Insert Witty Title Here
Was that an actual tumbleweed that just rolled past? I mean, it hasn’t been that long since I posted, has it? It’s only November, after all.
What’s that? January? 2008? Are you sure?
Jumpin’ Judas on a pogo stick! How long have I been gone?
Lessee – what’s happened since November 12th? Hmm…well, we had one of T’s friends spend about a week with us & did the usual Hollywood/Beverly Hills/Santa Monica pier routine. Oh, & we also went to the Griffith Observatory, where Jersey Girl (T’s friend) was told by a pimply faced representative of the Observatory to extinguish her cigarette or face a $1200 fine. Her argument that she could smoke where she wants in Jersey were countered with a friendly reminder that the hills all around Griffith had recently burned & the management really didn’t want a repeat of that as they’d just finished refurbishing the place.
You can imagine how well that went over.
Shortly after that came Thanksgiving. This year, it seems that everyone in the family had somewhere else to be. So, T, The Boy, my mom & I made reservations at a restaurant in Oak Glen & had one of the best Thanksgiving dinners ever, with turkey, ham, veggies, bread & desert (there was so much food that they had to serve it on multiple plates).
And there was ZERO clean-up, to boot! Score!
Capping off the Month o’ Company, T’s parents came out here to celebrate Thanksmas. It was nice to not have to travel this year, but by the time they’d left, I was interested in finally having the house back to normal, without the extra bodies roaming about.
While they were here, though, we went down to the San Diego Natural History Museum to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit.
Along with 50,000 other people.
Imagine, if you will, trying to look at a piece of paper the size of a tooth with an indecipherable language written on it, from about 15 feet away, over the heads of 20 other people, including the one moron who feels the need to get 2 inches from the tooth sized item & inspect it for an hour.
Lather, rinse, repeat 30 times.
To say that the exhibit was a bit of a letdown would be a massive understatement. SDNHM, if any of your representatives should ever stumble across this little missive, let me offer this bit of advice: offer guided tours of no more than 40 people through the exhibit at a time. This will keep the flow of bodies moving & make for a far more enjoyable experience. Arming me with a speaker shaped like a paddle & turning me loose in a crowd is a bad, bad idea.
Now, this is not to say that the whole museum was a bust. Oh, no. Quite the contrary. You see, while all 49,995 of the other people were herded into the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, The Boy & I found that the rest of the museum was quite sparsely populated & a lot of fun to explore. And the Natural History Museum is not the only museum on the site. There’s a photography museum, an art museum, a model railroad museum – simply too much to take in in a day.
A few days after the in-laws left, The Boy had his first band concert. Although I couldn’t see him from where I was sitting, I got some good pictures of the top of his baritone. His band did very well for being a first year class. The 5th & 6th graders, on the other hand…remember the ghoul band from “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” when they try to play “Jingle Bells” & it sounds like a funeral dirge? That’s exactly what they sounded like. Their saving grace was one little trumpeter with a red horn. He got up there, be-bopped around & played his heart out. They all were trying, but he totally stole the show.
That next weekend, T & I attended the Company party. It was a nice excuse to get dressed up for the evening, although it was hard to identify anyone I knew from work, as I seldom see any of them in anything dressier than a shirt & jeans. The party had a casino-night theme &, since we were given $1000 in play money, I had no problem betting aggressively (read: stupidly) in Blackjack. As it was the first time T & I’d played the game, it was fortunate that we had a dealer who not only showed us the ropes, but also gave us hints as to when to hit & when to stay. A lot of fun was had, but, alas, we once again walked away empty handed. T & I have yet to win any kind of raffle or drawing.
*sigh* I was so looking forward to a new mp3 player.
The week before Christmas, Miguelito gave me two gifts: the first, a mega-cool Darth Vader lightsaber, perfect for keeping the office in line without leaving bruises; the second gift was the Filipino Flu. As I’d planned to take the whole week of Christmas off & Civ my brains out & ended up spending it in bed, you can imagine my joy in receiving that particular gift. Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like a fever & snot.
I promised Miguelito that there would be swift & severe retribution for ruining my week. I daresay I’ve not failed to follow through on that promise.
I learned a couple of things during that time: one would be to read the friggin’ label on the bottle of Ny-Quil. While just about any type of Ny-Quil will knock you out for a few hours, the kind that does not contain acetaminophen will do nothing to help break a fever. Another would be that they warn you on the bottle not to take the medication for too long for a reason. Not being a drinker, my tolerance for alcohol, even the tiny bit in Ny-Quil, is understandably low. To this very day, a full week since my last dose, I’m still having trouble remembering things. It feels like someone replaced my frontal lobe with a baggie full of wet sand. T thinks I’m just being my usual lazy, procrastinating self, but, the truth is, I can’t get my mind to function properly.
What was that? “Since when has that been a problem?”
Oh, real funny.
We rang in the New Year with some friends of ours at their house, where we spent the evening eating, chatting & playing Balderdash. For those of you not familiar with the game, it goes something like this: one person chooses a word from a card & the rest of the group write the definition that they think is right. Then, the reader reads the definitions & everyone votes on which one they think is correct. I lost, but I think I had the most fun, making up the most inane definitions for the words given. For instance, who knew that a ‘nurdle’ was a term used in Tiddlywinks & not a terribly unpopular, socially inept, but computer savvy, turtle?
Actually, I did. Big surprise there…
So, there you have it – the past couple of months. I’ll bet it was every bit as exciting as you thought it’d be, right?
Right?
*crickets chirping*
Oh, whatever…
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