Better

Today I was pretty good. Only a couple of really atrocious coughing fits. My biggest problem was the weather. It was snowing this afternoon, quite badly. I waited 30+ minutes for the bus, and then it took 30+ minutes to go what usually takes it 25 minutes tops, so I was late for Pier 1. However, since there was a storm, it was ok. But the weather meant I didn't get dinner, so at 9:30pm as we were closing up I was feeling faint having subsisted the entire day on a granola bar (or 2 depending on how you count the ones that come in the green package), a smallish microwave dinner, a few squares of dark chocolate with caramel candy bar, and a lot of peppermint tea with sugar. Yeah, 14 hours on only that. Whoops!

Anyway, potbelly's to the rescue after work and my coworker Lynn's offer of some peanuts. Holy crap was I starved. Tomorrow and Monday, I will have to rethink the meal options between job one and job two.

Oh the weather was snowy, but much, much warmer, like almost freezing! It is sick to think that that is warm.

Oh and Sally, I hear from my brother they actually closed school out there for this storm? It must be one huge storm!

Still Sick

I am feeling better, I just need to dry up the crap in my sinuses and make my throat stop coughing. However, I did not go to work today because I still feel crappy and it is soooooo cold and windy here. It is 2 degrees (not a typo, single digits here) with a real feel of -17. My throat would never forgive me if I ventured out in that, I would not stop coughing, it would make it hard to breathe. I cannot leave the house in that not if I want to get better. It should be warmer tomorrow, thank God!

Home sick and watching movies

I did go to work for the first part of the day. I got all of the basic stuff done that I needed and then headed home. My head and body just felt icky and I couldn't stop coughing, so here I am on the couch with "The Way We Were." When I first saw this movie, I was convinced that I was Katie--isn't every girl who watches it. I think I have even dated some Hubbell's, but the thing about real life Hubbell's is that they aren't as good and kind and perfect as the character Robert Redford plays. They are messier, messier like Katie who really isn't all that messy.

Watching it now--way, way after high school (or undergrad--sometime in that time span is when I first saw it, before I had ever dated anyone at all), I don't really see as much Katie in my current self as I did then. Neither of us can seem to shut up and our mouths can get us in trouble, but I am not quite the angry, force of nature she is. I'm pretty sure I am my own force of nature, but not like Katie.

Domesticity

Sam made me dinner. It was excellent--some sort of chicken and green chile stew and a gruyere, ham and potato casserole. So delicious! He also made peanut butter cookies. This is what happens when I go off to work and leave him at homes on the weekend. And he tries to convince me he isn't the best boyfriend ever!

Sam met Holly

I'm pretty sure she liked him--because how do you not like Sam? I mean really. He's great (although my younger brother is a little nervous that he is perhaps not outgoing enough for someone from our family).

Ummm, we are going out to dinner tonight and then to a party. I feel a little like I am getting a cold, but I have decided to stop being sick and start being Awesome! (Thanks Barney).

Ummmm. Not so much anything else happening.

What is the deal?

Kids (or once upon a time kids) who are or were friends with my younger siblings have found me on my space, and they want to be my friend. I don't get this. We live far apart. I know next to nothing about them except that I thought they were cute and funny when they were six, but now they can legally drink and I don't care. AT ALL. So, I feel bad actually declining them, so I let the molder in unaccepted land hoping they will just go away.

But I still don't get why they want to be my friend? Some of them I have not seen or talked to in something approaching a decade. Weird.

A week

A very busy and not busy and uneventful week where I swear I did stuff but I sure can't remember what.

There was much sleeping in to recover from the brother visit because woowee did we drink and have fun. The Friday night I went out with friends and had the worst waiter in history (while Sam was in Virginia visiting a friend from high school).

Saturday and Sunday were consumed by season 4 of the Wire which I watched while swaddled in anything on earth that would make me feel a little bit warm because it is fucking freezing here in Chicago. The temperature right now even is not a positive number BEFORE you factor in the 10 mile an hour winds which make it colder. Yeah, nothing happened this weekend except work. It was too cold to move.

Sam came back Sunday, and I informed him I was sleeping over at his house because it is warmer. His buildings heat works really well, possibly too well, but I prefer that over the heat at my house which actually works fine, the main problem is that my room used to be outside in a porch and now it is inside and not really insulated well enough for not a porch. I needed to sleep at the warm house. He didn't mind though--turns out he might like me.

Monday was a nothing day. Tuesday I got in trouble at work for things that were not my fault by the person who's fault it actually was, but since he owns the company it turns out he gets to do that. Sam was going to make me dinner as a comfort, but he accidentally made a bottle of bar-b-que sauce fall off a shelf and explode all over his kitchen and dinner, so we ended up having to go out. Which was good, it just was awful cold to walk up the block for food.

Lake Michigan is freezing over, and I would take a picture some morning, but that would mean stopping in the cold and using cold fingers to take it, and well did I mention how flipping cold it is? Frozen Lake Michigan is pretty sweet.

Last night I ventured out again to a fundraiser for Jon, Chris, Sara, Luke, Branson, and Turpin's theatre project/company. I drank some, introduced Sam to the rest of the Idaho in Chicago gang (who were all together for the very first time ever!!!!!--this exact group anyway), and sang some karaoke. I did a duet with Chris Plummer on our song (Cruisin'), a duet with Anna on Dixie Chicks "Sin Wagon," Jamie made all the Chorus Line types sing "What I Did for Love" because she is cruel and unusual, and then I sang "The Shoop Shoop Song" all by my lonesome.

And yet it feels like nothing happened. Except it turns out I did something dumb with my finances which I am in the process of fixing. Blech.

Tomorrow I see Holly Harper and maybe Emily Gann-Korff, and they meet Sam.

MY BROTHER IS HERE

He is in the US and here in Chicago!!!! He is at my house for a day. He called me at 3am last night from Baltimore and said he is coming. It was so good to see him. I was tearing up on the train towards the airport but was relatively well-behaved there.

He is visiting me for a day with two friends before he ends up in California. We are going to the field museum and other things.

I only got bumped by a car

I am totally fine, but I did get kind of hit by a car on Friday. I was walking (you know like you do) and a woman was pulling out of the Walgreen's parking lot onto Fullerton Ave. (which was very busy and very, very slow moving at the time). She didn't look before she started to ease out into traffic, and I had just crossed in front of her and she slowly (because it was slow enough I could kind of move sideways as it was happening in speed with the car) nudged her car into me, but she very quickly saw me and stopped. So her car touched me and I kind of like grabbed at the hood to keep from falling over, but I didn't ever fall over and I am totally unharmed. Most of Friday I kept telling people that story over and over again to see their faces. It was awesome.

I am going winter coat shopping with my Christmas gift card to Macy's tonight. I will probably also get some underwear at victoria's secret, and I imagine sam will call me and coax me out to dinner since I am already downtown and need no coaxing whatsoever to go out to dinner.

Anyway, that was the car story.

Sorry for falling off the face of the planet

I just got busy seeing plays and people (and not just Sam) and then they cracked way down on internet usage at work, but now that I have internet at home I will try to keep better up. Or blog from Sam's itouch some more.

Momentously I discovered how to make my cell phone t9 capable this week as well as went out drinking a couple of times, had my favorite dinner at my fave restaurant twice in one week, kind of got hit by a car (I am fine now), and still have a plugged up ear. My week in a very poorly structured run-on sentence.

Home sick

My ear is all uncomfortably plugged up and I can't get to my doctor today, so, well mostly I am hoping it gets better and flirting with home remedies.

New Years=nap time

Well I had a very busy weekend that was supposed to be relaxing and calm. Whoops!

Sam and I went out to Howl at the Moon Saturday night after going out to dinner too (I think). We were just going to stay for a tiny bit because we were kind of tired and we shouldn't stay long, so we stayed for four hours and were kind of blitzed on whiskey and coke (him) and raspberry vodka and sprite (me).

Sunday Mary Hotter was in town and we went out for pizza with Anna and Branson (where we got inexplicably cheap pitchers of fat tire). Also apparently I have taken to calling Anna and Branson Branna. So there is that. Then we all went back to my house where Chris joined us and we drank until 3am for no good reason except that it was awesome.

Monday we got up and Mary and I went with her friend Derek to get mani-pedis. Sam prepped for his party where it seems like everyone I know ended up for the night. It was a great time. I got to meet some more Sam friends, there was a great deal of champagne drunk, there were fireworks at midnight, and at about 1:30am I decided I needed to puke or nap and chose napping. People came to ask me what I was doing, and I answered rather petulantly, "Sleeping!" because, well duh. It was good fun, good alcohol, general good time with lots of people I love and care about.

Then Sam and I just hung out for most of new year's day. We watched a lot of My Super Sweet 16, and Sam finds it hilarious how indignant I get about some of the bitchy teens on that show. We ate at the place called flat top grill where you sort of make your own stir fry (like a fancier Mongolian Bar-b-q place). The food was delicious!!! Basically, this was a good, good weekend, but I wanted it to be calmer--less going out and getting wasted I guess.

happy 2008!

I am blogging this from Sam's itouch-he got it for christmas. It pretty much confirmed that I really really really want one! It is way too much fun! It does however take an eon to blog.

Feeling better

Much, much better. I did awake with a sort of headache today, but I don't think it is related to the cold and could've happened any day (or that is what I am deciding).

I am at work today, at the 9-5 M-F work. What you say? Today is Saturday? Well, how right you are. We "get" to work Saturday in order to take Monday off. Yippie! I say with great sarcasm--although I suspect I will relish not working on Monday, so there is that.

The agenda is clean Jamie's desk (so she does not kill me on Wednesday when she is back at it) and then clean my desk and then do all the work that would create. Then I do the work that Maureen left me and then help Sonia file and then invoice. Yeah that will be just as much not that much fun as it sounds.

Ok, well the good news is that after today I get like three days worth of unbroken time with the boy who I have missed very much in the last two weeks where I hardly got to see him. (PS he got me a really nice Christmas present that I will get to enjoy for the next six months--wines and cheeses of the world every month).

Christmas for tomorrow

Here am I wrapping presents for Sam and my Christmas which we are celebrating tomorrow. I am also watching "The Last King of Scotland."

My cold seems better today. I don't know if I have zicam or robetussin to thank for that, but I am glad. Who knows how long I will stay feeling better--I have this premonition that this is just a brief holdover.

Blech. I hate being sick.

Sick

I am full blown sick now. It isn't awful. I can still function, but it is niggling, constantly a little unpleasant, and I get to play receptionist all day like this, and it is no fun. I also Pier 1'd tonight and will do so tomorrow night as well, and it makes me miss my associate days when I could just call in sick because in fact I am sick, but now I cannot call in. No one can cover for me-not this time of year and not with as few managers as we have on schedule. So I work, and I work some more. However, easy work on Saturday and Sunday and no work on Monday and Tuesday, and I look forward to napping a lot on those days. They were going to be days of fun, but now they look to be days of napping.

Sam, I think, feels bad because he was sick first ergo perhaps he got me sick. But Kathy in my office was way sick too. There was no way I am escaping it. Plus, it seems like Sam and I will be spending more than enough time together in the foreseeable future to keep getting one another sick which is a weirdly happy thought.

Merry Christmas

Yeah I know for like twenty more minutes. I had a nice Christmas and the Branson-Schlegal-Peterson-Plummer residence (but without the Plummer). I definitely fell asleep on the floor after two appletini's on Christmas Eve, and there was napping today.

The crap thing is that I have a cold. Scratchy throat, runny nose, coughing. I might have had a fever earlier in the day, but I was really, really hot in my coat while walking home--although that could've just been the temperature.

I am apparently too sick to be interesting this fine holiday. Oh well.

I miss Sam. Hopefully I get to see him day after tomorrow.

It works!!!!!!

My internet works. FINALLY!!! Seriously, I can't believe how hard it was to get my aircard to work, but now there is internet everywhere, and I am happy with it. It did take a half hour on the customer service line and 4 different customer service representatives--including one of them that was stumped for a while--for it to work. But it now works and I can have a very merry internet filled Christmas.

Why am I still at work?

Being here at regular day job right now seems pretty pointless. I mean, I did get to meet and talk to a woman named Santa (no joke) and girl Santa is awesome! I also got to play with a puppy, and we had a secret Santa giveaway that was great (and I got Amish peanut butter and raspberry jam--super tasty!). But seriously, I have basically no motivation to work for the next hour. At all. None. I want to go home. I no longer want to answer the phone--which has rung far more than I expected. The puppy who just left was the best part of the afternoon, also messaging Sam who is sitting at home, since he took some vacation that he has to use up. Although it totally is unfair that he is sitting at home and I am working, and later I am working some more at job the second. I am getting a little burnt out from the psychotic amount of work I have given myself.

Good news though. I get the 30th, the 31st, and the 1st off and probably have only a short day on the 29th. This will be awesome! Especially since Sam has all those days off and will be back in town. Yes!

On a not-so-much-related note, I am getting curiouser and curiouser about what he is getting/has gotten me for Christmas, but we aren't going to be having our Christmas until after he comes back. So I have almost a week to wait before I find out. Hmmmmm. . . I have some ideas (and basically no clues) as to what. But I was always the kid who liked to ponder and reason out what was in a particular gift, and I got really good at it--using the package itself but also my knowledge of the gift giver to guess.

Don't worry. I will spill the beans here as soon as I have beans that it.

Last night I was at Sam's going to blog as soon as the air card was up and running, but it has not yet been activated because I have to call, and I didn't have it in me last night. This weekend. I will call then.

What I did have in me was pizza with walnuts and Gorgonzola and pears on it and polenta fries and a nice Chianti. They were yummy and what Sam and I had for dinner at this great little Italian place in the Near North River North restaurant district because Cafe Iberico does not want me and Sam to eat there ever again.

I am also super busy at work (not that it is stopping me from this right now--whatever) being multiple people, and that means I am sitting at the receptionist's desk. Her desk has a different keyboard than the last time I did this. Her keyboard rocks! The old one used to not type w's, i', r's or 8's which got really old, really fast. This one makes a very satisfying clicking when you type. I like that.

I was also going to post about how snow is pretty, but when you live in a neighborhood full of dogs its poses a problem if it does not melt off the sidewalks right away. I live in a neighborhood of yellow snow. Everywhere. Since last Saturday night we have been coated. And the twenty or so dogs I see getting walked around my block have turned the snow yellow. The little melting that has occurred has unearthed some poo too. That's awesome for walking in, except that it is not. I really do not like yellow snow. It grosses me out. It's oookie. I no like it.

Jim sent me more DVD's of TV in the mail. I think that is awesome! Renee gave me a speaker thing for my ipod to dock into, its also an alarm clock, and it is little enough to fit into my bag, so I took it to work and now the dixie chicks are serenading me (among others, punchline was the last song).

Sometime soon, I get two days with no work off in the space of a week. Also I might get some sleep. That will be a nice change.

Sam's morning doorman called me sweetheart today and told me to keep warm. It was sweet, and then I saw my coworker Brad at the bus stop. He asked if I was going to work or home. I was going home briefly before work. Yeah, that was awesome. No, Brad is my friend and just teased me about it a little.

Steve McQueen went to the vet. He is getting to be a very spendy free kitten, but he no longer has ear mites and he does have his rabies shot. He just has to be neutered and we need to make sure we have killed his worms. He has decided he does not like Dr. Amy our vet because well she pokes him with things and sticks stuff in his ears, and so he hissed at her. Then he would come and sit in between my arms whenever she let go of him like he wanted her to know that he was mine and that I was going to protect him, but really I kept letting her fix him. He should be fine for a long time though. He's pretty healthy.

That's all for my long ADD post today. 5 days until Christmas!