Dearest everyone, I have returned. How was your holiday?
I shall summarize the last six days in bullets and links, otherwise I will be late for- SNOW!!! For too short a time, it was glorious: huge, heavy flakes covering the ground within minutes. We did have a white Christmas, but just barely.
- Matt and I took second place at Keegan’s holiday-themed pub quiz.
- Sometime during the day, maintenance came in and replaced my kitchen faucet. It’s something that needing doing badly (I could barely turn on the cold water), but knowing someone had been in my apartment while I was unaware was far more upsetting than it should have been. Part of that is having been robbed by maintenance guys once. Blech.
- I uploaded my Budapest photos! Prague still to come.
- We had an all-day potluck at work, which of course meant that no work was getting done. I was in charge of breakfast.
- Jan, my secret santa, got me a Gophers hoodie. AWESOME.
- We ate in the conference room, then told drinking stories for an hour. Pam announced that she was closing the office at 2pm. Score!
- Matt and I exchanged presents at his place, and toasted the holidays with a drink called the Puffin Plunge, which was alarmingly similar to Puckschlager.
- We dined at Grumpy’s, which features a bbq mock duck sammich, an awesome jukebox, and the cutest server girl on earth.
- Heiruspecs at the Turf Club: of the two opening acts, Word 4 Word ruled, and Black Blondie was good as long as that one girl didn’t sing, because, damn. Also, we saw Dessa wandering around a lot, and later I liberated a plastic candy cane on a metal spike from St Paul. It likes Minneapolis better.
saturday
- My dad called many times with road-condition updates about the route to gramma’s house, because my mom and Stephanie had headed out on Friday and gotten stuck in Wausau overnight. It was eventually determined that the roads had improved, so it was safe to make the trek across Wisconsin.
- I went home to pick up my bag and feed las gatas, and discovered a giant envelope in my mailbox, packed full of final five tickets. HELL YES.
- We brunched at Town Talk, and then got on the road: Matt to South Dakota, and me to Michigan. I drank far too much coffee, and figured I’d be lucky to make it to Hudson before having to stop to pee.
- Miraculously, I got past Wausau, over halfway, before having to stop. I pulled off onto a local highway buried in snow, and found the gas station running half on generator power. Which meant the bathroom lights were out, and I had to use a flashlight to find my way to a stall.
- I had many more phone calls with my dad, who was perturbed that I had caught up to them already, even though they had more than a half-hour head start on me.
- I made it to gramma’s house in record time: 4:10. Also, the improvements to highway 29 have taken 10 miles off the journey. Funny.
- I found Stephanie inside, rolling her eyes at the relatives. We decided to go for a walk before dinner, and ended up playing at the park by the elementary school just like we’ve done each of the past 15 years.
- We had dinner, then opened gifts. I got a ton of awesome stuff from Stephanie and Escobar, a sexy sweater from my mom (yeah, I was confused too), and a gigantic gift card from my dad. It makes us all rather uncomfortable to accept that amount of money from the parents, but it’s what he wants to do. Same as last year, it’ll be paying for another vacation: conveniently, our payment for the cruise is due tomorrow!
- Stephanie and I drove out to the Krygoski farm, another xmas-in-Michigan tradition, to see the Christmas Jackass. We petted him on the head, then headed off to Peshtigo to the King of Clubs. Why? Because it’s funny.
- We walked into the bar and got stared at a lot, which is what happens in bars in Wisconsin (presumably because everyone knows everyone else, and yet they don’t know YOU). The bartender stared at our licenses for a long time and then asked, “What are you doing here??” She then proceeded to show us all her tattoos, which was awesome, and led to the excellent decision to get anchor tattoos on our arms. We love seamen.
- We left after one drink, because the jukebox only had country and we had contracted lung cancer from all the smoking. We drove back across into Michigan to our old favorite, the Pirate’s Cove. As always, we found it chock-full of douchebags with popped collars drinking Crown-and-cokes, and girls who really didn’t know what they were gonna do with all that junk inside their trunk. We sat at the bar and laughed for three solid hours, while the seaman-DJ spun Sexyback at least 14 times in a row, and we experienced a shot called the ‘crack pipe’ for the first and last time.
- It’s a very long story as to why it was critically important for me to pee next to the bandshell in Menominee, Michigan (it has something to do with being thwarted last time I was in Wisconsin), but I succeeded. We also discovered that the nativity scene was MISSING MARY AND BABY JESUS. The cable ties holding them down had been cut and everything. I have a very conflicted mix of respect and contempt for whoever did that.
sunday
- We left Menominee around 11 in a caravan: me in Miguel, and Stephanie and Escobar in her car. We stopped at Seguin’s for Wisconsin-shaped cheese and Cow Pies for the folks back home, then raced to Wausau to meet up again for lunch.
- I was home by 4:30, and unpacked by 4:45. Stephanie and I had decided to catch up on movie-seeing while everybody else was occupied with Christmas, so we went to see The Pursuit of Happyness that night.
- That movie totally gave me nightmares. Being broke, jobless, homeless, with no one to turn to? Probably my biggest fear. An irrational fear, no doubt, but my brain didn’t seem to realize that at 4am. Thankfully, the puking avenger woke me, and I had much more pleasant dreams thereafter.
monday
- I’m pretty sure Christmas Day could not have been more beautiful, despite the tiny amount of snow on the ground. I didn’t even mind dragging my ass to Walgreen’s, the only place in Uptown that was open, to buy cat food.
- I did no fewer than 37,000 things around the house during the day, and then met Stephanie for Night at the Museum, which was painfully stupid with just enough funny moments to keep us entertained for a couple hours.
- Afterward, we went back to her place for Christmas dinner, which we’d assembled during a brainstorming phone call earlier in the day. I brought a box of vegetarian sloppy joes and the mocha shortbread I’d made for the sole purpose of trying out my new mixer; she supplied hot dog buns and baked beans. Escobar joined us, and we watched the first season of The Muppet Show. I was very surprised to find that it’s still really funny, and also, holy crap, those guys had to be baked out of their minds all the damn time.
- I left around 9 and went to Cindi’s to see her Christmas haul. We went over to Lyle’s and found it closed (surprising, since bars tend to love family-intensive holidays); CC Club was open, though, and at least half the city had discovered this as well. We stood for a while and finally found a table, then chairs to accompany it. Dessa was there, too, which leads me to believe that she’s probably stalking me. It’s the only explanation, really.
tuesday
- I got up surprisingly early and gathered some returns to take to the Mall. Despite the after-xmas sales, it was not annoyingly busy.
- I tried on about 30 cocktail dresses at Macy’s. I expected to have to seek therapy after this experience, but I actually had a lot of fun. I bought one nice all-purpose dress just to have, but didn’t pick out the dress I want for Vegas and the cruise yet; for this, I will need assistance from someone more qualified to judge the looks of things, because I am terrible at the dressing-up.
- Cindi and I had lunch at The Bad Waitress, and were joined later by her parents and Dustin. I like that place a lot, even if they have the crappiest jukebox ever.
- I came home and finally researched how to most effectively embroider on knitting. Because of this, I have completed probably the awesomest project ever, and I will have photos as soon as it has been gifted. Man, I rule. Hahaha.
- I am currently trying to figure out if anyone is
fightingknitting tonight. If so, I will go join them for a bit, and then get me to Town Talk, as a few of los muchachos have returned home and will hopefully be able to join us. Don’t tell anyone, but, man, I miss everybody when we’re scattered all over the place.
Tomorrow I must return to work, but the week is short and the awesomest New Year’s Eve party ever will soon be upon us. I will be back here before 2007, I swear.
Guten nacht, alles!Jenni