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Thanksgiving with Mom and Daniel was fun. We went all over the place and saw almost everything they had on their To Do list. One of my favorite things was going into SF on Saturday and showing them where I work.

We took many pictures and they will be available soon. Stay posted.

On Friday, I got a massage. My poor posture and sitting for long periods of time at my desk and on the train make my upper back and neck very tense. I’m not in a ton of pain, but I feel stiff if I don’t make a point to stretch very well. I had one massage about a month ago. It was good, but I think the masseuse was afraid of hurting me so she didn’t press too hard. I decided to check out some other options. It turns out that there are certain masseuses who give discounts because they are affiliated with my health insurance. One of them works right down the street from my apartment, so I made an appointment with her.

The massage was awesome. I’m still a little tight, but she got most of the major knots out. I got a deep tissue massage and, by the time she was done, I felt like a big ball of dough that had been kneaded into a supple lump. She did a really good job and was not afraid to press a little harder to work out a tight muscle. I’m so happy to find a good masseuse. I used to treat myself to massages in Austin and had the BEST masseuse who was also my workout buddy. I was sad to say goodbye to her but I’m so relieved to find an acceptable substitute.

After my massage, I wandered over to the Trader Joe’s by my house to pick up a few groceries. As many of you know, I love to go grocery shopping when the store isn’t insanely crowded. Danny humors me, but I feel bad spending five minutes just picking out crackers when he’s waiting patiently. I wandered around the store for a while just checking out the stuff and seeing what was on special that week. When I got home, I realized I still had a red mark on my face from the sheet on the massage table. Whatever. The store employees probably thought I was crazy anyway for staring at crackers for five minutes.

Once I got home, I made some pumpkin soup and watched America’s Next Top Model with Danny. I was so pissed that they kicked off one of my favorite contestants. I guess that’s the way it goes though. Now it seems that all they have left are bitchy divas, but I guess they’ll stand the chance of lasting the longest in the modeling world.

On Saturday, we slept late and ran a bunch of errands. We were going to have dinner at some fancy restaurant. I wanted to “audition” it because I need to find a good place to feed Mom and Daniel on Thanksgiving Day and I know this place will be open. It was a pain to find and once we got there they only had valet parking which was not free. I was not impressed. It looked busy and we were hungry so we skipped it. We went back to our favorite Indian food restaurant and discovered that they too will be open on Thanksgiving and will have some sort of turkey curry buffet (ala Bridget Jones style). It sounded pretty good so we’ll see if mom and Daniel are game.

Yesterday, we did a little more shopping and then had a very leisurely late late lunch at Denny’s. We took the newspaper and had a relaxing time just reading and chatting over our coffee and eggs. That’s what the weekend should always include: a lazy lunch with endless cups of coffee and a pile of newspaper to sift through.

Once we got home, I continued tidying up the apartment while Danny worked on putting up the cable we had strewn on the floor. He stapled it to the ceiling so I won’t keep tripping on it and pulling the router off the stand. I also put up a poster in the office to actually add some decoration besides Captain Picard. We kept the good captain though. Danny removed the piece of cardboard that helped keep him upright. He then nailed him to the wall (or crucified if you ask him) by the closet.

I started putting up Christmas decorations and have the living room and office almost finished. Normally, I don’t care about decorating, but Danny and I are both suckers for strings of colored lights on sale. I’ll take some pictures and post them soon.

Danny told me that his company is having a Christmas party. I’m excited because we get to dress up and party at some nice place in the city. I’m assuming it’s nice. It’s not a Chuck-E-Cheese so it’s nice. The party isn’t for another month but I’m ready to get all dressed up and hit the town. I don’t know if my company is having a party. My guess is that it isn’t, but maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. The last company Christmas party I attended was a full-blown formal event at the Four Seasons in Austin. This was before the economy bottomed out and one third of the employees were canned. That is also the first time I learned that it is NOT so much fun to come to work on Monday after getting trashed in front of your coworkers. Fortunately, most of them were somewhat trashed too. Ha!

I just found out that Ted and his wife Lizzie had a baby girl last night around 6:30pm CT. She is Hazel Caroline and is 7 lbs and 15 oz, 22 inches long.

I’m so excited! He is my first good friend who has had a child. Everything is fine. She has all of her fingers and toes and is gorgeous. See for yourself.



Danny’s comment: Cool! Ted spawn.

I checked my email this morning to find a very nice thank you note from one of the sailors who received one of my care packages. I just mailed it on Tuesday of last week so I’m amazed it got there so quickly. She was very happy to have received it and said that her fellow sailors were equally thrilled. I think I just sent them an assortment of bath stuff, gum, and some magazines.

This is fun. I can see it quickly becoming an addiction.

Strangest phrase overheard today: Yeah, her boyfriend died in a freak hang gliding accident….

This is a picture of a couple of tornadoes that formed in west Austin today. My friend Lisa sent me a pic one of her coworkers took as they were standing out on the balcony at their office. Fortunately, they were far from the twisters but it still looks pretty unsettling to me.

Here are some more pics from the local news.

Everytime I try to recap the weekend’s highlights, it takes me a few moments to remember what we did. We usually have fun, but we have fun doing very little. Let’s see, we slept in on Saturday, ate a huge breakfast and then decided to brave Wal-mart on Saturday afternoon to get Danny a new car battery. It was as bad as I expected, but I was well-rested and full of tasty breakfast food so I could deal with the madness.

On Sunday, we rode around Stanford on our bikes. We hadn’t done that since we both got our new super-cool foldup bikes with matching blue helmets. No one laughed us, at least not to our faces anyway. Oh, and we went and saw The Incredibles. It was cute.

Today, I had a bit of a stomachache at work, so I left early, went home, and laid on the couch for a while. I feel fine now. I guess I ate something a bit off. And it is Monday - always a crucial factor.

This is my five year anniversary of being a technical writer. Whoohoo! I started at Synthesys Technologies on November 11, 1999. In all of that time, I only had a total of 3 months of being unemployed! That is what I’m most proud of actually.

To celebrate, I’m going to go home tonight and eat the other half of the meatball sub I got for lunch today. Oh, I’ll do some laundry too.

I’ve been making more care packages. I sit in my living room with the tv on as I sift through my pile of goodies trying to decide which group of soldiers needs shampoo or candy more.

The only problem with this is it’s highly addictive. As many of you know, I used to swap for new or gently used cosmetics through makeupalley. I still love makeup, but I got out of the habit of swapping when I moved and wasn’t buying any makeup before I got a job. Still, it was fun to sift through my goodies, ship them off, then wait for a box in the mail.

Surprisingly, this helps me with my clutter. I got rid of a bunch of stuff when I moved, but I still have plenty of junk lying around. I’ve packed up a bunch of magazines, paperback books I’ll never read again, and odds and ends like sweetener packets, tea bags, and shampoo/hand lotion samples.

I’ve also gotten rid of some of my smaller toys (stuffed animals and desk decorations). The soldiers carry these in their packs and pass them out to children they meet. I’d like to send more stuff for the people of the countries we invaded, but I should probably do that through another organization (one that specializes in humanitarian efforts).

I still think that we would be much better off without GW in power. I feel so frustrated because almost everyday we hear of Americans being killed in the middle east (not to mention the number of Afghanis and Iraqis). I say prayers for them (and I’m not that religious) but I just feel like it’s out of my hands. I think about the folks who signed up for the National Guard who are now on 9-18 month tours in the middle east. I’ve been feeling sad about this for a while but I finally found something to do about it.

I was reading fark the other day when I came across a link for anysoldier. It is a grassroots organization that delivers mail to soldiers who do not get much, if any, contact from the states. It works like this: a contact person in a certain platoon signs up on the website and lists the items that the soldiers need most. Lots of times they just want snacks and letters of support, but sometimes they need warm socks and gloves. When people mail in gift packages, they send it to the contact person who then distributes the package to one of the soldiers. Right now, there are over 650 contacts in the middle east and the balkans.

I sent four packages today. Since I was shipping to APO addresses, the price of shipping is based on domestic rates. Anyway, I didn’t send anything fancy - mostly personal items such as soap and shampoo as well as candy and cookies. Some just want books, magazines, and used gameboys to help stave off boredom. I included a christmas card with a little note because I don’t know how soon they’ll receive it.

I guess this is kind of weird because I have never supported the attack on Iraq, but I can’t help but sympathize with the troops over there who are mired in a situation that they can’t control. Even some of them said (to paraphrase) “I know that the country is split over this war, but we’re doing the best job we can under the circumstances.”