Abbie's Real Life Blog

I had a nice Thanksgiving, a nice trip to Chicago, and a nice birthday, and that was my holiday.

This is my first full week of work since October, and it’s a hell of an adjustment.  I don’t seem to be ready for it at all, and I’m also kind of exhausted from all that traveling.  I went to the gym yesterday morning* and it was sort of painful.  My body just did not want to run or stretch or any of it.  My eyes dazedly rested on Fox & Friends, and my brain did not even shut down automatically, the way it should have.  (God, I hate that little blonde Gretchen woman with every fiber of my being.  She is the opposite of everything I am and everything that I hold dear.  She is only matched in uselessness by the two pompous windbags who share that stage.)  This morning, it was all I could do to keep from calling in late to work so that I could sleep it off a bit.  I didn’t, though.  But I wanted to.

* Oh, we have been so good about the gym this year!  We’ve been going regularly since June, even with all my inconvenient trips last month and my sister in school, and now with the snow and the ice.  We’re still going three times a week, when we can!  I am very proud of us.  I think it’s because it’s so early that my brain isn’t functioning.  I tend to wake up as I’m running on the elliptical.  I think I’ve even lost some weight, because my pants are all a little too big.  But it’s that stage where you’re not actually sure if you’ve lost weight, and especially if you’re really going to keep it off, and you’ve spent major cash this year on buying new clothes, and are you really going to go buy more just because the others don’t fit?

I joined GoodReads and Flixster this week, both of which involve cataloging every book or movie I’ve ever seen, and rating them.  It’s been interesting.  I just can’t remember if I’ve seen Platoon or not.  I think I rented it with Full Metal Jacket a few years ago, and I remember Full Metal Jacket, but I don’t remember Platoon.  I was reading the Wikipedia entry, and it sounds vaguely familiar, but I feel like I would remember it.  Or maybe it just wasn’t that memorable.

Oh, Thanksgiving.  It went well.  Tracy left early for the airport in St. Louis, and I got up later to make a Tofurky, though I didn’t have any orange juice so I just made the soy sauce and olive oil baste, mixed up with some thyme and basil and cumin, and it turned out very tasty.  At ten, I left and picked up the turkey from my grandparents’ house, and then I picked up my Chinese friend and two of her friends, and we all went up to my parents’ house for the feast.  Inviting the Chinese students was a great idea because they were super thrilled to see my parents’ house in the woods and go for a couple of long walks around the property and eat Thanksgiving dinner.  They even brought food to share, which was so sweet.  My family was pretty small this time around, but it just made it easier for everyone to chat and have a good time.  We left around 4pm (we always eat dinner early) and I went home, made backups of my computer and watched television, and then packed for my trip.

I left for Chicago early on Friday morning, but as it was Black Friday, I was hardly the only car on the road.  In fact, I ended up leaving Columbia later than I planned because of the traffic on Stadium Boulevard near Best Buy and the other shops.  But I got out by seven am, and rolled into the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook, where my cousin and his family live, around 1:30pm.  The goal of the trip was to take family photos and baby photos (they have a two-year-old and a newborn), but I managed to fit in some IKEA and Chicago Diner too (with a drive through downtown Chicago on Friday night) and so it was a pretty successful trip.  I was home around midnight on Saturday.  I was very excited that I used less than a tank of gas for the return trip!  (We hybrid owners are a weird bunch, you know.)

So that left Sunday, which was my birthday.  I slept late, surrounded by all of the cats, then woke up feeling very groggy.  I sat around for the rest of the morning, watching various Pixar movies and doing some Internet stuff, and then my mother called and I went up to their house for awhile.  My sister made me a coconut cake, which I toted around with me, offering pieces as I went, and that was fun.  Tracy got back to St. Louis in the late afternoon but encountered major traffic on the way home.  A normally hour-and-a-half trip took her more than four hours to accomplish, though I think she ended up trying a shortcut at one point that probably only added to the length.  When she got home, we went for Chinese and then came home again to crash.

It was a good weekend.

Now I have pictures to process and Christmas cards to address and gifts to buy, and I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed, but it’s ok.  It will all work out.

I think I’m in good shape as far as presents go.  I may have just made the bad decision to purchase something on eBay for Christmas, which means that it might not make it, but it’s always fun to inject that little bit of suspense into the holiday, don’t you think?  I’m stuck on a couple of people, but I hope to have everything bought by the end of the week.  On Friday, it’s St. Nicholas Eve and the Columbia College lighting ceremony (which we always attend), and then I want to spend the weekend putting up lights at my house and helping my parents put up their Christmas tree.  I’d feel much more jolly if the cards were mailed and the presents all purchased, so that sounds like a good goal.  All of it done by this weekend!

I am glad that all the traveling in November is over, and now December stretches out before me, with nowhere to go but plenty to do.  I won’t be out of town again (well, out of the state, anyway; I will likely end up in St. Louis at some point in the next few weeks, and Christmas will involve a jaunt to Kansas City to see family, as always) until the end of January, when I go to Denver for a work trip. 

That isn’t to say that it wasn’t fun to see so much of the country in such a short period of time.  I’m starting to get to the point where I’ve seen nearly all the American stuff on my “See Before I Die” list, with the exceptions being Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, the Grand Canyon, and the National Parks of southern Utah, most of which I am sure I will see when I retire at 65, sell my house, and start cruising around in an RV with two dogs and a tripod stand built on the roof.  Looking forward to that, let me tell you!  While I’m young, though, I should concentrate on getting to see the Himalayas and the Nile and the Transsiberian Railroad and the Great Wall of China.  Whew!  But it’s all on my list.  Anyway, between Hartford and Orlando and Madison and Ohio and Chicago, it was a busy few weeks.  It was a fun few weeks.  And I didn’t have as much anxiety about flying as I thought I would.  Not that I like it, you know, but it wasn’t terrible.

It is nice to have some time to do things.  It’s nice to be home!