Month: November 2009

I got rained on today.  When I left for my run, it wasn’t raining.  It started to rain right at my halfway point, naturally, when I was as far from home as I was going to get.  It didn’t start pouring until I was about a mile from home.  That was nice.  At least it wasn’t cold.

Thanksgiving was wonderful, busy, loud, fun, slightly stressful, and busy.  And loud.  And fun.  And really good.  Oh, and I’m exhausted.  I didn’t do much today.  (I was recovering.)  I returned the table and went to Home Depot for paint chips so I can figure out what color to paint the dining room.  Oh, and I discovered that the wallpaper in there is not going to come off as easily as I had hoped.  I’ll have to score it and use hot soapy water and stuff.  Yay.  I’ll start on that tomorrow, I think.  If I can narrow down the paint colors, I’ll get samples tomorrow, too.

Our dogs are robots!

Are they planning to take over the world?  Kill us in our sleep?  Or just fight to the death over who gets to sleep on the dog bed?

John and I spent our evenings this week watching the AMC remake (in miniseries form) of “The Prisoner”.  It was confusing, disjointed, confusing again, and ultimately unsatisfying.  Waste of six hours.

I spent the entire day preparing for Thanksgiving.  I shopped, I cleaned, and I cleaned some more.  Tomorrow I’m taking the dogs to be groomed, and cleaning even more.  Should be fun.  But then, I’ll be READY.

Earlier today I had something to say, but I didn’t say it then, and now I’ve forgotten it.  Not a big deal.  We slept in a bit, went to Wegman’s for bagels (John’s first trip to the new Wegman’s – very exciting for him), and sold the Korean end tables to a Korean woman, all before noon.  This afternoon, I took John to Haverty’s so he could see some of the dining room tables I liked in person.  I think I’ve convinced him that the Ebony collection dining room table and chairs are the ones we should get, but we’ve decided to wait a while.  There’s no rush, since we certainly wouldn’t have the new table in time for Thanksgiving, and it can’t hurt to wait until we’re both making money again.  We had dinner at Gout de Paris, the new French cafe that opened in our little shopping center.  It was very good, and totally empty (it’s brand new), which may be why it felt a little uncomfortable.  The manager (maybe owner?) and the staff were hovering a little.  I think I’d go back for coffee and pastries, but not for a whole meal.  Well, I might.  It’s a little expensive for lunch.

Potential dining room table:

Matching chair:

Despite my best efforts to convince him that he was too sick to go (he wasn’t), John prevailed (as usual when it comes to races) and we ran the 2009 Herndon Turkey Trot 5K this afternoon.  Also as usual, he was right and I was happy to be there and happy we’d done it when the race was over.  My time wasn’t great (but better than it’s been lately), and I figured out why I don’t like this race (I don’t like the cross-country part – too slippery when the grass is kinda wet and there’s lots of mud), but that’s all okay ’cause I felt really good when I crossed the finish line.  AND we didn’t see anyone we know today.  For the last two years, we’ve run into people from our old company (I almost said “people from work”), and I’m pretty sure they were planning on being there today.  I guess we missed them.  And I think I’m relieved.  These people in particular were always nice and everything, but they weren’t close friends and I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with that.

We’re home, I’ve gotten four emails from people who are interested in the Korean chests I put on craigslist today, and I’m hungry.  We have steaks on the grill and champagne in our (plastic) glasses because we’re finally celebrating John’s new job (and mine).  I’m itching to edit that plastic glasses thing.  If they’re plastic, they’re not glasses.  Plastic champagne flutes would be more accurate, but it’s a weird combination of pretentious or snobby (flutes instead of glasses) and trashy (they’re plastic so I won’t break them when I knock them off the counter).  Hmm, not so much trashy as klutz-friendly.  That’s nicer.

What do I have to say today?  Well, I was productive.  I spent the entire day cleaning out the closet and the cluttered surfaces in the guest room, and from there I made a dent in the mess that lived in one corner of the bedroom.  I threw out a lot of stuff (actual trash in some cases, including leftover lengths of wallpaper for rooms we stripped the wallpaper out of) and put together a couple of bags of donatable stuff.  I have two whole under-the-bed plastic storage bins full of sweaters to give away, too, but I want Mom to have a shot at them before I get rid of them.

To be productive tomorrow, I think I’ll have to clean the windows.  Or clear all the extra stuff out of the dining room.  Vacuum upstairs.  Finish putting the guest room back together.  Or all of those things.

Not an eventful day.  But that is totally okay.  I’m making lists of what I can do around the house and then prioritizing for what really needs to get done before Thanksgiving.  And then I didn’t do any of those things today.  But I will tomorrow.  For real.  For reals, even.

I spent the rest of the day, um, reading Harry Potter.  🙂  I’ll do better (be more productive) tomorrow.

I just signed, scanned, and sent back an offer letter.  The best part is that I have a month and a half to get all kinds of things done around the house with NO pressure on me to find a job.  I start in January.

I’m a little excited.  And relieved.  (I might have done a little dancing and singing after I got off the phone this morning.)  I still won’t get paid until I actually start working (of course), and I no longer trust ANY companies (of course), and anything could happen between now and January, so I will still keep some feelers out there just in case (of course).  Hence the “kind of” in the title.  But…YAY!!

Actually, today was a scouting expedition.  John needed to concentrate on his homework and his project, so rather than drag him with me to every furniture store I could think of within a reasonable distance (Leesburg to the west, Dranesville Road to the east), I went by myself, armed with a notebook and my camera.  More than three hours later, I’m home and John and I have eliminated a few of the options based on looks alone.  Next, we have to make some decisions based on size.  Then price.  But that will probably wait until later.

In the meantime, we’re going to snack a little for dinner and hope John can figure this simulator thing out for his project.  It’s starting to bother him.

I just watched Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, and by the end my eyes were brimming with happy tears.  Kind of like the first time I watched Love Actually.  It was such a nice movie.

(“Brimming with tears” sounds like such an odd phrase now that I look at it.  Is that right?)

Also, I just finished my first Inspector Ian Rutledge mystery (by Charles Todd, who is apparently a mother and son writing team and not just one person), and I really liked it.  I’ll have to go back to the beginning and read all of them.

A flowchart of “Hey Jude”.

It’s early yet, so this probably won’t last (way to be optimistic, Zannah), but I feel SOOOO much better than I did yesterday.  I got up, it wasn’t raining for the first time in two days, and I went for a run.  It was hard, but in a good way, and I feel good.  Now let’s see if I can make something happen on the job front.

I’m trying to figure out if Roxy really loves me or if she’s just using me for food.  Hard to tell.  And I may never know.

I don’t really have anything else to say today.  I have no good job news, only possible bad job news, and that’s just depressing.  The weather isn’t helping.

Yeah, that’s all I’ve got.  Sorry to be both short and depressing.  I’ll do better tomorrow.

John worked from home, and it was gray and rainy, so I don’t feel like too much of a loser for not leaving the house even once today.  I applied for three jobs and made a list of companies whose career opportunities I’ll be checking out the rest of this week and into next week.  I had exercise plans, but since the rain didn’t let up even for a little, I let them go.  It was a nice day.  Even though John was, you know, actually working most of the day, it was nice to have him right here in the dining room.

No news on the job front.  Not surprising, since today is a holiday for most people around here, so I’m not as annoyed about it as I was yesterday.  Hopefully, tomorrow will be better.

The band is practicing in the basement tonight, so I’m heading upstairs to read.

I remembered.  I need to get a urine sample from Roxy and take it to the vet for testing.  She finished antibiotics for a UTI last Friday, and they need to re-test to make sure she’s okay.  Exciting, right?  So was the bank.  🙂

I don’t have very much to do right now.  I can only spend so much time per day job-hunting before I get depressed, and I’m not ready to tackle house projects yet (although that’s coming soon, I think).  I’m spacing out the errands I have to run to make sure I have a reason to leave the house every day.  (That looks worse written out than it did in my head.)  Yesterday, I went grocery shopping.  Today, I went to the bank.

Damn.  I think I’m out of errands.  I thought I had one for tomorrow, but I can’t think of it.

I did my weekly grocery shopping at the brand new Wegman’s that opened yesterday in Leesburg.  That’s right.  I’m one of those uber-lucky people who gets to live in close proximity to not one, but two Wegman’s stores.  One is 6 miles east of our house, and the other (the new one) is just over 4 miles to the west.  The layout of the new store is completely different, so I spent more time trying to find things than actually shopping, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.  Right now, though, I’m feeling some loyalty to the old store.  Which is still on my way home from…hm.  Well, not work, since I’m, ahem, not working, but I’m sure it will be on the way home from work eventually.

I didn’t really like The Witches of Eastwick.  Glad I’m done with it. Today was a beautiful day.  Warm, too.  I wish the warm part had started a little earlier, though, ’cause I could have used it at the Purcellville Turkey Trot this morning.  I like Purcellville and everything, and they give out the best race t-shirts, but man, that town is hilly!  Last year’s course had all those ups and downs, and since this year was a new course, I’d hoped it would be different.  I was wrong.  Different hills, and not as bad as the Wolf Trap hills, but still.  My point, I think, was that it was cold this morning.  For the first time in more than a year, I had the lung/throat pain that comes from breathing too hard in cold air.  Hate that.  Other than all that, it was nice to be out and about that early.

Okay, I think I’m done slacking off here.  I’ll try to go back to regularly posting something.  Maybe not daily, but more than once a week.  I’ll keep the job hunt details out of it.  Except for this one: John just completed his first day of work at his new job!  He spent less than one week unemployed, which is just crazy.  And fantastic.  I believe it went well, but I couldn’t get the details because his phone was about to die.  I’ll get them when he gets home.

I had a very nice, friendly, no-worries-about-unemployment day.  I got up early with John (who was heading off to WORK!), shot off some job hunt-related emails, and headed to the zoo with Margaret.  It was a bit chilly (and windy), and I think we spent more time on the metro and Connecticut Ave trying to get TO the zoo than actually in it, but it was more about hanging out anyway.  Besides, we saw the animals we really wanted to see (cheetahs, pandas, lions, tigers, panda bears, seals, gorillas, etc).  No elephants (too cold for them to be outside, and the elephant house is closed), we never found the  giraffes (though we didn’t look very hard), and we walked right out of the reptile house after we saw the scary spiked lizard with the triangle-shaped head in the first exhibit.  And it was a beautiful sunny day.

We parted at the metro to go on separate lunch dates: Margaret with an old friend, and, well, same for me.  I went to Crystal City to have lunch with Erik.  By the time we were done (after a visit to Starbucks – post-lunch coffee was a good idea), Erik could legitimately leave work, so we got on the metro and rode back to Ballston together so he could go home and I could pick up my car and get home to rescue the dogs.  Which I did.

Anyway, good day.  Not sure what’s on for dinner tonight, but champagne is definitely on the menu.