Right then. Ketchup. Though said entries are despised a bit.
14th: Tuesday: Finished everything. Die Kevin Die.
15th: Wednesday: Shopping with Nicky?
16th: Thursday: Got my hair cut! Then, when Nicky was inspired by my sexy new do, went with her to get hers died. Went to the final IES dinner (held at Coopers on Leeson St.) which was quite enjoyable and involved steak! Yummo. Then, after going home for a little bit, we all headed out for what would prove to be an insane, yet incredibly fun, night out. Yay last night! But, I hate it that this night had to happen with only two days left, could we not have done this the first week and subsequently made the rest of the trip rock that hard? Ah well, c’est la vie. Oh, except Connor nearly gave me a bloody concussion by deciding that I needed to be carried around and successfully running me into a door =P.
17th: Friday: Some hardcore final shopping followed up by the obligatory ‘out for a final drink’. I nearly didn’t go, but it was a really good idea that I did, as I got to say all of my goodbyes in one go, and for the first time was actually sad that I was leaving. I actually never went to bed this night because I had so much last minute packing/ stealing things off the computer to do. I probably wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway consider the Russians had their incredible loud, drunken, forty+ year old professors over ALL night (they were still there when I left for the airport at 6am). That wasn’t a complaint by the way, said professors were quite nice, and one of them had been to Coop, Oneonta, AND Oswego, where he had allegedly seen the most beautiful sunset in the world. Weird. These past two days involved lots of goodbyes; Niyati had left Friday morning, and Nicky and Meredith left about an hour before I did.
18th: Saturday: Spent FOREVER in the airport, and was not in the best mood about it. Also, the whole ‘tax-back’ thing is a pain in the ass, airports need to have more than one clock (and it would be good if that one clock weren’t an hour and a half fast!) and um…yeah, that’s about all. Susan was on my flight but we only saw each other for about the half hour beforehand. Flight was long, but I’d taken sleepy Tylenol and Dramamine so I slept for most of it. Getting into JFK was exciting, though it took a few minutes to find Mom and Karen, who hadn’t recognized me. First we went to Uncle Russ and Aunt Maureen’s house, but only for a little bit, and then we headed home…despite some awful traffic. Home was good, but boo was tired and went to bed relatively soon thereafter.
19th: Sunday: Went into town in the hopes of Danny’s Sandwiching it up with the Jell, but alas it was not to be. From there I went to the Brassaws to see Dan for the first time in THREE MONTHS. Gah. It was really awkward at first actually, but it got better. That night we went to Candlelight night where neither Karen nor my Dad recognized me (come on people, the hair doesn’t make me look THAT different!). There we saw a bunch of people from HS, including Pookie and Allan, aaaand I got to meet Lucas, my pseudo-host brother. Yay ^_^. Back at Dan’s house we had one of those long, awful talks which I suppose are good for you, but are never the most fun things in the world, particularly when you know you’re going to be having a lot more of them.
20th: Monday: Jelli time! Unlike with boyfriends, things don’t get awkward between best friends when you’ve been away for a long time, so seeing Jenni was just awesome ^_^ We got Danny’s Sandwiches, shopped around town, and then headed back to my house for some planning and picture-ifying. Jelli had to go pick up her brother so she couldn’t stay terribly long, but I got to see her again at the concert that night, along with the rest of the HS crew and some teachers. Most lovely ^_^ I heart my bean!
21st: Tuesday: Winter Solstice: In accordance with the planning of the previous day, Jelli and I rounded up a group of people (Jenni, Dan, Joe, Teddy, Mikki, and I) and went to Oneonta to see ‘Finding Neverland’ (which was adorable and rocked), get milkshakes at the Neptune, and play hide and seek in Walmart- except that boys are dumb so we didn’t, but we DID buy matching underwear! And no Jell, I don’t think it’s sad that we now have three pairs of matching underwear and a matching pair of shoes…it’s just...ah…unique ^_^ Back at my house Jenni, Joe, Dan, and I all watched ‘Love Actually’ (as miss bean had never seen it), and despite the fact that she made me sit between Dan and Joe, I will be eternally grateful to Jell for not letting me face the Joe all by myself.
22nd: Wednesday: Jelli had spent the night, her old bed having been traded in for a futon, and the next day she and I went up to Utica with me mum to do some Christmas shopping. Coincidentally we ran into her dad and Melissa up there. Shopping was generally uneventful, and successful, and when Jenni’s dad came to pick her up that night I made sure to inform him that he could have her that night, but I was claiming her for the next day as well- mwahahahaha.
23rd: Thursday: The Fourth Annual Christmas Eve’s Eve party! As usual, I was running late, and so did not have time to wrap Jenni’s present before she got there. Bad Sandy. The whole ‘Dan and Jenni’ coming early thing didn’t work out to well. See, I generally invite them about an hour earlier so that I’ll actually have time to see them, since being all Hostessy I can never spend time with any one person at the party itself, but this year I was running late, and Dan brought Lisa and Jake with him…and then left with Jake because he’d forgotten something- so after exchanging gifts with Jell (who gave me the cutest little tare panda thing ever, and my beloved Peter Pan ^_^) I had to start being hostessy right away, and then people started showing up and bah. Fortunately I could cuddle with Jenni while we were all watching Napoleon Dynamite, but Dan got ignored all together *guilty*. I love this party, and it’s great to have a set thing were you can see everyone over break each year- but I kind of wish I wasn’t the one hosting it- it’s damn near impossible to have a conversation with anyone because there are always like fifty people and I have to try to say hello and goodbye to all of them and keep refilling snacks, and breaking up fights (okay so that was only this year, and incredibly lame, psh, stupid people). I also wish Amity and Joe hadn’t been in Belize so that I wouldn’t have been the only person at the party that Lisa knew…with the exception of Lauren Carlson- who only made matters worse (Lisa dated her brother for a long time and had a really wretched breakup). But yeah, despite the usual ‘not getting to see enough of anyone’ I had a really good time, and it was nice to get to see people for however a brief amount of time it was. Special thanks to adorable Mikki and Erin who both brought me beautiful gifts even though they really shouldn’t have. P.S.: Rained all day and washed away all the snow :(
24th: Friday: Christmas Eve: Slept late, cleaned up, was a bum. Much to my dismay my Mom made me go to church, but it actually wasn’t so bad, and I was glad I went. Back at home we did the traditional Christmas PJ’s and story reading, and set out cookies and milk for Santa, but instead of going to bed, I went to the Brassaws to exchange gifts with them. To be honest, I was a bit surprised, last year Mrs. Brassaw just gave me a little necklace, sort of from ‘them all,’ and so when I went shopping this year I got a deck of Ireland Scenery cards (because I always play cards with them) and a big coffee table picture book, addressed to the family, but really more for Mrs. Brassaw. However, Mrs. Brassaw, Mr. Brassaw, and Lisa all got me actual gifts this year, so I was quite spoiled and wished I had brought more. Mrs. Brassaw gave me a really pretty sweater, Lisa gave me these very cool Christmassy martini glasses, and Mr. Brassaw gave me a rather spiffy umbrella and some cute dolphin earrings ^_^ They all loved the book, particularly Andy- for its photographic aspects- and the cards were broken in by a couple of hilarious games of six-handed pitch. Daniel and I exchanged gifts as well; he gave me a gift certificate for a massage at essential elements (oooh what a glorious gift, I can’t wait to use it) and he looks adorable in the sweater I got him, which he likes very much. The rest of the evening was spent by the fire in the living room, playing cards, and making jokes, and was just a ridiculous amount of fun. Maybe it’s just because I’m used to the way my family spends Christmas Eve, or because I just love the Brassaws in general, but either way, this was definitely the best Christmas Eve ever ^_^ To top it off perfectly, it started to snow as I drove home; that nice fluffy sparkly kind that you can only get when it gets below a certain temperature, and every radio station was playing Christmas carols, the lovely old fashioned ones.
25th: Saturday: Merry Christmas! Was woken up by Miss Molly on Christmas morning, and did the whole traditional Christmas thing, breakfast and presents and what not. Taught my dad how to use his new digital camera, played with the cats in the wrapping paper, stayed in my PJ’s all day watching new movies with my sisters (I’d gotten Molly “Mean Girls,” which despite its ditzy teen movie cover, proved to be really good, and quite funny). That night the Giovines came over and we had your basic, semi-fancy, Christmas dinner (mmm turkey). Quite a bit later, Dan got back from the ‘Brassaw Christmas’ and came over so that my parents could give him their gift, and to watch Peter Pan, but really just fell asleep on the couch =P All in all, it was quite a nice holiday ^_^
26th: Sunday: The Bush Christmas: Went over to Dan’s house for the Bush Family (his mom’s side) Christmas. His Uncle Ralph was there, with family (Derek, Devon and Terry), as was his Aunt Sue and family (Tom, Beth and Beth’s husband (?) Mike, none of whom I’d met, well…except Aunt Sue) as was his Great Aunt Loretta. We had ‘dinner’ (though it was about 1:30), sat around and chatted, exchanged gifts (again…not expecting gifts from them, but was given a gift card by Aunt Sue and a bracelet by Aunt Loretta), played an incredibly amusing game of Taboo, had dessert, was told an incredibly tragic story by Terry (I’ll relate if you ask), and generally participated in merry making. Once the guests had left, Andy, Lisa, Dan and I sat down to play Risk. Now, I’d never played before, and was a little dubious, but it turns out that this game rocks, and I kicked ass- mwahahahaha. Of course, that may have been because Dan is easily booed into not killing me, Andy was being nice and giving me tips, and Lisa made the mistake of making a deal with me which was followed to the letter rather than to the idea (yes mom, I am treacherous, but you love me anyway) which resulted in her downfall. We didn’t actually finish the game, but we stopped when I had all of Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as Greenland (the main access into North America, which had no defenses) and was about to get another hundred armies. BWAHAHAHA oh how we evil masterminds will take over the planet- there’s a reason Queen Boo is the Queen you know! However, as all-powerful as I am, I can’t beat the weather, and since it had snowed six inches while we were playing, and neither Bush Rd. nor Christian Hill had been plowed (and my car has neither four-wheel-drive nor snow tires…) there was to be no going home for Miss Boo. Then again, that’s not really a tragedy.
27th: Monday: Up. Shower. Say hello to Amy, Andy’s exgirlfriend from college who I met over the summer and had come to visit for the day. Breakfast. Feed Miles (Dan’s fish). Play with Kitties (Lisa’s). Come home. Go pick up Molly’s friend. Buy milk. Attempt to clean room (AKA: clip finger nails, listen to music, and wander around aimlessly accomplishing nothing). Go pick up Mom from work, drop her off at Staffin’s to retrieve other car. Go to Utica with the mum to go coat shopping. Purchase coat and lovely shirts (three of the same…so that I now have the same shirt in black, white, grey, and green….very original). Get camera card for Dad. Come home. Try to plan visit with Sarah. Go to bed.
28th: Tuesday: Today! Well…so far I’ve done nothing but drive Molly around and type this up, but I’m hoping I’ll accomplish the following: Plan LOTR fest with Jenni, actually get some cleaning done, possibly go to the Laundromat (that’s weirdly spelled…and why does spellchecker demand that I capitalize it?) maybe get to see Miss Bean since her dad has clearly exceeded the Jenni time and I have yet to steal her back, remember to write to Megan about paying IES or ResLife about rooming preferences (oh hell, maybe even both!) aaaand um, that’s probably all, as I can’t really do any more trip planning until I hear from Sarah.
15th: Wednesday: Shopping with Nicky?
16th: Thursday: Got my hair cut! Then, when Nicky was inspired by my sexy new do, went with her to get hers died. Went to the final IES dinner (held at Coopers on Leeson St.) which was quite enjoyable and involved steak! Yummo. Then, after going home for a little bit, we all headed out for what would prove to be an insane, yet incredibly fun, night out. Yay last night! But, I hate it that this night had to happen with only two days left, could we not have done this the first week and subsequently made the rest of the trip rock that hard? Ah well, c’est la vie. Oh, except Connor nearly gave me a bloody concussion by deciding that I needed to be carried around and successfully running me into a door =P.
17th: Friday: Some hardcore final shopping followed up by the obligatory ‘out for a final drink’. I nearly didn’t go, but it was a really good idea that I did, as I got to say all of my goodbyes in one go, and for the first time was actually sad that I was leaving. I actually never went to bed this night because I had so much last minute packing/ stealing things off the computer to do. I probably wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway consider the Russians had their incredible loud, drunken, forty+ year old professors over ALL night (they were still there when I left for the airport at 6am). That wasn’t a complaint by the way, said professors were quite nice, and one of them had been to Coop, Oneonta, AND Oswego, where he had allegedly seen the most beautiful sunset in the world. Weird. These past two days involved lots of goodbyes; Niyati had left Friday morning, and Nicky and Meredith left about an hour before I did.
18th: Saturday: Spent FOREVER in the airport, and was not in the best mood about it. Also, the whole ‘tax-back’ thing is a pain in the ass, airports need to have more than one clock (and it would be good if that one clock weren’t an hour and a half fast!) and um…yeah, that’s about all. Susan was on my flight but we only saw each other for about the half hour beforehand. Flight was long, but I’d taken sleepy Tylenol and Dramamine so I slept for most of it. Getting into JFK was exciting, though it took a few minutes to find Mom and Karen, who hadn’t recognized me. First we went to Uncle Russ and Aunt Maureen’s house, but only for a little bit, and then we headed home…despite some awful traffic. Home was good, but boo was tired and went to bed relatively soon thereafter.
19th: Sunday: Went into town in the hopes of Danny’s Sandwiching it up with the Jell, but alas it was not to be. From there I went to the Brassaws to see Dan for the first time in THREE MONTHS. Gah. It was really awkward at first actually, but it got better. That night we went to Candlelight night where neither Karen nor my Dad recognized me (come on people, the hair doesn’t make me look THAT different!). There we saw a bunch of people from HS, including Pookie and Allan, aaaand I got to meet Lucas, my pseudo-host brother. Yay ^_^. Back at Dan’s house we had one of those long, awful talks which I suppose are good for you, but are never the most fun things in the world, particularly when you know you’re going to be having a lot more of them.
20th: Monday: Jelli time! Unlike with boyfriends, things don’t get awkward between best friends when you’ve been away for a long time, so seeing Jenni was just awesome ^_^ We got Danny’s Sandwiches, shopped around town, and then headed back to my house for some planning and picture-ifying. Jelli had to go pick up her brother so she couldn’t stay terribly long, but I got to see her again at the concert that night, along with the rest of the HS crew and some teachers. Most lovely ^_^ I heart my bean!
21st: Tuesday: Winter Solstice: In accordance with the planning of the previous day, Jelli and I rounded up a group of people (Jenni, Dan, Joe, Teddy, Mikki, and I) and went to Oneonta to see ‘Finding Neverland’ (which was adorable and rocked), get milkshakes at the Neptune, and play hide and seek in Walmart- except that boys are dumb so we didn’t, but we DID buy matching underwear! And no Jell, I don’t think it’s sad that we now have three pairs of matching underwear and a matching pair of shoes…it’s just...ah…unique ^_^ Back at my house Jenni, Joe, Dan, and I all watched ‘Love Actually’ (as miss bean had never seen it), and despite the fact that she made me sit between Dan and Joe, I will be eternally grateful to Jell for not letting me face the Joe all by myself.
22nd: Wednesday: Jelli had spent the night, her old bed having been traded in for a futon, and the next day she and I went up to Utica with me mum to do some Christmas shopping. Coincidentally we ran into her dad and Melissa up there. Shopping was generally uneventful, and successful, and when Jenni’s dad came to pick her up that night I made sure to inform him that he could have her that night, but I was claiming her for the next day as well- mwahahahaha.
23rd: Thursday: The Fourth Annual Christmas Eve’s Eve party! As usual, I was running late, and so did not have time to wrap Jenni’s present before she got there. Bad Sandy. The whole ‘Dan and Jenni’ coming early thing didn’t work out to well. See, I generally invite them about an hour earlier so that I’ll actually have time to see them, since being all Hostessy I can never spend time with any one person at the party itself, but this year I was running late, and Dan brought Lisa and Jake with him…and then left with Jake because he’d forgotten something- so after exchanging gifts with Jell (who gave me the cutest little tare panda thing ever, and my beloved Peter Pan ^_^) I had to start being hostessy right away, and then people started showing up and bah. Fortunately I could cuddle with Jenni while we were all watching Napoleon Dynamite, but Dan got ignored all together *guilty*. I love this party, and it’s great to have a set thing were you can see everyone over break each year- but I kind of wish I wasn’t the one hosting it- it’s damn near impossible to have a conversation with anyone because there are always like fifty people and I have to try to say hello and goodbye to all of them and keep refilling snacks, and breaking up fights (okay so that was only this year, and incredibly lame, psh, stupid people). I also wish Amity and Joe hadn’t been in Belize so that I wouldn’t have been the only person at the party that Lisa knew…with the exception of Lauren Carlson- who only made matters worse (Lisa dated her brother for a long time and had a really wretched breakup). But yeah, despite the usual ‘not getting to see enough of anyone’ I had a really good time, and it was nice to get to see people for however a brief amount of time it was. Special thanks to adorable Mikki and Erin who both brought me beautiful gifts even though they really shouldn’t have. P.S.: Rained all day and washed away all the snow :(
24th: Friday: Christmas Eve: Slept late, cleaned up, was a bum. Much to my dismay my Mom made me go to church, but it actually wasn’t so bad, and I was glad I went. Back at home we did the traditional Christmas PJ’s and story reading, and set out cookies and milk for Santa, but instead of going to bed, I went to the Brassaws to exchange gifts with them. To be honest, I was a bit surprised, last year Mrs. Brassaw just gave me a little necklace, sort of from ‘them all,’ and so when I went shopping this year I got a deck of Ireland Scenery cards (because I always play cards with them) and a big coffee table picture book, addressed to the family, but really more for Mrs. Brassaw. However, Mrs. Brassaw, Mr. Brassaw, and Lisa all got me actual gifts this year, so I was quite spoiled and wished I had brought more. Mrs. Brassaw gave me a really pretty sweater, Lisa gave me these very cool Christmassy martini glasses, and Mr. Brassaw gave me a rather spiffy umbrella and some cute dolphin earrings ^_^ They all loved the book, particularly Andy- for its photographic aspects- and the cards were broken in by a couple of hilarious games of six-handed pitch. Daniel and I exchanged gifts as well; he gave me a gift certificate for a massage at essential elements (oooh what a glorious gift, I can’t wait to use it) and he looks adorable in the sweater I got him, which he likes very much. The rest of the evening was spent by the fire in the living room, playing cards, and making jokes, and was just a ridiculous amount of fun. Maybe it’s just because I’m used to the way my family spends Christmas Eve, or because I just love the Brassaws in general, but either way, this was definitely the best Christmas Eve ever ^_^ To top it off perfectly, it started to snow as I drove home; that nice fluffy sparkly kind that you can only get when it gets below a certain temperature, and every radio station was playing Christmas carols, the lovely old fashioned ones.
25th: Saturday: Merry Christmas! Was woken up by Miss Molly on Christmas morning, and did the whole traditional Christmas thing, breakfast and presents and what not. Taught my dad how to use his new digital camera, played with the cats in the wrapping paper, stayed in my PJ’s all day watching new movies with my sisters (I’d gotten Molly “Mean Girls,” which despite its ditzy teen movie cover, proved to be really good, and quite funny). That night the Giovines came over and we had your basic, semi-fancy, Christmas dinner (mmm turkey). Quite a bit later, Dan got back from the ‘Brassaw Christmas’ and came over so that my parents could give him their gift, and to watch Peter Pan, but really just fell asleep on the couch =P All in all, it was quite a nice holiday ^_^
26th: Sunday: The Bush Christmas: Went over to Dan’s house for the Bush Family (his mom’s side) Christmas. His Uncle Ralph was there, with family (Derek, Devon and Terry), as was his Aunt Sue and family (Tom, Beth and Beth’s husband (?) Mike, none of whom I’d met, well…except Aunt Sue) as was his Great Aunt Loretta. We had ‘dinner’ (though it was about 1:30), sat around and chatted, exchanged gifts (again…not expecting gifts from them, but was given a gift card by Aunt Sue and a bracelet by Aunt Loretta), played an incredibly amusing game of Taboo, had dessert, was told an incredibly tragic story by Terry (I’ll relate if you ask), and generally participated in merry making. Once the guests had left, Andy, Lisa, Dan and I sat down to play Risk. Now, I’d never played before, and was a little dubious, but it turns out that this game rocks, and I kicked ass- mwahahahaha. Of course, that may have been because Dan is easily booed into not killing me, Andy was being nice and giving me tips, and Lisa made the mistake of making a deal with me which was followed to the letter rather than to the idea (yes mom, I am treacherous, but you love me anyway) which resulted in her downfall. We didn’t actually finish the game, but we stopped when I had all of Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as Greenland (the main access into North America, which had no defenses) and was about to get another hundred armies. BWAHAHAHA oh how we evil masterminds will take over the planet- there’s a reason Queen Boo is the Queen you know! However, as all-powerful as I am, I can’t beat the weather, and since it had snowed six inches while we were playing, and neither Bush Rd. nor Christian Hill had been plowed (and my car has neither four-wheel-drive nor snow tires…) there was to be no going home for Miss Boo. Then again, that’s not really a tragedy.
27th: Monday: Up. Shower. Say hello to Amy, Andy’s exgirlfriend from college who I met over the summer and had come to visit for the day. Breakfast. Feed Miles (Dan’s fish). Play with Kitties (Lisa’s). Come home. Go pick up Molly’s friend. Buy milk. Attempt to clean room (AKA: clip finger nails, listen to music, and wander around aimlessly accomplishing nothing). Go pick up Mom from work, drop her off at Staffin’s to retrieve other car. Go to Utica with the mum to go coat shopping. Purchase coat and lovely shirts (three of the same…so that I now have the same shirt in black, white, grey, and green….very original). Get camera card for Dad. Come home. Try to plan visit with Sarah. Go to bed.
28th: Tuesday: Today! Well…so far I’ve done nothing but drive Molly around and type this up, but I’m hoping I’ll accomplish the following: Plan LOTR fest with Jenni, actually get some cleaning done, possibly go to the Laundromat (that’s weirdly spelled…and why does spellchecker demand that I capitalize it?) maybe get to see Miss Bean since her dad has clearly exceeded the Jenni time and I have yet to steal her back, remember to write to Megan about paying IES or ResLife about rooming preferences (oh hell, maybe even both!) aaaand um, that’s probably all, as I can’t really do any more trip planning until I hear from Sarah.