Abbie's Real Life Blog

I had such a great weekend for such a cold weekend… we were supposed to get snow on Saturday.  All the weather people were in agreement about the snow for Saturday, but then it never actually happened.  It sort of blew over us and then dumped a foot of snow elsewhere, which means that we have had the shittiest year on record as far as snow is concerned.  I think so far we’ve managed a measly three or four inches, total, as far as snowfall.  Not that it hasn’t been cold, though.  Very disappointing.

But it was fine because we were out and about on Saturday anyway.

I went for a massage and facial on Saturday morning.  I don’t get facials very often- not even one a year- and I don’t know why I went back to the same place I went last year, because I wasn’t impressed last year.  They seem to do a half-assed job there.  But then I wonder if beauty treatments have regional differences.  I never had facials or waxings or what have yous until I lived in Maryland, and so I was used to a specific order of things, but it’s different here in Missouri.  When they do eyebrow waxes, for instance, the stylists in Missouri (and I’ve been to several, not just one) don’t wax the top of your eyebrow unless you specifically ask for it, which is strange.  In Maryland, that was pretty typical.  I don’t get it!  So I will have to go somewhere else next time, and see if they do it differently.

Anyway, I had a few issues with my left shoulder a couple of years ago, and they’ve started up again, so I was hoping that a massage would help.  I don’t think I’m having as much pain, but it’s hard to tell.

After that, Tracy took the dog to the park and then we went out on an antiquing adventure.  Well, ‘antiquing’ is probably the wrong word, because we’re just interested in old furniture (furniture made of actual wood, not pressboard) and there are a ton of shops in the area that sell old furniture under the guise of ‘antiques’, even though they’re not really antiques, usually.  So we went to about five or six shops looking for old furniture after lunch at a cafe in Jefferson City that we like a lot.  We lucked out too- Tracy bought a desk, a bookcase, and a 50′s style chrome table with a bright yellow Formica top.  Nice!  Then on Sunday, she found a set of four wooden chairs to go with it, because even though those old tables came with vinyl-covered chairs originally, they are not often sold with them in the antique shops.  And that was Tracy’s haul.  I bought a late-1960s Danish modern large cupboard with a glass top, which I love and which only cost $90.  I also bought a green vinyl chair in the same Danish modern style and a yellow vinyl ottomon with chrome legs.

Right now, we’re filling up the house with extraneous furniture.  Good fun.  We still have not sorted out the kitchen equipment, which was on my quarterly resolutions list.  Ergh.  I can’t believe it’s already March 2009!  2009!  Good lord.

I did some laundry and we watched several rental movies: Religulous, W., The Incredible Hulk, and we still have Choke to watch before I have to return them all.  I think we both disliked the Hulk movie, both liked Religulous, and I liked W. but Tracy fell asleep in the middle and then claimed that they didn’t spend enough time in the movie on the runup to the Iraq War, which is ludicrous.  And in the meantime I found out that Tracy has never seen a Quentin Tarantino picture and I don’t think I ever made her watch Blade either.  Unbelievable.

On Sunday evening, my friend from the International Center invited me to her house for dinner, and it ended up being a dinner party.  I was the only native English speaker there, but they all spoke English as they could and we kept up a fairly decent conversation.  I’m always a little worried that I’m being too basic and stupid when speaking simple English so that non-native speakers can follow me.  I have a dumb way of both overusing the word ‘like’ in a Valley Girl way and then throwing in fifty-cent words because I can’t remember a smaller, simpler term.  Plus, they were all master’s degree candidates in engineering fields, not to mention a few years younger than me, so I already feel a little dumb.  Oh well!  They made several wonderful dishes and it was great.  Now I probably need to reciprocate or something.

Meanwhile- nothing much going on this week.  New photos at my Flickr site, and I’m working on pictures every night while finally getting dangerously close to finishing The X-Files.  This show seems to have taken months and months to get through.  Well, it has taken months and months to get through it.  It’s been forever.