oh! i know something good

so, on the heels of my whine/rant, i thought i would post some of the cool stuff i got for xmas...

adam totally rocked it this year, which is hard for a guy to do for me for xmas. i'm apparently "difficult to shop for" and keep "buying myself everything i want" etc blah blah blah...

so, adam, who apparently *does* listen when i talk surprised me with a pair of uggs. the ones i have wanted forever, and was going to buy myself, but then once the dog got hurt i wasn't going to buy them, etc (and blah blah blah)




these are mine and i love them now...












i haven't taken the boots off since i got them. i wore them to work, i wear them in the house, i wear them other places i go. well, you get the point...

he also got me this nifty green sweater that i would never think to buy myslef but i love it. the color's great, it's super warm, and it has puffy stuff all over it. how can i beat that? i can't!

then he came through with fancy smelly lotion, 4 balls of NICE yarn, and some cashmere and mohair socks. mmmmmmmm. all around, the boy scored some points.

i will post pics of what i got him soon. words just don't do it justice.

so there's a little happiness for ya. enjoy!

ugh. merry f*cking christmas.

so...i'm way behind. i have lots of whining to do to catch you up on what is (and what will never be...)

so let's see, about weds the 21 or so (def weds before xmas, whatever the date was) star and i were playing some chase around the house star was pulling babies from a burning building and she destroyed her knee. being the bastion of compassion that i am, i waited until friday to see if she got better and when she didn't i brought her in for an emergency consult with some local vet. basically, they said "youre looking at $3500 of surgery to fix this" at which point i had a minor stroke and ran out. the vet tech told me that vet care in MD is ridiculously expensive and i might be better off in MA if i had a vet there. since i did, and star and i had a standing appointment for shots anyway, i took the proffered pain pills and left.

back here in boston, we went to our regular vet, who confirmed a "grossly obvious" cruciate injury and recommended surgery ASAP. so as it stands right now, we are scheduled for a consult and pre-op workup next weds, with little ms. going in on thursday for her operation.

ballpark estimate:$3000 (cue vomit here)

thanks to dad for the interest free loan (as opposed to the 21% offered by the hospital). thanks also to all my friends who have pledged money to help out- you better come through!!! hahaha, kidding. we appreciate any help anyone has given us, including just general help and offers of help with the dog.

the plus side to this is getting my dog wasted on pain pills every night. she gets pretty drunky and very funny. i will post pics when i have some, but we've caught some very fab poses from her highness this week. there is no dignity at the bottom of a Rimadyl bottle.

i really have nothing else to say, because this whole injury/surgery/money things is currently consuming my life but i hope soon it will all be in the past and we will be on the road to recovery.

otherwise, my visit home is going well. lots of visits with family and friends i haven't seen in a while which is nice. i'm a little sad because star and i had lots of planned walks in my favorite woods, but i'm trying not to dwell....as you can tell, i fail at not dwelling.

What I did at work today

Step 1, cut a hole in the box

















Step 2, put your junk in that box


















Step 3, Open the box!





Over at your parents house, dick in a box, hanging round the office gotcha dick in a box!!

i am high society, b*tches!

So this weekend I went to Wake Forest, NC for work. Saturday was a great day, we went to the Sarah P Duke gardens in Durham, gorgeous. I will post pics later, but the official site can be checked out here. I look forward to seeing that place in the spring.

Saturday night we went out to Mura restaurant, a posh little sushi house, for our new annual tradition of a work Christmas party. We got a private tatami room, which had a table about 6 inches off the ground, but a well under the table for your legs so you sit low, but not indian style. It was very funny looking around, knowing we were all on the floor but the floor is the seat you know? It also got interesting watching people try to get up out of this arrangement as the night went on and the drinks flowed!

When we got back to the hotel, Jake and I weren't tired so we decided to ask Mary (*the* most helpful person in the world, who worked the front desk of the hotel) where we could walk to and she suggested McKenzie's right around the corner. We strolled over to have a nightcap, and found it was a no frills bar, with some cool locals just kicking around inside. Unfortunately, we were told it's members only, so we did the only thing we could: we joined! So now I am a member of a social club in Wake Forest and can go kick it local style whenever I go down for work. Thanks to member and local Chris for sponsoring us for membership! Joey (the bartender) said our cards will be laminated and ready for us the next time we go back. I'm fancy now :o)

I'm exhausted now, my poor body has been abused this weekend. I'm off to eat some of the nourishing Soup and go to bed.

Study of the Christmas tree still to come.

For random picture fun-ness here is Star. I spilled bacon grease all over myself, so she was all up in my grill until I changed.

If you recall, said terrorist at left busted up my keyboard a few weeks back. Being terribly lazy and having a USB keyboard I've just plugged into the laptop for now I'm still missing keys. Got pulled aside and had to boot my laptop for the security guards at the airport today so they could see it was just a laptop with some keys missing and not a giant missile.

easy like Sunday morning....

so when we retired saturday night, the tree looked pretty much like this.


more accurately, it looked like this (or at least this is what it looked like first thing sunday morning)
it's not bare, but it is nowhere near what it is going to be....











now, some of us (me and the dog) like to relax a little on sunday morning. some of us (adam) wake up, grab some garland and get to getting...





<---hard at work, no rest for the wicked etc etc etc






star and i were mystified. enthralled. our seemingly so sensible man of the house had become some frightening cross between tortured artist, control freak, and 6 year old boy. stunning, and fascinating.

view from the couch. the dog is total Towly at this point. "we have no idea what's going on!"

The face of a dog without any Vision







So Mr Christmas goes about his business, with the dog and i settled in firmly to supervise (and by supervise i mean sit and watch and not give input because we dont share The Vision)

Mr Christmas is alternately concentrating very hard, and exclaiming gleefully. statements like "oh rad, a cupcake" are coming out. really? rad? a CUPCAKE? let's have a look at this "rad" cupcake, shall we?

cupcake and his cupcake. i shit you not.




cupcake in more serious times. trying to decide where to put a bulb without having it be "too obvious" (?????)

So this goes on for hours. Star and are unable to move, we are completely transfixed by the project that is the perfect tree.....eventually le artist' exhausts his talent pool, not to mention the stash of tacky decorations, and falls on the couch completely spent. it's not easy creating art people!!!

little elves and rocking horses? check!

santa? check!

It must finally be ready!!!!








And here it is.....are you ready....can you handle it???????????

Fear not dear reader. I know it's far away, but there will be an up close study of this masterpiece to come!!

Now, a couple more photos for y'all (new word of the week)

here is one of star. it's part of the extreme closeup series, but is cooler than you think:

Please notice the sparkle in her little doggy eyes.

Is it xmas joy?
Is it jubilee?


perhaps. Or perhaps...could it be....let me check...


FEAR OF THE CRAZY MAN IN THE YELLOW SHIRT YOU SEE REFLECTED IN HER EYES!!!!





Extreeeeeeeme close up. You can almost see the gleam in his eye off the gleam in hers!


An in depth study of the tree is to follow, because there are some things you need to see.

oh. my. gawd.

hahaha, this is great. when we last left our heroine (that's me), she was bitching about not having any christmas going on and just about fed up and ready to go haul a tree carcass in and string it up in front of the hippy (that's adam). she was also making a dinner los fabuloso, which came out as good as i knew it could be and was delicious. but back to my christmas cheer and the material display of such things.

it wasn't exactly true that we had no decorations, but they had been left by the previous tenants and were really tacky (it's kind of a thing in my neighborhood). i had sorted through them, decided they were all nasty and boxed them up to go to goodwill. more on this later.

so: not 2 hours after i posted, adam comes home and begins clearing a spot out in the corner. i knew something was up, but then when he grabbed a 10 in saucer i had lying under another plant, i thought the something might turn out to be pretty lame- what could possibly fit in that that is worth being excited about?? he makes one trip back to the car, returns with some hangy garland things. very nice- pine cones, mixed greens the works. 3x9ft lengths. so far so good, i'm impressed; excited even.

back to the car again. returns with 2 shiny greens arrangements which are nothing but frivolous- i mean, they werent the sort of thing youd expect your boyfriend to come home with. they seem more like the kind of thing a girl would want and a boyfriend would roll his eyes at but keep quiet and take it home, you know? i had one brief moment of "who are you because my boyfriend doesnt buy stuff like this" but i liked them so i wasnt complaining.

<- shiny green non manly things


for me, yay! --->

a third trip to the car, flowers for me (yay!) and some assorted snacky goodness from whole foods (also yay!). also on board are some nice shiny, classy bulbs (oooh) assorted hanging colored lights (hmmm. ummm) this is where things start to go "Different Than I Had Imagined Them".

fourth and final trip: Adam (hereafter referred to as Mr Christmas) comes waltzing in proudly bearing a 7 ft tall, LIVE AND WITH ROOT BALL canadian fir tree. Now, a couple of things are funny about this:
1) adam has a tree. like from a nursery, this tree needs a forest or a yard or something tree. he had at one point in some anti xmas tree slaughter rant mentioned getting a live tree and setting it free after but i totally didnt believe him. but he has a tree and is already going on about all the neat places he can plant it. he is making googly eyes at it, petting it's branches and all around looking way too happy to be near this tree. i think it's his new pet, and i suspect he may go visit this tree now and then once it is in the woods.
2)he has attempted to put this tree in a 10 inch saucer. this tree is about 15 inches and 50lbs too big for the saucer, yet he tried his little heart out to make it work. man logic becomes evident (the saucer is an unmitigated casualty, but well worth it in entertainment value) and i settle in to realize that my little tree hugger has just saved the holidays. most excellent.

that does not fit in there

so. we break for my fabulous dinner, talking about the tree and the lights. i try to tactfully bring up the colored lights thing and explain it isnt really my ride, and i was picturing more of a simple tree, with white lights and some classy decorations. nothing fancy, it's really more about the tree for me. and the lights. white lights....mmmm. adam-? not buying it, which was surprising. he's very minimalist and natural in his pottery, i was thinking he wouldn't want to decorate the tree much at all.

boy was i wrong.

after dinner, we adjourn and i head upstairs to putter. i mention to adam that the decorations that came with the house are boxed up out back and we should load them into the car for goodwill. i come back down 15 minutes later and he is up to his elbows in said boxes, exclaiming loudly over all the neat stuff inside. uh oh. he is also stringing himself up with silver garland, which he apparently intends to drape all over the poor tree, which at this point i just feel bad for. colored lights? silver garland? tacky leftover 80s ornaments?? ICK. so i see the garland, recognize that i am at a crossroads with this tree thing and i decide to compromise. he brought the tree home, i'm really happy about it and i dont for once feel the need to impose my will and put my foot down about the tree. silver garland and multi colored lights it is, how can i help you? (damn im a big person!) so he strings the lights. it doesn't look offensive or anything. go get 'em tiger! i can totally handle this! then he starts stringing garland. i attempt to get in the holiday spirit and start hanging bulbs but am requested to let him get the garland on first- apparently there is some sort of science to tree setup. i back off, wait my turn and eventually Mr Christmas deems me worthy and i am allowed to approach the tree.

the view from the couch, where i was sent after hanging that white bulb right there before himself had a chance to hang the garland.

i hang a bulb, all is well, we are merry. i grab some more, and get to hanging those too. then i notice that Mr Christmas is following me around, moving all the bulbs i hang around- apparently there is a very specific look we are going for, and since i haven't got the vision, i'm just messing shit up with my "random" and "obvious" bulb placement. he's not seemingly malicious with this bulb fixing, just really looks like he has a plan and my shit is freaking him out because im not putting it where it goes. he's sort of silently suffering and trying to be non chalant about the fact that he's rearranging bulbs on a live christmas tree he brought home and stuffed on top of a 10 inch saucer.

noticing his pain of course motivates me to see where i can hang things that might actually cause him to gasp or seriously freak out. this game is fun for a bit, but then i realize i'm just not doing it right and he's following me around spending *way* too much time thinking about bulbs. then a couple of things dawn on me:
1)the hippy has a vision. he's pretty good with the art stuff, so i thought he might have something great in mind that i just lack the vision for. i decide stepping back and letting him go might have interesting results.
2)my digital camera is right there. i can sit on the couch, supervise, photojournal, and post on my blog to take the piss out of him!!

WINNER! and so i settle in. dog in lap, camera in hand, and watch Mr Christmas show me how it's done.

more on the tree later

Star says "I know this fool is not busting out neon lights"

whew.

no, i've not fallen off the face of the earth, i've been crushed under work. this week i learned about the physics of optics in a Zeiss FF3 fundus camera, a bunch about digital camera ccd chips and filters, and a little about electrical waves, because we had messy ones. so much to know, i love it! i don't feel like talking about that right now, but there's lots cooking at work these days.

speaking of cooking (am i smooth or what?), right now i'm waiting for 715 to roll around so i can put my dinner in the oven. tonight's menu consists of bleu cheese stuffed mushrooms (recipe here), which are ready and waiting to go, and a variation on this recipe. for the vegetable we will be having roasted baby carrots, and for a starch we will be having Alexia oven reds bagged spiced potatoes- available in your local grocer's freezer section. i'm pretty psyched.

got half a case of wine, so the meal will be accompanied by a nice pinot grigio (also featured in the gravy) and for those of you who prefer a red wine we have a spicy peppery cabernet.

i fucking rule.


i also finally had a chance to clean the house and mess with my plants, etc today. tonight i will be hanging my christmas decorations; i'm breaking down and contributing to the slaughter of innocent shrubbery. i want a christmas tree!!


pictures later.
i'm out.