Man.
Well, I dare say although it's been a whirlwind of craziness, this has been one hell of a fun few weeks off. I must apologize however, as SO much has happened there's really no way I can relate the whole holiday experience as was had, but all the same, here's my best foot forward on the play by play:
First week off highlights:1. Excavated all Christmas related coolness from the bowels of the basement, and put up indoor/outdoor decorations respectively.
2. Started phase one of "the purge", e.g. all the stuff that was long past its usefulness expiration date and thus, had to go. Items included but were not limited to: toys, clothes, tupperware lids widowed by their containers, chipped dishes - in fact, broken and/or stained anything - spinster socks I've finally come to accept will never find their mates, etc.
3. Made an unholy amount of fudge in every imaginable concoction - dark chocolate cherry cordial, mint meltaway a la Fannie May (the candy company, not the defunct lenders, but ha wouldn't that one have a nasty aftertaste!?
* Ba-dum-bump*), lemon chiffon bread and cannoli.
4. Sharpened my impeccable wit.
5. Got my first ever manicure with best buddy Leddy who came home from San Diego for the holidays, then an hour later took her to one of my infamous kettlebell classes, which of course she promptly spanked being the fitness goddess that she is - and WITHOUT chipping a nail mind you.
As for the manicure, let's just say it was not the orgasmic adventure in luxury hygiene
Kahuna promised it would be. Sure the women were beautiful and Vietnamese all right, but the guy who did my nails was on his phone and/or laptop more than a 14-year-old
iCarly zealot, and when he
was doing my nails, was blathering on in Vietnamese while strategically inserting English phrases like "No nail what-so-eva!!" - complete with
Soup Nazi inflection - in order to thoroughly communicate his disdain for the task at hand (ha, get it?), or maybe just for me and my nubby nailed gall. Either way, guh.
6. Went with the family to see
The Tale of Despereaux, which was good but kind of slow, but anymore that's a pretty good rating for cartoon movies without the good fortune of being made by Pixar.
7. Had a rockin Christmas with family and friends! Everyone had so much fun together, and all the presents were a hit. I, for one, will be totally set this winter on the trainer with umpteen episodes of
Smallville and
Supernatural to watch, not to mention will be trying to channel my inner comic book geek thanks to my now completely enabled addiction to
Wonder Woman and all things
Justice League.
See, James put together quite the sampler set of
DC awesomeness for me, and since I've been interested in doing some comic book story lines lately (which of course started out as just writing them, but then evolved into illustrating them too since I can't just do ONE thing, I have to try to do it all, and we happen to have a friend who illustrates comics so I've been learning all about that "world", which by the way is really interesting... right, but I digress), he also put together a professional drawing starter set for me with all the fancy shaders and erasers and pencils and pens and even a hard-bound sketchbook, how cool is that? I'm telling you the week was just multiple layers of fun all around, and hey there's more! As alluded:
Second week off highlights:1. Completed phase one of "the purge" and began phase two - target: the basement, basement closets, and garage.
*cue Terminator music*2. Took a kettlebell circuit class with the owner of the gym and promptly bonked my brains out 3/4 of the way through. After half a protein bar and a bottle of water, I was back on the front lines with my 35-pound bell (why yes, yes I did say 35-lb...yes up from 26-lb, that's right. What a great memory you have!) doing one-armed swings and cleans, YEAH BABY.
3. Looked longingly at my bike on the trainer, and promised to dust it off next week.
4. Went to the BEST New Year's Eve party ever with some cool couple friends, and there, met even more cool couple friends, which as you may or may not know are a rare breed. It usually goes a little something like this: either one half of the couple is cool and the other has some passive/aggressive control freak disorder, or is into voodoo or something, and of course then forget about it, or better yet they're both these Jekyll and Hyde religious cult types who are half the time cool and half the time trying to get you to come to 'taking up snakes' night at church, you know what I mean? It never works out that they're both regularly cool except every so often. But, yes, thanks to the party we now not only have one set of cool couple friends around here, we have three, and that's just all kinds of great. Hopefully no one will have any weird cutlery fetishes come out and the good times will roll on.
5. Went with the family to see
Bedtime Stories with Adam Sandler, which was actually pretty funny.
6. Took down the previously mentioned Christmas coolness and returned it to storage along with some new (75% off!) stuff for next year.
7. Finished phase two of "the purge" and now will endeavor to paint the hallway and stairwell this weekend... after ice skating with cool couple friends and our collective kids tomorrow.
And there you have my vacation to date! With that, if you'll be so kind as to excuse me, I'm off to sneak in some
Smallville before bed, and then if there's time, draw a frame of my postmortem protagonist rifling through a pawn shop for his leather jacket.
Yeah, life is good.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!