some reason, my parents decided this year to go visit my dad's side of the family who have retired to Charleston, SC. I decided that spending my coveted long weekend in the company of only five people (the youngest of which besides myself is my mother) and traveling about a zillion hours to do so wasn't worth it. So instead, I will spend the holiday here in DC. Woman boss invited me to her house for dinner on Thursday. Nicole will be coming over that evening and we will be getting wasted while watching chick flicks. And as a capstone to the long weekend, it just so happens that the aforementioned charming man will be in town so there is a date planned. My mother now feels so guilty that she is offering to shower me with gifts for Christmas/birthday. Booyow.
-I had the DTR (define the relationship) talk with Man Boss. It was one of the scariest things I've done, but I was ridiculously proud of myself for having it. It went something like this:
    Man Boss: Liz, we need to talk about your job.
    Me: Okay.
    MB: Blah blah blah. I've been neglecting you - I am sorry. I know you're bored. I want to change         that. Woman Boss is no longer your boss. Do you want to stay here or find a new job? There are         the many things I think you are good at...blah blah blah. I will help set up informational interviews     for you. Basically, your job will be ten times better and if not I will find you a new job.
    Me: Okay.
I actually really did contribute a lot to the conversation and told him what I had been thinking about. Considering how hard it is for me to tell someone how I am feeling - I think I did a banner job. And I didn't cry (though I was quite tempted to hug him at the end of the interview. I resisted.)
-We had a Halloween party. The keg is still sitting on our porch.
-Sometime over the past two months, I developed a cleaning obsession. I'm not sure where it came from but the Dreamcastle is looking pretty damn spiffy.
-A bunch of other small things occurred that caused me to think to myself, "Man, I should blog this." However, I can't think of any at the current time. Oh well.