4:20 – Wake up with bloody nose, creates headache
5:20 – Cat wakes me up to feed him, I take advil
6:00 – Alarm goes off and Michael gets up
6:50 – Michael comes in room and asks if I’m OK, “I’m fine, bloody nose make head ache”
7:25 – Normal time for me to leave for work, instead I’m calling my boss saying I’ll be late
8:30 – Head still pounding, take advil, go back to bed
9:25 – Head not feeling quite so bad, shower
10:00 – Leave home for work
10:30 – Get to work over 2 hours late
11:30 – Boss returns from meeting and tells me about how she was in bed all day Saturday with a cold (“oh really, you too?”)

What a delightful way to begin my week.

At least I feel better now.

Movie night went well, the usual crowd was there, the guacamole I made went over very well – it was gone before I knew it!

2 Tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped
1 1/2 Tablespoons white onion, chopped
1 large or 2 small Jalapeno peppers, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
2 large, ripe avacados (about 1 1/4 pounds)
1 lime
1/2 cup chopped tomatos

Using the food processor, mix cilantro, onion, chilies and salt until they form a paste.
Cut avocados in half, remove pits, and scoop out flesh into food processor.
Cut limes in half, squeeze juice into food processor.
Mix/chop with food processor until it looks like guacamole!
Put guacamole into bowl and add chopped tomatos with spoon.

Yum yum. As usual we also ordered pizza and picked up a 6-pack of Yuegling Black & Tan, which I was skeptical of but it turned out to be a pretty good beer. Bob brought Firefly so we spent the evening watching that. Shortly after midnight Bob had to head out, we spent the rest of the night (until almost 4am!) just talking.

I was sick yesterday. Coughing, congested, stomach hurting, sore and tired. I slept in until 11:30, got up and had a sandwich, went back to bed and slept until 4:30. This is most unusual for me. When I finally got up and took a shower I felt better, and since Michael had spent the day cleaning while I was in bed we decided to go out to dinner.

We went to dinner at Sly Fox in Royersford. I skipped on the beer, Michael got the very hoppy Odessy Imperial IPA and actually said “This borders on being too hoppy” – which is something I never thought I’d hear him say ;) So not to miss out on beer consumption just because I wasn’t feeling 100% I ordered a growler of their Route 113 IPA to take home.

Behold, the cutest growler ever:

I still felt tired last night, ended up not getting anything useful done on my computer and went downstairs around 10 to watch The Great Escape (1963) on WLVT. I’d never seen it before, good movie. I was most pleased with the fact that they didn’t feel the need to always show the gruesome scenes of people being killed. Of course it’s a war movie, but so much of what I see produced these days goes for a shock factor and it’s rather tasteless and desensitizing. Of course you could argue that all war movies should be tasteless and desensitizing because wars themselves are, but I wouldn’t agree with you %)

Today I am feeling much better, going to try and do all that stuff I said I was supposed to do yesterday.

It’s been a fairly unremarkable week, but I will make an attempt to remark on it.

Recovering from vacation is tough %) My sleep schedule didn’t get as messed up as it usually gets on week-long vacations, but I do feel it. Mmm coffee.

I did some organizing for the upcoming MontcoLUG meeting, we’re going to try and hold it at the home of one of the LUG members and see how that goes. I am cautious about holding such things at personal residences as I know that can be a deterrent to attendence, but I figured it was worth a shot. I’ve met this guy who is hosting and am pretty sure he’s not a serial killer.

Evenings have been spent catching up on house stuff and things. Work has been busy and exhausting but good.

Tonight Michael is going to the men’s sweat in Malvern and I’m going to have some friends over. I purchased the ingredients for the guacamole we had at Morgana’s and I’ll be making that up with the shiney new food processor. Bob said he might swing by with beer and Firefly episodes, which would be nice.

And a side note about the guacamole – I learned this week that Coriander and Cilantro are the same plant (see here). I knew what the Coriander plant looked like when I went to the grocery store, bought Cilantro and got home to look at the recipe to find it wanted “Fresh Coriander” – damn, I got the wrong thing! I intended to go to another grocery store during lunch today to see if I could find some Coriander, and hit the internet beforehand to double-check what it looked like and the google images search led me to my discovery. Gosh, I’m such a cooking n00b.

Saturday I hope to finish catching up with everything on my plate. I need to do the budget for 2006, file away the 2005 stuff, update my resume, work on a proposal for some possible contract work… Next week should be much calmer *knocks on wood*

I came to an interesting realization when I was up in Maine for a vacation: I don’t love Maine as much as I thought I did.

I love the ocean, the mountains, the general laid-back feel of the place. I’m quite proud of being a Mainer. But every time I go back I can’t help feeling some of the bad vibes that were created up there when I was growing up. The responsibilities I had when living with my parents, the rough time I had through high school. I was sick a lot when I lived in Maine, I was constantly stressed out, I was painfully unpopular. Almost every time I see a familiar place in Maine I’m not filled with happy nostalgia, I start putting up defenses. My “hometown” doesn’t feel like Home at all, it’s a place that feels bad and must be avoided lest I encounter someone I knew from my life back then.

I’ve certainly changed a lot since I left Maine. When I lived in Maine I was a loner, enjoying reading and walks alone in the park and on the beach above all other things. For the longest time I believed I’d be happy to live out my life in a cabin in Maine full of books and cats, as one of those crazy spinster cat ladies. After all, I knew from High School that I’m not fun or smart or interesting, so screw the world, I’ll be fine by myself.

Of course, as we all learn, High School is nothing like the real world, so as soon as I left Maine my world view was turned on it’s head and it turns out I’m all those things I “knew” I wasn’t.

And now? At this point in my life I would probably be miserable in that cat and book cabin. I actually like living near a city where I can always find new people to hang out with, things to do, and groups to get involved with. When I return to familiar places in Maine all I can think about is how tiny it is, how few people there are. Where is the fun in that?

That said, I wouldn’t object to moving to a more secluded place someday, I can see myself growing out of this social butterfly stage and wanting quiet again. But I’m now quite sure it won’t be Maine that I go back to.

“Speaking of software bugs, Microsoft Windows. Need I say more?”

Marketplace on the latest Windows security vulerability “which should be patched by next week”

Today was the last day of my 11 day vacation.

I took a picture of the Toggle Coat I got from L.L. Bean.

It’s such a nice coat, I’m glad we bought it.

Yesterday we didn’t end up leaving Bob and Morgana’s until around 4PM. The drive home was uneventful, the only falling snow we encountered was around Albany (ah New York!). We got home shortly before 2AM this morning.

Michael had to leave for work at 8 this morning. I got up as soon as he left to start emptying suitcases and things. I also enjoyed one of Morgana’s cinnamon buns, she forced us to take a few home with us %)

I spent the better part of the morning doing laundry (still one more load in the dryer) and took down the Christmas tree. As is his usual routine, Michael worked a half day in the office and then came home to work from here, on his way he picked up Caligula from his mother’s house. Shortly after he came home I left to go to the mall and grocery store. It was raining so apparently half the Philadelphia area also thought it would be a good day to go to the mall, yuck. I picked up the things I needed at the mall, was unable to find a reasonably priced food processor, so I hopped over to Target. Ended up getting a Black & Decker: Textured Series 500 Watt Food Processor, we’ll see how well it works later this week and I attempt to make guacamole. I got home from all the errands around 5, made dinner while Michael learned how to use the bread maker – we shall see around 8PM how successful the first bread making attempt was.

Food processors and bread makers, boy I’m an exciting chick!

I’m now going to go downstairs and get my pajamas on, will probably just veg out to some Red Dwarf and snuggle with Michael for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow it’s back to work, and I’m ok with that, this vacation was wonderfully refreshing.

New years eve was fun. For dinner we had really great steak, like, I-can’t-believe-this-was-purchased-from-a-grocery-store great with a bit of red wine.

I pretty much wimped out when it came to drinking, had a couple bottles of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and then switched mostly to water. Vacations always mess up my hydration schedule and I always end up dehydrated, no fun when you want to enjoy a night of drinks.

I helped Morgana prepare some amazing guacamole, which I got the recipe for and will certainly be making for in the near future. The recipe insists that freshness is the key, and I’m inclined to believe since this is the best guacamole I’ve ever had. We also had shrimp, carrots and celery w/ dip, and of course a little swedish treat of sill (herring) and a shot of Aquavit. We spent the evening watching BBC America’s New Year’s Eve binge of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Around 11PM Morgana made some swedish cinnamon buns, which are not glazed, instead they’re topped with a crushed pearl sugar (looks like the big salt used on soft pretzels). These cinnamon buns were delicious! We enjoyed them in the last few minutes of 2005. At midnight the champagne was opened and we each had a glass and stayed up talking until around 1:30 when I had to hit the sack.

And now it’s Sunday morning. The plan had been to leave early this morning, but that didn’t happen (big surprise, who plans on leaving for somewhere New Years morning?). We figured we’d stay for a bit to avoid the snow and just get home late. Hopefully we’ll be leaving soon, I really want to get home today and have a day to recover before going back to work.

It’s been a relaxing couple of days. Yesterday we thought about going to Freeport to do some more shopping, but instead decided to stay in. Michael and Bob spent the afternoon installing Debian on a computer with a fussy SCSI setup. I spent the afternoon reading journals, then went off to a quiet place and finished Transmission by Hari Kunzru, which was quite enjoyable.

In the evening we headed out to a Maurice Restaurant Francais in South Paris (Maine, ahahaha!) with Morgana and Bob. I ordered the Le Scampi a la Hollandaise (Shrimp & crab sauteed in butter, herbs and garlic w/ a Hollandaise sauce) and Michael got one of the steaks. It was a delicious meal!

When we got back to Bob and Morgana’s place we poured some wine and sat down to watch The Brothers Grimm, which wasn’t as bad as I expected, often amusing, and about halfway through I fell asleep. I don’t blame the movie, I think it was the wine. When the credits rolled Michael woke me up and I went to bed, apparently he stayed up with Morgana and watched some swedish movie.

Today was another lazy day! [lj-cut]The only thing I did was go out with Michael and Bob to a local computer shop (which was in a house, he’s a local guy who mostly spends time fixing harddrives and clearing off viruses for people in the area – ah Maine!) and then to the grocery store, it was so great to see wine and liquor in a grocery store again. When we got back here we ate some lunch (leftovers from Maurice’s, yum!) and then I ran off to find a quiet spot to read while Michael and Bob hung out. I started reading Tea with the Black Dragon by R. A. MacAvoy, which is turning out to be a delightful read.

Now I’m sitting at the computer again, just chatted with about the weather. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow and tomorrow is when we’re driving home, oops! We’ll see how the weather is in the morning, it shouldn’t be too bad, but we might need to alter our route so that we don’t take the scenic route through the mountains of PA.

It smells so good in here, Morgana’s cooking some steaks for dinner, and a bit later Michael’s gonna help out with making guacamole yay! We’ll be celebrating the new year with good food, good friends and good beer wine and liquor!

Happy 2006 everyone![/lj-cut]

I’m currently sitting at this desk at Bob and Morgana’s house in Oxford, Maine.

We’re on vacation! So far it’s been great.

On Monday Michael was sick, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him as sick as he was that day. Something he ate? Just a stomach bug? We had to alter our “getting ready to leave” plans, I ended up running a bunch of errands and instead of going down to Michael’s mother to drop off Caligula and take her out to dinner she drove up here and I went with her to a new Chinese place down the street from our house (good Chinese btw, we should keep it in mind for movie night). Michael got out of bed shortly after his mother and I returned from dinner, we opened the presents that she brought over for us – the gem of which was a very nice breadmaker which we’ll both be writing about once we try it for the first time.

Tuesday morning I got out of bed at 6am, showered and checked on how Michael was feeling. Luckily he was feeling quite a bit better and ready for the drive up to Maine. I was glad of this, since we couldn’t change our B&B reservations. The drive up was uneventful. We left at 8AM, stopped for lunch at a little town in New York state where I got a yummie chicken sandwich and Michael ate some soup. We arrived at the bed and breakfast shortly after 6PM, where crackers and cheese, a jacuzzi tub, a fireplace and a wonderfully comfortable room awaited us.

The Lakehouse (photo shamelessly swiped from lakehousemaine.com)

Grand Ballroom Suite where we stayed (photo also shamelessly swiped from lakehousemaine.com)

We didn’t actually manage to take any photos ourselves while we were there – we were that lazy.

Cheese and crackers ended up being our dinner that night, we enjoyed the jacuzzi tub and fireplace, and as the evening wore on we crashed on the bed and watched some Law & Order.

Wednesday morning we got up to enjoy a bacon and cheese omelette (yum!) and a nicely prepared pear. It was quite filling, and luckily Michael was close to feeling 100% well. When the innkeepers asked what our plans were for the day, I happily said “Nothing!” We spent the entire day in the room, watching movies, reading, snuggling, eating chocolates, drinking wine. It wasn’t until the early evening that we needed to go somewhere to find food, as the Lakehouse isn’t open for dinners this time of year. We headed up to Bethel, about 30 minutes from the B&B in Waterford, for dinner at the Sudbury Inn.

The Sudbury Inn was busy! Finding parking was a bit of a trick. The place was filled with skiing snobs and their loud children *groan* I will blame the lousy service and screwing up the order on how busy they were, they offered us free dessert for the screwup. The food was good though, dessert was delightfully decadant, and I got to enjoy my first Allagash White on tap! I had an Allagash Tripel back in PA a few months ago and was quite impressed, the white wasn’t as good, but it was neat getting it from the tap.

When we got back to the B&B, finished the bottle of wine, hopped in the jacuzzi tub for a bit and just chilled out. Such a great day!

Thursday morning we got up, had breakfast of grapefruit, sausage and french toast. We checked out around 9:30 and headed to Freeport to go to L.L. Bean. L.L. Bean was quite busy, I should have expected that right after Christmas, they were having their annual winter sale. We each picked up a couple shirts, I got a very nice winter coat to replace the old one I have now which keeps losing buttons. After L.L Bean we headed to a used bookstore on Route 1, a great place with tons of local stuff (I was very tempted to buy the $20 book on Cape Elizabeth from 1970), I ended up leaving after just picking up a 100 year old swedish-english pocket dictionary that I thought Morgana would enjoy.

Around 12:30 we arrived at the Muddy Rudder in Yarmouth, slightly early for our 1:00 reservations, but they seated us so we could wait for the others to show up. The others were one of the only friends I keep in contact with from High Schoool, Leslie and my sister Heather. It was a great lunch, a lot of catching up to be done even though we read each other’s journals. It was great to see Leslie, and with Heather moving up to Canada in May I’m not sure when the next chance to see her will be. I got to have the lobster pie that I love so much (and have dreams about and was the REAL reason for this trip! *g*). The waitress was nice enough to take a picture of us.

From left: Leslie, Heather, Lyz, Michael

We left the restaurant around 3PM and headed to Morgana and Bob’s place, got here a little after 4. Morgana made a nice meat dish which we enjoyed with wine while watching 40 Year Old Virgin. Morgana also made banana bread and we had some of Michael’s oatmeal chocolate coconut cookies. After dinner we hit the computers, did some reading of journals and checking email, a good end to the evening.

Today is another do nothing day. Yippee!

I’ve been thinking about this entry for a few days, kept telling myself “too early to write it yet!” but since I’m leaving tomorrow, not to return home until after new years, I figured now is an ok time to do it.

It’s been quite a year for me. In all honesty, I think it’s been the best year of my life. But even the best years have their bad bits, I’ll start there so this entry can end on a light note.

—

The not so good

I lost my father in the end of 2004, dealing with his death was tough. The memorial service was in the spring of this year.

I lost my father’s father, Granddad, in October. This was not easy either, I was comforted to know he lived a long, great life, but his absense is strongly felt.

—

Wow, is that all that was bad? There was the usual family stuff that goes on, small arguments and minor hangups. A close friend went through a lot this year and that certainly hurt some, but in all, those two things were the major things in my life that made things tough.

—

the good and the great

I started a temp job on February 14th for a large corporation, I quickly moved up to a higher position and was hired for real in Accounts Payable on June 13th. This is a big step for me, and could lead to a lot of opportunities in the future.

Michael and I got engaged on March 26th![lj-cut]

Prompted by the engagement, Michael and I embarked on a new spiritual path together. This path brought us to Malvern, PA and our teacher Jim Frank. We’re now enrolled in his Shaman class and regularly attend sweats at his property. The wisdom I’ve gained in just these past few months has been transformational. I’ve also met a bunch of really cool people.

Water softener and filtration system! New dryer! Ok, that’s the mundane stuff, but both purchases have been wonderful assets to our life. The change in water quality since putting in the softener makes showers nicer, cleaning easier (no more chaulky buildup!), and drinking tolerable without a brita pitcher. The dryer replaced one that squealed constantly when it ran, I was glad when it finally kicked it and we were forced to replace it.

We got a second car! Since I now have a stable job we were able to comfortably afford two cars, which has given me a great deal of independence, no more needing Michael to drive me to work or friends to pick me up every time I want to go out with them.

I’ve made a lot of progress in social and professional networking this year.

—

In all, I’m really grateful that so much has gone well this year. We’re happy and healthy, no major catastrophe befell us. If 2006 can bring us half the joy we experienced in 2005 it’ll be a great year too.[/lj-cut]