Kevin is back home. Time for a slightly delayed Thanksgiving dinner. No turkey obviously – the boy has had enough to last for weeks. So crab-stuffed mushrooms and a nice piece of sirloin. Red wine for me, egg nog for him; mince pies for dessert. Yum. Thank you, Goddess.
Also some wise words from Jed Hartman:
my favorite things: Warm sunlight on skin; warm water on skin; warm skin on skin
Couldn’t agree more. I love California.
So, here we are at the start of another holiday season. Despite a faint ray of hope this year, it looks like once again I’ll be spending all of the major holiday days alone. The good thing about this is that such days tend to be very quiet, which means I can get lots done. And the thing to be thankful for is that I have work to do. Having work means getting money. Getting money means I survive for another year and get more chances to spend some of my life in California with Kevin. This is very good.
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you folks out there who are tucking into your turkey dinners.
Today has been a complete bust. It is one of those days when you set out to do a small and simple housekeeping task on your computer and 12 hours later it is still unfinished. This is not the sort of thing you should be doing when you have urgent work projects to complete. Except of course that I don’t have all of the data I need right now so I can’t really make a lot of progress anyway. But it does mean that I’m unlikely to make BASFA tonight, and I’m probably looking at canceling any plans I might have had for Thanksgiving weekend.
Still, I did get to the SF in SF reading last night. Karen Joy Fowler and Molly Gloss were fabulous, and it was good to see a lot of friends.
Meanwhile, back to work.
It seems like no sooner have I arrived in California than I’m off again. Heres’ the schedule:
And then I have only a few days to recover before having to fly back to Boston on business.
Just in case anyone out there doesn’t know California geography very well, the current wildfires are around San Diego, several hundred miles south of where Kevin and I live. We haven’t even been affected by the power cuts (caused by fires burning around transmission lines).
On the other hand, we do have friends down there. Jim and Sandra (and the chinchillas) are safe. Their house may not be. No bad news on anyone else, and that’s a good thing. Here’s hoping it stays that way.
Update: Jim has posted to his LJ to say that the house is still standing. Apparently some of the chinchillas had to be left behind, but as least some of them are OK. I guess they won’t know until they count them.
I appear to be more or less arrived in California now, meaning that I felt refreshed enough on waking up this morning to start getting back into my Pilates routine. I’m obviously getting too old for long-distance international travel because it takes me longer and longer to recover from the flight each time, but at least I still get there in the end.
The other good news is that I have my kitchen back, so I’ve been able to experiment on Kevin with some new recipes. I’m pleased to report that Nigella’s new squid recipe is every bit as fast and delicious as she promises, though I’m clearly missing a trick with regard to getting the coating to stick well. I also tried out a new chili recipe which included mole paste. That worked very well indeed, though the mole paste itself proved to be very dangerous stuff, being very oily and prone to staining it touches bright orange.
OK, so it might be October, and we do have rain forecast for this evening, but I’ve just been out for a walk. The sky was blue, the sun was shining warmly, I had the new Go Team album on my MP3 player; have I mentioned how much I love California?
My brain seems to be slowly emerging from the jet lag fug, so maybe I will be able to be productive today. Certainly I need to do some work. I also need to make progress on the pile of mail that was waiting for me here, finish unpacking, and generally do some housework. That latter, of course, starts with the computers. I have discovered that running a full-system virus scan on my desktop now takes more than 24 hours, which is not good if you have one scheduled to start every day.
You know that your hairdresser has done a good job when…
… you get carded buying Guinness in Safeway shortly afterwards.
When I woke up this morning the temperature in the apartment had dropped to 68F. Brrr! I decided that closing the patio door might be a good idea.
I have I said before that I love California?
Several of my American friends have been marking their traditional holiday by blogging about what they, personally, are giving thanks for. I, of course, am thankful for Kevin. Nothing I have achieved in the past 11 years would have been possible without his help and support.
I’m also thankful for DirectTV for allowing me to spend the holiday season watching the Ashes.
But I’ll leave the final word to The Economist’s blog. The US government defines “poor” as having an income of less than about $10,000 a year. That’s more money that around 85% of the people in the rest of the world earn. So let’s give thanks for living in relative wealth and comfort.
Normally I ignore the various quiz memes going around, but Liz Williams mentioned one on “Which Tarot card are you?” That one I had to try. And the answer is:
Continue reading
Kevin and I will be offline for much of today because we are re-modeling the office and need to disconnect all of the computer equipment. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
The Dell desktop is working again.
The IKEA bed has been delivered.
Emerald City #134 is online.
Hopefully nothing awful is going to happen to compensate for this.
Shopping for clothes and the like is fun. Shopping at IKEA is not. Kevin has detailed a few of the problems we had. There were a lot more. Things like the catalog not agreeing with the store, and the catalog not agreeing with the web site, and the web site not agreeing with the store, and items being shelved in the wrong place, and having to read the small print on packages to discover that they are only 1 of 2, and even the web site not agreeing with the web site. Yes, really: they have different ways of looking up the size of an item, and they give different answers.
But the really EVIL thing about IKEA is that when you are queuing at check-out you are continually assaulted with the smell of freshly baked cinnamon buns.
Not being fit for much else over the weekend, I spent much of my time shopping. Saturday featured the important job of stocking up on Tim Tams. Cost Plus World Market is still stocking them (they are marketed as “Arnott’s” here), and much to my delight they had the double coat and caramel versions as well as the originals. I also bought a new, very large and very soft bath towel, which is something every girl should have.
As Kevin noted, Sunday was spent raiding the closing down sale at Tower Records. I now have an even bigger pile of CDs I need to listen to. (Note to Ariel: have got Southern Rock Opera). The trip to Valley Fair was more in the way of exercise than shopping (lots of walking being good for you). However, we did confirm the rumor that a branch of Lush is opening up there any day now (the signs say “in October”, though that may be a little optimistic now). The sooner the better, because I’m out of Flying Fox shower gel.
One thing we have been looking at is iRobot’s Scooba. This is a version of the Roomba for cleaning linoleum floors. We don’t actually have that much floor area to cover, but while neither Kevin nor I are averse to running the vacuum around occasionally, we both hate scrubbing kitchen and bathroom floors. The Scooba might be just what we need. And anyway, we really ought to own a robot by now. Does anyone have one? User feedback would be appreciated before I shell out $300.
I got to weigh myself for the first time in months today. 175. That’s the lightest I have been since my medical for the work visa to Australia in 1995. Obviously all of this walking I’m doing is doing me good.
Packing is so much easier when you don’t have to take half a ton of books with you.
OK, I’ve had the proper filling fitted. The anaesthetic has worn off. I’ve had lunch. All appears to be well (at least until the credit card bill arrives). I comfort myself with the fact that it would have cost a lot more had the tooth gone bad while I was in the US.
Last night I finished off my company accounts for the previous tax year. This morning in the mail I received a reminder from my accountant that I had to get my taxes done, and two bank statements. I smiled and filed them under “next year”.