All I Want for Christmas - Reprised

At the risk of seeming greedy, I very recently realized that I had one more item for my Christmas list: To be in Seattle with Paul for Christmas. And I am thankful indeed that this wish will come true!

You see, we went for a short 2.5 day visit to see our friends in Sacramento over the weekend. As we were leaving, Seattle was getting a big blanket of snow. In our absence, Seattle enough snow to shut down the airport and cancel our flight. Our return was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, but I certainly didn't feel confident that the flight would actually go. Then, Paul and I both got nasty headcolds.

We finally made it to Seattle and immediately went to the store, since we heard more bad weather was on the way - just getting throught he checkout line took 55 minutes because the cashiers appeared to be untrained seasonal help rather than people of average intelligence who could figure out the cost of a bunch of grapes. Seriously, our ice cream melted while waiting behind only 5 customers.

Then it took about 40 minutes to make it the last 40 yards of our street, but we finally slid/rolled our way into the driveway a little after 10 pm.

Lastly, this all also means that we won't be able to drive down to my parents' ranch for xmas this year - I'm really bummed about it, but can't risk being stranded again (on the way down OR back), and I'm positive my family doesn't need our headcolds. ["Merry Christmas, We got you a little something!"]

So, that's a lot of complaining, and while I generally try to stay positive, sometimes things just go crappy for a bit.

But now that's all out of the way, I can also say this:

* Our house, yard, and neighborhood covered in snow are SO pretty!
* I LOVE being home with Paul
* Seeing our friends in Sac was a wonderful treat, and very affirming
* The game Killer Bunnies is a blast
* I miss California
* I especially miss my family at the holidays
* Building a fire on a cold wintery morning while it's snowing outside and I have nowhere to go is like a gift of time from the universe.
* Colds come and go, but cookies always taste good
* Artificial xmas trees are much nicer than I would have guessed
* The fact that any airline employee can deal with delayed passengers for days and still be nice may just be evidence of a higher being
* Cakewrecks.blogspot.com is still one of the funniest things I've seen
* I am thankful to & for more people than I can ever hope to personally acknowledge

Take care, stay warm, and I hope you are exactly where you want to be this year.

Australia, Underpants, and Being an Unwilling Witness

Saw the movie "Australia" a couple weeks ago, and was that a 4-hour long steaming pile of cliches. In fact, it would probably have been a delightful movie with a couple small tweaks: 1) having a storyline that wasn't 5 different storylines of indeterminate relevance, 2) if it had no sound. Lots of interesting pictures, but very little need to hear the dialogue.
While leaving the theater, I got to thinking about what kind of incomprehensible tripe would be in a movie called America - does make one shudder.

While away on a recent trip, Paul said that (as an example of how discombobulated he is without me) he'd gone to work one day with his underwear not only on inside out, but also backwards.
Still makes me laugh. He's awesome.

This last weekend we had some snow, and so Sunday morning I got up and went for a walk for about an hour, to assess how bad things were. I spent about 20 minutes at the top of a long, curvy, steep hill, watching car after car make a slow approach and then inevitably lock up all 4 tires and go coasting towards unavoidable collision with the next vehicle. Fortunately, no one *actually* collided when I was there, I think they managed to save all those reindeer games for the bottom of the hill. Thankfully I didn't have to be present for any stupid police witness statements, cuz it would have been something like: "They were all idiots, anyone without a lobotomy would have known this was NOT the street to drive when covered in ice."

Paul and I went back about 5 hours later just to see what the conditions were like, and the city had closed the street and erected signs to that effect.
On an icy Sunday afternoon. You KNOW that if you get the city to go out on icy roads and put up signs Sunday afternoon that there must have been some really exciting car sculptures at the bottom of that street.

Got to work from home Monday - the commute ROCKED! :-)

And, for the record, this is sooooooo sweet, I'm just psyched such unadulterated happiness exists:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcT4paZfflg

Dec 21

National Haiku
Day is on the 21st.
Get ready to write!

Send me your Haikus.
5-7-5 is the scheme,
ryhming not needed.

Compose with a friend -
Raise a glass and toast the words
we can briefly share.

Silly excesses,
writing these little poems.
Kind of addictive!

:-)

Been here and there

I went back to DC for a business trip immediately after Thanksgiving. It was way beyond awesome to see so many really neat people that I'd met when we lived there.

The trip was excellent for a lot of reasons (great client meetings for my current job, a couple meals on the business dime, seeing old friends, racking up frequent flier miles, talking with a bunch of locals about the incoming president, etc), but it was unexpectedly valuable for wrapping up loose ends I didn't even know I had.

I'd always felt like leaving my previous job left some unfinished business - I acutely felt how much more I'd wanted to do there. Maybe I should have just transferred to another office? Maybe I should have just waited it out? Maybe I just needed an attitude adjustment of some sort that would have made things better? After all, a lot of extraordinarily bright and hard working friends of mine stuck with it, emplying various strategies to maintain sanity. And, I certainly felt intellectually qualified to do the work, as well as curious enough to excell in an environment where I was constantly learning.

What this recent visit showed me, though, was that there was, in fact, no alternative path for me: My friends and former colleagues are more willing and able to deal with the things that drove me nuts, and I see now that moving to a new office or just waiting it out would not have worked for me. [Let me also clarify that I believe all people have different sensitivities and thresholds, and what might drive me to cover my naked self with stamps and mail myself to a pirhanna infested region in the amazon may just roll right off the backs of others. This isn't a negative assessment of anyone involved, only that we all have different lists of what drives us crazy.]

Must also say that knowing that these quality people are carrying on the work they do makes me feel better.

So, I returned feeling great about seeing old friends who I genuinely miss, having really good business meetings alongside the most senior people in my company, and attaining unanticipated closure to a period of my life that I invested a LOT of energy into. (yeah, that's right, ended that sentence with a preposition. it's MY blog, I can.)


Friends back east: I miss you tons. Be prepared for the regular pitches to move out west. Cuz da west is where it's AT.

Off to bed.