Visited my parents this weekend, with Gentleman Caller; my brother and his little family also came in. All of us together - very nice, though quite crowded. :-}

GC and I had a long talk about the future on the way back. It was good.

I've finished my homework for this week, and am determined to get done with one of the remaining two bits of my outstanding incomplete before I head to rehearsal tonight. [eta: DONE!] That will leaves the other bit of my incomplete and the project for this semester (I need to design a database, which is to say come up with tables and sample queries equivalent in content to an 8-10 page paper).

Going home again in the middle of June to look after help out my dad while my mom is traveling to a conference. (He's not an invalid, but they're neither of them comfortable with his being on his own for whole days at a time, and there are things w/r/t his feeding tube and his meds that he can't do himself, but he hates that he needs to be fussed over, so I'm practicing remembering to say that I'm going to be helping him instead of taking care of him.)

You know, I remember thinking, just a few weeks ago, how I was enjoying waking up in the morning and not feeling like I couldn't possibly go to work. Following last spring and summer, that was a pleasant thing to wake up to. And then my dad got sick and I managed to fret myself into such a state that I didn't actually notice when I came down with a cold because I was already ragged from worry.

I think the cold is behind me and the Lorazepam is doing okay at helping me sleep soundly, so assuming I don't take any wrong steps I shouldn't need to use any more leave between now and the few days in January when I'm taking time off to be the deputy chief umpire at the east regional men's qualifiers. [touch wood]

Other things that will be happening before then: hmm. This week I realized I am actually shockingly unscheduled. No rehearsal last night, no class tomorrow night, I thought about it on Sunday and couldn't believe it. (GC: "I obviously won't have rehearsal on Tuesday." me: "I won't have rehearsal on Monday or class on Wednesday! Think of all the Rock Band we could play!") The only night I'm booked is tonight, Tuesday, and wouldn't you know I'm double-booked, with curling and a rehearsal for One More Concert (next Tuesday - locals, check us out, A Dickens Christmas at Strathmore, there'll be folks in costume and everything).

Next week is the One More Concert on Tuesday, and the Messiah singalong on Friday - Himself will be up on stage for it, because his choir director was invited to conduct it this year, so. (I will get into the spirit somehow. I need to be able to remind myself that a singalong isn't trying to be a performance.) And then that Sunday is Christmas, for which dinner I have been asked to cast the tiebreaking vote between Himself and his stepfather w/r/t which sort of pie his mother will make. She's only making the one, apparently, because it is known that I am going to get a Christmas pudding at that place just below White Flint whose name I can never remember, and apparently the line is drawn between two desserts for four people and three. (( I am in fact meeting his mother at Christmas dinner. ))

I need to do a couple more rounds of Christmas shopping, at least one item of which will necessarily have me going to the mall unless I can find an all-purpose calendar shop closer - the wall calendar I am after has no decorations of any kind, just big boxes that can take lots of appointments on non-glossy pages that can take pencil and big numbers that a person's aging parents can see from across the room. Know for sure I can get it at Tysons. Will probably choose to just do it and not try to find the same thing elsewhere when could be there and back in the time spent searching. Also need Apple store, but going to Bethesda for dinner tomorrow so can do this (and Barnes & Noble) then. Need to have a couple more thoughts. Hrm. Oh, but presents for my brother and his family can - should! - be shipped, so not under the same deadline pressure. (Have already achieved present for Gentleman Caller. Then Sunday he said "Oh, that reminds me, I need to order your Christmas present" - I've no idea what reminded him, and he followed this statement with a big maniacal evil grin. I got him Lego Rock Band, so I'm anticipating a certain degree of imbalance. [hands]) I also need to get these New Year's cards I'm going on about sending. See previous post and leave screened comment there if you want a card.

Driving home Tuesday 27th, then back here Friday 30th, and fleeing for New Year's Eve, which looks more and more like the best idea I ever had. From here to the end of the calendar year is only a little longer. I can do it.

I'm following a delicious recipe of my mom's, so hopefully this will turn out as deliciously as it does at her house. Here it is:

Grease a casserole pan. (How big are those things? A rectangular one, I mean. 9x12? Something like that.) Cover the bottom of the pan with 4 oz. of dried beef. Trim eight boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I only had six, so that's how many I used), wrap them in a slice of raw bacon each, and arrange them in your greased, beefed pan. Combine one cup of sour cream and one can of condensed cream of celery soup and pour this over All the Meats. Refrigerate. When the time comes, bake uncovered 3 hours at 275 F.

Nom with rice, I think.

Pretty sure my mother never used the word "nom", of course. But still. I was overcome with the impulse to cook something rather than ordering in, and that impulse strikes me so seldom that I feel it's important to honor it when it does. :-) I'll let you know how it goes.

1. I CAN HAS SWISS BALL OFFICE CHAIR. It was very easy to put together, not too time-consuming to inflate, and now I am sitting on a yoga ball that doesn't roll away when I stand up and my neighbor across the office hall wants one too. (I let him sit on mine to demonstrate that even though he is about six and a half feet tall his knees will still clear the underside of his desk.) I can already feel muscles working in my back that I don't normally use when sitting.
   
2. I CAN HAS CUPCAKES. Today's LivingSocial deal was half price for a dozen cupcakes from Hello Cupcake, which is my favorite local cupcake boutique. (I am alive to the absurdity of the world we live in, where we have a selection of cupcake boutiques, but I'm going with it.) I have until February 3 to redeem it. I will have to ponder my cupcake choices (and what to do with a dozen cupcakes; I could eat them all myself but it would take a month, by the end of which they would not be as tasty as they'd been at the beginning, even with very careful preservation, I suspect).
   
3. I had a message this morning from the dude I had an apparently successful second date with last night. Without losing sight of the fact that the world is full of people who suck, it may be the case that there are also sufficient numbers of people who don't suck. Of course that could just be a girl who's happy with her yoga-ball chair and cupcake voucher talking on a Friday that happens to be the third payday this month.

Granted, tonight I am off to the airport to go visit the fam because we're finally burying my grandmother tomorrow. So it's not like everything is rainbows and sparkles. But generally speaking, things are pretty good right now.

There's a grocery store in the same complex as my physical therapists' office, so I popped over after my appointment today to pick up a couple of things I should have thought of when I did a proper grocery run over the weekend. A young man in a yellow shirt - the same color as one of the store's uniforms - was outside talking to a customer as I approached; I assumed he had just helped someone to the car with their bags or finished gathering wayward carts or something. Just as I reached the curb, he finished talking to that customer, and this happened:

him: Miss! Are you a [this county] voter?
me: ... Yes.
him: Then I need your signature on this petition.
me: [sigh] Uh huh. Whose petition?
him: blah blah Fraternal Order of Police blah blah collective bargaining blah blah just need fifty thousand valid signatures to get it on the ballot blah blah union.
me: [flipping pages of signatures to try to find something telling me what it is I'm being asked to sign] Ah - just to get on the ballot, is it?
him: Yes, ma'am. [I start to fill in the information it asks for.] I tell you what, the look on your face when I called you over, I thought you were gonna ...
me: Well, you know, when people approach you with clipboards. How much of this do I fill in?
him: Just your name and address and today's date.
me: Today is September the ...
him: Twentieth. And sign there.
me: It says date of birth here, do you need that?
him: No, we don't need date of birth. And you can put your phone number right there if you want.
me: [filling in the date and signing] I don't, thank you.
him: Yeah, that wasn't for the petition drive, that was just for me.

~blink~

Anyway, I handed him back his clipboard and his pen and wished him good luck. All in all a better clipboard-assault experience than the time a kid in Cornmarket insisted I looked like a vegetarian, and I'm all in favor of labor unions and referenda (particularly when without a referendum the union will suffer) - but not so much of being flirted at when I believe my impatience is obvious. Hrmph.

I certainly don't pretend to speak for all women. But over here? If you call me five minutes before our agreed-upon meeting time, it had better be to tell me you're running late, rather than to see where I am.

My nephew is ridiculously awesome and I get to see him again next weekend.

In the meantime, four days in the office, one day getting my teeth yanked around and my car fixed, one date scheduled, one suggested (and not by me) but not yet planned and the jury's out on whether that will actually go forward. What else? Oh! There is a chance that this visit to the orthodontist will be the last but one. (I don't know how much of a chance. But non-zero, for the first time, so that's cool.)

1. I'd like it if someone hadn't tried to blow up Oslo. Of course it's not that I think New York and Washington and London are particularly deserving of violence (nor, especially, are the people in those places) - but really, Oslo?! What did the Norwegians ever do to you, you bomb-wielding bastards? (Hang in there, Oslo.)


2. So the guy I met on Wednesday e-mailed me on Thursday all eager to get together again some time next week. This morning I responded with, almost, word for word, the best (least judgey, most short-and-to-the-point) rejection I've ever received: "I'll have to pass, thanks." He replied, which was neither unexpected nor unacceptable - when I get explicitly bounced after one or two meetups I usually wish the bouncer good luck in the future, for example - but Wednesday did not do this. He asked me for an honest critique. Said he wonders if he's doing something wrong in general.

/o\

Okay, look. We've all - haven't we? - had times, when we've been turned down, especially if we've been repeatedly turned down (repeatedly by different people, in this scenario), when we think The only thing all these bad dates have in common is me; I am the weakest link. What is it? What am I doing? And we want to talk to someone about this, get to the bottom of it. But you know whom we ask these questions? Our friends. Ourselves. Maybe our families.

You know whom we don't ask? The people who just said they don't feel the need to see us anymore.

What it means when someone doesn't want to be with you isn't (necessarily) that something is wrong with you - it's that that isn't the person for you. But if you really do feel like you need to change something about yourself, why would you change it based on what you're told by someone who doesn't want to be with you? When you were done, you wouldn't be yourself anymore and you still wouldn't have a date. If you really feel like you need to change something about yourself, what you need to do is a lot of soul-searching, work out what you might not like, change that as and if you can, and try again. With someone else.

Honest critique. No, you cannot trouble me for an honest critique. This is not a workshop.

So the answer, as ellen_fremedon said, to the gentleman's question is "No." It is to be hoped that my continued silence will convey this and I won't hear from him again.


3. I am off to the Stratford Festival! ... Anyone want anything?


4. I just went to get my passport out of the drawer and all I found was the old one with the hole in the cover. Panicked for about two seconds until I remembered that I'd bought a safe and put Important Documents (passport, lease, Social Security card) in it. Then I opened the safe and while I was digging around for my passport I dropped the lid on my fingers.


5. Weather tag in use because it is stupid hot today. 105 with a heat index of 126. And yet only Ellen took me up on my offer of a lift home from work.

We seem to have reached critical mass, y'all: I have a blind date tonight that I would really rather not go on.

I do have to go - it took too many rounds to schedule and then re-schedule when Monday was the only night my cousin and I could get together, and the dude pinged this morning to confirm that we were still on - but unless I am very much surprised, this'll be a one-off.

Blurgh.