A much more sedate weekend
I kind of needed a sedate weekend, maybe more than I even realized.
Friday, I did need a few necessities at Target...but I wanted nothing to do with getting near Target that close to a weekend. Fortunately I'd had a client site visit that morning for work, so on my way back from that I took part of my lunch hour and did Target errands then. It was a little crazy there at midday Friday, but nothing like I'm sure the rest of the weekend was!
Having done that already, on Friday night I could just. go. home. And I did! I had a few last minute cards to address and walk up to the mailbox, which thus constitutes the entirety of any effort made by me on Friday evening to do anything other than watch TV. Oh and I ate some dinner. I went to bed, continued reading 11/22/63, and dropped right off.
More or less. Desmond is getting so ridiculous about food that basically he starts begging for "breakfast" as soon as I turn out the light. Ha-ha. And "supper" is a meal that I started when Oz was sick, to try to bulk him up, and neither Desmond or Katie are all that interested. So I think I see a way to train them to expect one meal of wet food before bedtime, instead of early morning! Desmond will still come sit next to my head and meow and pat my face with his paw-pads, but I can shove him away without thinking "Oh is he out of food?" (They have dry food available at all times, also.)
All that fuss meant I slept from like 11:30 p.m. until about 10:30. Ahh. Delightful. Saturday I decided to just leave the Christmas lights on all day. I may just leave them on until the new year at this rate. Hey, they're LED! Don't cost that much to run! I am going to go through lights-withdrawal on 1/2, I can tell. Saturday I took my fine time, but did eventually gear up to go get my brother's gift. (A Ram's Head gift certificate, necessitating a drive down to the one in Savage Mill.) On my way to my car I missed my left glove! Oh no! I retraced my steps back to the apartment and didn't see it. Dang! I liked those gloves, too! They were red leather and new this year. I had been thinking, though, that I really did need warmer gloves. Maybe there are some fancy lined leather gloves out there that keep fingers warm, but mine always leave my fingers pretty cold. I have big ol' mittens for snowstorms, but they're somewhat impractical in other weather. Thus inspired, I drove up to the mall thinking I could just park far away and walk to LL Bean, but HA. How ridiculous to assume I could get within a ZIP code of the mall. I turned right back around and drove over to REI, where the parking lot and store were not very crowded! Nice! I got some fuzzy purple gloves. It is apparently a very purple winter for me, as the gloves match my new coat. They are SO warm holy cow. Awesome! From there I went down to Ram's Head and got the GC - also not crowded or a headache. I am very fortunate to have such a small family and not to have any need to spend a bunch of time and money grubbing my way through malls at this time of year.
Came back to my apartment to find - my left glove, propped on top of the mailboxes! Oh! Hey, cool! So now I have my nice red leather gloves if I would like to look fancy, and my fuzzy purple ones if I actually want to be warm. In the mail were a few more Christmas cards, including my annual favorite - the card from my massage therapist with a coupon for 50% off! Also in the mail were the giftcards I'd ordered for my mother, sister-in-law, and SiL's mother. Christmas was really coming together! Hurrah!
I had a little bit of downtime before Pat and Christine and Paige arrived and we headed up to 34th Street in Hampden, "Christmas Street". We got up there close to 5, parked the car without much trouble, and found a place to eat. "Tasty Asian" I believe it was called - a lot of restaurants were unsurprisingly really crowded. We ate and then I hit the shoe-and-chocolate shop where I found ridiculously overpriced Hawaiian chocolate. The only chocolate entirely Made in the USA! (Hawaii is the only state where cocoa beans can grow.) I met up with everyone over at the coffee shop across the street and got a cup myself, and we headed down for the lights. I took a bunch of pictures I'm mainly not satisfied with, but it was snowing slightly and very pretty and Christmas-ish! I thought they closed the street off to traffic, but no, apparently people wait in their cars for a long time to drive through! (The bonus to that, one supposes, is staying warm.)
After we'd seen the place, we headed home. I was probably back in my living room by 8 p.m. Nothing much else was going on so I just stayed in. I caught up with Heather on the phone for a bit, which was cool. I did some DVR catch-up, which was cool. I had a bout of the blahs, which isn't that cool, but it happens. And Saturday night was as good a time as any for it to happen, so I didn't fight it. I went to bed not very late and read more and went to sleep.
Sunday morning, everything looked a little brighter. I did more reading - I was close to the end, but couldn't quite get there that morning. I got up and got ready for church, which I really couldn't skip because I had to read. Did that, said Merry Christmas to a bunch of people I won't actually see next week because I'll be at church with Mom in Bowie, and then headed out. I had a hankerin' for a hamburger sandwich so I went to Fuddrucker's. I thought briefly about watching a matinee movie then decided I would rather have the time. I went to TJ's for groceries, then went home and put stuff away. I started cleaning! Hurrah! Seriously, last weekend was so busy that I basically hadn't cleaned since my party on the 3rd, so I was glad to finally have time to do it. And I was done before it was fully dark outside! Score! I sat down to fuss with pictures, then Matthew called so I caught up with him on the phone for a bit, then I realized that most of my pictures were pretty crappy, and I decided the hell with it and I'd have dinner. Oh also in the middle of all this I did three loads of laundry. In all, I was terribly efficient and ...more or less ready for bed by 8:00. I have turned into an old person. BUT I have a good excuse: I really wanted to finish the Stephen King book! I didn't really get to bed until about 9, and I was up until about 10:30 reading, and it was very satisfying.
Spoiler free review: Mr. King, please accept this tear-stained hanky and this National Book Award, with my thanks. Seriously. What an excellent book. Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm not really capable of being objective about Stephen King books. Some of them are awful, but usually I'm pretty forgiving. I've been reading the guy since I was like eleven years old - reading one of his books is like visiting with one of my oldest friends. But some of them are way better than others. This one is really, really good. The characters are the strongest part, because they always are, with King. The best books tend to be the most character-driven. The conceit, that someone travels back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination, is barely important after a while. The stuff dealing with Lee Oswald directly was the least-interesting part of the book to me, possibly because I could see where that storyline was going. (Or thought I could...I was a tiny bit off.) But how his characters handled strange and difficult situations, how much I cared about what was going on in this tiny Texas town in the late '50s/early '60s...that was vivid and important to me.
My only real complaint is that King keeps making his characters around the same age - 30s/40s. But his voice has not changed enough to keep them actually sounding like people who are currently that age. What I mean is, when I was a kid reading about a 37-year-old, the nostalgia that character had seemed appropriate: because when I was 12, someone who was 37 would have been born in 1947. Someone who is 37 now was born in 1974, and is my contemporary. He does usually do a decent job with keeping up with the cultural references, but there is so much in this book about nostalgia and a relationship with history, that some of the things this dude who was basically my age knew/did not know didn't ring true.
Overall, though, that didn't interfere with my enjoyment a bit. And it's really not a horror story at all, so if you're not sure if you'd like Stephen King, this would be a cool one to try.
Friday, I did need a few necessities at Target...but I wanted nothing to do with getting near Target that close to a weekend. Fortunately I'd had a client site visit that morning for work, so on my way back from that I took part of my lunch hour and did Target errands then. It was a little crazy there at midday Friday, but nothing like I'm sure the rest of the weekend was!
Having done that already, on Friday night I could just. go. home. And I did! I had a few last minute cards to address and walk up to the mailbox, which thus constitutes the entirety of any effort made by me on Friday evening to do anything other than watch TV. Oh and I ate some dinner. I went to bed, continued reading 11/22/63, and dropped right off.
More or less. Desmond is getting so ridiculous about food that basically he starts begging for "breakfast" as soon as I turn out the light. Ha-ha. And "supper" is a meal that I started when Oz was sick, to try to bulk him up, and neither Desmond or Katie are all that interested. So I think I see a way to train them to expect one meal of wet food before bedtime, instead of early morning! Desmond will still come sit next to my head and meow and pat my face with his paw-pads, but I can shove him away without thinking "Oh is he out of food?" (They have dry food available at all times, also.)
All that fuss meant I slept from like 11:30 p.m. until about 10:30. Ahh. Delightful. Saturday I decided to just leave the Christmas lights on all day. I may just leave them on until the new year at this rate. Hey, they're LED! Don't cost that much to run! I am going to go through lights-withdrawal on 1/2, I can tell. Saturday I took my fine time, but did eventually gear up to go get my brother's gift. (A Ram's Head gift certificate, necessitating a drive down to the one in Savage Mill.) On my way to my car I missed my left glove! Oh no! I retraced my steps back to the apartment and didn't see it. Dang! I liked those gloves, too! They were red leather and new this year. I had been thinking, though, that I really did need warmer gloves. Maybe there are some fancy lined leather gloves out there that keep fingers warm, but mine always leave my fingers pretty cold. I have big ol' mittens for snowstorms, but they're somewhat impractical in other weather. Thus inspired, I drove up to the mall thinking I could just park far away and walk to LL Bean, but HA. How ridiculous to assume I could get within a ZIP code of the mall. I turned right back around and drove over to REI, where the parking lot and store were not very crowded! Nice! I got some fuzzy purple gloves. It is apparently a very purple winter for me, as the gloves match my new coat. They are SO warm holy cow. Awesome! From there I went down to Ram's Head and got the GC - also not crowded or a headache. I am very fortunate to have such a small family and not to have any need to spend a bunch of time and money grubbing my way through malls at this time of year.
Came back to my apartment to find - my left glove, propped on top of the mailboxes! Oh! Hey, cool! So now I have my nice red leather gloves if I would like to look fancy, and my fuzzy purple ones if I actually want to be warm. In the mail were a few more Christmas cards, including my annual favorite - the card from my massage therapist with a coupon for 50% off! Also in the mail were the giftcards I'd ordered for my mother, sister-in-law, and SiL's mother. Christmas was really coming together! Hurrah!
I had a little bit of downtime before Pat and Christine and Paige arrived and we headed up to 34th Street in Hampden, "Christmas Street". We got up there close to 5, parked the car without much trouble, and found a place to eat. "Tasty Asian" I believe it was called - a lot of restaurants were unsurprisingly really crowded. We ate and then I hit the shoe-and-chocolate shop where I found ridiculously overpriced Hawaiian chocolate. The only chocolate entirely Made in the USA! (Hawaii is the only state where cocoa beans can grow.) I met up with everyone over at the coffee shop across the street and got a cup myself, and we headed down for the lights. I took a bunch of pictures I'm mainly not satisfied with, but it was snowing slightly and very pretty and Christmas-ish! I thought they closed the street off to traffic, but no, apparently people wait in their cars for a long time to drive through! (The bonus to that, one supposes, is staying warm.)
After we'd seen the place, we headed home. I was probably back in my living room by 8 p.m. Nothing much else was going on so I just stayed in. I caught up with Heather on the phone for a bit, which was cool. I did some DVR catch-up, which was cool. I had a bout of the blahs, which isn't that cool, but it happens. And Saturday night was as good a time as any for it to happen, so I didn't fight it. I went to bed not very late and read more and went to sleep.
Sunday morning, everything looked a little brighter. I did more reading - I was close to the end, but couldn't quite get there that morning. I got up and got ready for church, which I really couldn't skip because I had to read. Did that, said Merry Christmas to a bunch of people I won't actually see next week because I'll be at church with Mom in Bowie, and then headed out. I had a hankerin' for a hamburger sandwich so I went to Fuddrucker's. I thought briefly about watching a matinee movie then decided I would rather have the time. I went to TJ's for groceries, then went home and put stuff away. I started cleaning! Hurrah! Seriously, last weekend was so busy that I basically hadn't cleaned since my party on the 3rd, so I was glad to finally have time to do it. And I was done before it was fully dark outside! Score! I sat down to fuss with pictures, then Matthew called so I caught up with him on the phone for a bit, then I realized that most of my pictures were pretty crappy, and I decided the hell with it and I'd have dinner. Oh also in the middle of all this I did three loads of laundry. In all, I was terribly efficient and ...more or less ready for bed by 8:00. I have turned into an old person. BUT I have a good excuse: I really wanted to finish the Stephen King book! I didn't really get to bed until about 9, and I was up until about 10:30 reading, and it was very satisfying.
Spoiler free review: Mr. King, please accept this tear-stained hanky and this National Book Award, with my thanks. Seriously. What an excellent book. Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm not really capable of being objective about Stephen King books. Some of them are awful, but usually I'm pretty forgiving. I've been reading the guy since I was like eleven years old - reading one of his books is like visiting with one of my oldest friends. But some of them are way better than others. This one is really, really good. The characters are the strongest part, because they always are, with King. The best books tend to be the most character-driven. The conceit, that someone travels back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination, is barely important after a while. The stuff dealing with Lee Oswald directly was the least-interesting part of the book to me, possibly because I could see where that storyline was going. (Or thought I could...I was a tiny bit off.) But how his characters handled strange and difficult situations, how much I cared about what was going on in this tiny Texas town in the late '50s/early '60s...that was vivid and important to me.
My only real complaint is that King keeps making his characters around the same age - 30s/40s. But his voice has not changed enough to keep them actually sounding like people who are currently that age. What I mean is, when I was a kid reading about a 37-year-old, the nostalgia that character had seemed appropriate: because when I was 12, someone who was 37 would have been born in 1947. Someone who is 37 now was born in 1974, and is my contemporary. He does usually do a decent job with keeping up with the cultural references, but there is so much in this book about nostalgia and a relationship with history, that some of the things this dude who was basically my age knew/did not know didn't ring true.
Overall, though, that didn't interfere with my enjoyment a bit. And it's really not a horror story at all, so if you're not sure if you'd like Stephen King, this would be a cool one to try.