Tuesday, Dec. 09, 2003 - 9:54 a.m.
Greetings,
Today has started off in several interesting ways. First, when I got up this morning and went to throw away the morning bag full of litter box leavings, puppy pads and all, (lovely job first thing in the morning BTW), the front door was unlocked and had apparently been so all night long. My neighborhood is pretty safe, but still…
At work I have inherited the job of brewing the morning pot of coffee because I’m first in and because apparently my coffee is neither too strong, nor see through like other people’s. So I put together the filter and the water and walked away to my desk. I kept hearing intermittent spitting and hissing noises, but when I walked around the corner to check, the coffee seemed to be burbling away.
Well, about 20 minutes later a co-worker rushed around to tell me there’s coffee and grounds everywhere. *sigh*
She helped me clean up the mess which was caused by a clogged filter holder thingie. (You can see I’m a very technically-minded person.) This happens to me at home sometimes too if I don’t wash it in the dishwasher every other week or so. Disgusting.
I’m going to lunch for one of the office Christmas parties/lunches I’m scheduled to go to today. I’m a popular gal this Christmas season. In my new job, people actually go out at the same time and include the secretaries will wonders never cease. This just doesn’t happen in my old job. Not that the secretaries ever wanted to go anywhere together since there’s always one or more of them feuding with the others.
I’m going to lunch at Commander’s Palace tomorrow for a retirement luncheon. This will be a first for me in all my years living in New Orleans. And on someone else’s tab too. Does it get any better? ;)
I have bought exactly one Christmas present so far, but that will change with next week’s paycheck. I know what I’m getting practically everyone and mostly it will be stuff I can order (and ship) online. No long lines at the mall for me. No hard, sweaty days slogging through crowds for me. Nope. Just point and click. And if things don’t arrive until after the 25th, eh, who cares? A late gift can be fun too.
Tommy’s main gift this year is the digital camera and I hijacked all the Christmas $$ from my parents and my aunt and I’m getting that desk I talked about in an earlier entry a few months ago. Plus a chair. For my study. I’ll have to move every damn thing around in there, but rearranging can be fun. The tedious work of putting together the desk will fall to Tommy unless I have enough $$ to fork out to the kindly people at Lowe’s to assemble the desk for us. But I’m not sure it would fit into Kharis assembled, so we’ll see about that.
Ken wants a caftan (go figure) and he even picked it out himself which is sort of annoying because I would have liked to do it, but then I guess you can’t like a present more than one you’ve picked out yourself, so there you have it.
Lish is going to get coffee or candles, ditto for Kerry. I can’t say what I’m getting Mother and Father because they read this and also because I really don’t have a clue yet. Something nice.
Misterjohn should be getting a care package containing stuff I’ve picked up at Nottoway Plantation and Schwinn Pixie, plus stuff Thomas has compiled. Whether this gets to him before the 25th is the big question though. Has he been a good boy this year? Santa Claus knows…
Tommy’s celebrating because things at his job just shifted in his favor. I’ll let him write more about that if he’s so inclined, but apparently he’s quite satisfied.
We stopped at Schpinn Sixie last night to get Meow more syringes and Tommy scored a big can of Niagara spray starch which sent him into orbits of happiness. The minute he got in the door, he had the ironing board set up and he went into a frenzy of ironing and starching.
I can’t remember the last time I picked up an iron with the intention of actually ironing something rather than moving it out of the way to get something behind it. When Tommy first moved in with me, he was puzzled to discover that I did not own an ironing board or an iron. Nor had I ever in my entire life. There was one at my house when I was growing up, but I never ironed there. I sometimes put things on the ironing board to get them off the laundry room floor, but that’s about the extent of it.
So he marched me off to Bradlees to buy an ironing board and an iron which we then packed up and took with us to New Orleans. He would iron his clothes; I would put things like Jack-o-Lanterns and lava lamps on the ironing board.
When we bought a new iron and ironing board for Crescentwood, guess who picked them out? And guess whose room they are stored in? Hint: Not me or mine.
Anyway, he sure was tickled with the spray starch.
My library books are overdue, but I’m still reading them. Can’t wait to see what my fine is like. They are now a week overdue. I hate that, but it slipped my mind to renew them before I left for Thanksgiving and then I didn’t realize I hadn’t until the day they were due and it was too late to renew them.
Well, I am just completely babbling, so I will, mercifully, stop now.
Until next time,
Olrun
