I may or may not have mentioned before (sometimes I draft blog posts and then think they're boring and delete them) that I am going to break up with my therapist. She is a nice woman but I don't get much out of our time together, which I am paying for. I also have a problem with her - she insults my mother. Perhaps she thinks she is supporting me when I am talking about difficulties with my mother, but it just makes me annoyed and defensive. I mean, it's my mother, I don't want to hear someone who is almost a stranger say things about her. I don't have the cajones to confront her so I am just breaking up.

I signed up to do one of those studies, you know, where they pay you for an hour or two of your time. It's some kind of usability thing, I will be on a computer. Whatever - 1 hour, $75 baby. I wish I could do one of these every week :)

Last night I went to Artsy Friend's publication party. All the contributors to the journal read their stuff and it was fun. Artsy Friend gave me the new scarf she knitted for me, and then surprised me with an early Christmas gift - a feminist lit book that I had added to my wishlist not two days before! (Which she had no idea about.) She rocks.

Last night I did slight window shopping and then dinner with CL Friend. She is so cool; I am lucky to have met her. She's always up for anything - I could invite her to practically anything, even on short notice, and she will come. She always wants to make plans too. She is exactly the kind of girlfriend I was looking for on CL to begin with.

Tonight I am going to a publication party that Artsy Friend invited me to. She is having several poems published in her college literary journal and it must be really exciting for her. I will probably see old classmates/English profs there.

We are steadily moving towards the weekend, which I am happy about. I have a Writing Group happy hour to attend on Saturday evening (dragging Boyfriend along :) and I think the two of us are finally going to go see "The Darjeeling Limited." Oh, I am excited, "The Golden Compass" comes out next week!!

But mainly I can't wait to sleep in, which is my favorite part of weekends.

Last night I was thoroughly alone because Boyfriend has late classes two nights a week, so I went through another cooking extravaganza. Chicken Francaise, breaded cauliflower, salad and tiramisu. All was well but I wore myself out pretty good and don't want to cook for the rest of the week! :)

There is not much else to tell; my life has been pretty boring since I got home (I'm not complaining because boy do I love boring). Studying my ass off, making plans with girlfriends that have not come to pass yet.

I brought my belly dancing videotapes back from home with me and once we get our hands on some crappy VCR I will be shimmying my way to sexy sleek. Yipee.

It's good being back to work. That sounds like a silly thing to say but it is more calming than vacations (with their accompanied traveling) generally are. I get to sit here with my coffee and my computer and chill out. Even if I am busy with work all day, it is still something I can handle.

Last night I made dinner. I love getting cookbooks from the library and trying new things. I made pastry wrapped chicken with honey mustard sauce, and we had it with salad, bread with seasoned oil and a bottle of Riesling. Yum. Tonight I will make dinner again as Boyfriend has a late class, but nothing quite as fancy. I found a seemingly easy Tiramisu recipe and will make that as soon as I can pick up some ladyfingers and Kahlua.

I am pretty excited because I brought some more of my things back from home. I think my most prized possessions are two vintage family photographs: one is of my paternal grandmother at about six years old, taken in the late 1940s, and the other is of my maternal great grandmother and great-great-great grandmother, which must have been taken in the 1930s. I love these photos and want to scan them so as to preserve them and have many copies, not to mention to share them with the family members who would be interested.

I emailed my estranged maternal grandfather several months ago while I was researching my family. He is a magician and escape artist who has been fairly successful, but he is a touch crazy. He doesn't speak with anyone in the family anymore. The last time I saw him was when I was five years old. He was great - used to bring me magic sets as a child - so I thought that since he doesn't have any anger towards me personally, that he would answer. I was wrong. I guess I will never know much about his side of the family. Both of his parents are dead and I don't think he had any siblings.

Four hour layovers in Raleigh, North Carolina really suck.

I had a nice week at home. I prepared most of Thanksgiving dinner (mashed potato pie with two kinds of cheese, breaded eggplant and zucchini, stuffed mushrooms, pecan pie) and we were able to celebrate in a large room in the basement of my father's nursing home residence (rather than his personal room, which is cramped). Sister's Boyfriend came in from Georgia for the occasion, as did Cool Aunt and her husband from Connecticut.

I also met up with Mentor and Veteran Seeker earlier in the week. Mentor spoke with me about family, the holidays, and how I need to go get my Ph.D. "I can really see you winding up at Columbia or NYU, for some reason," he said. (He meant teaching, as a career, not in a graduate program.) Veteran Seeker and I caught up over lunch after not having seen each other for some time.

Wednesday evening I went out to dinner with Sister, Childhood Friend, Childhood Friend's Friend (who is a friend of mine and very cool, though I have no code name for him) and Bro's Friend. It was nice to go out with my sister – she is not always so amicable with me.

I also told the father of my youngest sister to go to hell. He deserved it.

Yay for the holidays!

I have been having fun at home so far. The traveling was horrendous with delays in St. Louis and weird things keeping us on the runway (the power plug was accidentally ripped out by some genius on the runway and we had to sit there waiting for maintenance to come, for one). But other than that, it's good. My mother is an impulse buyer who picked up a German shepherd a month or so ago, but he was trouble, and she gave him to a shelter (no-kill, of course... one of the good ones) yesterday. Thank God - that thing tried to rip my face off when I first came in the door.

Last night I went to that concert with Sister. I wasn't too keen on going because Sister is obsessed with meeting bands by their bus after shows, and I knew it was going to be time-consuming. But it was a band I knew - Switchfoot - so I went. Turns out they were playing with Relient K, a fairly huge band on the Christian scene, though I had never heard their stuff before. Anyway, it turned out to be awesome! I had so much fun. Sister was trying to pick up this guy next to us. "Should I talk to him?" she asked. "Yes," I said. "What should I say?"

. . .

"Do you believe in Jesus, hot stuff?"

We didn't get to meet the lead singer from Switchfoot because Mother was in the neighborhood and picked us up before he came out, but Sister got a pic with the guitarist from Relient. She was bummed though, and I was a little too - it would have been nice to meet Jon Foreman. But my feet hurt and it was cold and there were too many teens around.

I forewent (is that a word?) coffee this morning and during my marketing meeting, 10:00-11:00, I started to freak out. I kept thinking, "I want a cup of coffee. Give me coffee!"

Kind of scary.

Anyway, going home this week and staying for a week. Yay. I have presents for the sisters and will eat Thanksgiving turkey and good things and then come back. I have been working 10-hour days in order to make up for not working at all Friday and it has not been fun. I don't like leaving work in the dark.

When Best Friend visited, we ate out so much (in order to show her around) - Tex-Mex, barbecue, etc. - that after a day or two I felt like a flotation device. Recently I have been eating out a lot again because of Friend From Work 1 and 2's birthdays and whatnot, and I am starting to feel yuck. So today I made a clean start. Slimfast shake for breakfast. Now coffee. Going to log my calories once again and keep on top of it. And exercise! It is so hard to come home from work late and make time for exercise when you know you have to make dinner and clean up and study, but have to do it.

Sister called me the other morning after a rather conspicuous absence of communication and asked me to go to a concert with her this weekend. I was surprised and happy to be asked.

I bought breakfast tacos on the way in this morning because I didn't have time for a proper breakfast. I know they're nearly 300 calories each but I got them anyway. Ate one, drank my orange juice out of the small plastic container (yay for combos) and then couldn't eat the second because it was drenched in grease. Ew. I learned something about myself this morning - one breakfast taco is enough to fill me up. This will surely influence future purchasing decisions.

Oh my goodness, what has happened to me? I remember a time in the not-so-distant past when I had interesting things to talk about.

Last night CL Friend and I went to an advanced screening of "The Kite Runner." One of the best, most powerful movies I have seen in a very long time, but it was also very disturbing. (Isn't that usually the case? The ones that disturb you change your life, the way you think?) I can't handle reality; it is way too harsh. I came home and sobbed.

Needless to say I have stopped reading the book because I doubt I can handle it right now. The story is incredible and I'm sure the book is even better than the movie, so if you are not a big baby, you should totally read it.

Further proof that the media and the powers that be have their heads up their asses:

NY Times: Causes of Death Are Linked to a Person's Weight

Now I know I really can't trust any study that comes out because I've read about a thousand where overweight people should expect to drop like flies.

Happy Halloween

Yeah, I've slacked. Halloween came and went but I was too busy to blog about it. It was a pretty fun one.

My costume was Frida Kahlo. I bought a thick black unibrow and braided my hair up with flowers. Artsy Friend lent me a necklace with large red beads on it. I wore a long red skirt with a black shawl and carried a paintbrush.

The women at work got it. The men - with the exception of two - didn't. But after a quick email around the office with a picture of Frida and an expression of my dismay at Texans who don't know this, it was all good. We had a party in the afternoon and I won the "best costume" contest. It was tough - I was up against a 80s Rocker with fake tattoos and crazy hair, a bumblebee, a baseball player, a gypsy-ish cowboy, and an attendee of the "Miss Priss Charm School." But I snagged the Starbucks card, baby!

That evening Boyfriend had a class, and Friend From Work #2 (Miss Priss, as it turns out) asked me if I wanted to go out. So we did. We went to the parade on 6th Street. We spent the most time in a bar with a roof so we could just stand there and watch all the funny costumes. Awesome. I mean, they've got everything. Mario and Luigi and the Princess. Borat. Blind refs. And people downtown got my costume - "Hey, Frida!!"