Monday, November 30, 2009

Great Weekend. Long Day.

I went home last Wednesday night for the Thanksgiving weekend. My flight had moved from its originally-listed departure time, so I ended up getting home a couple of hours earlier than usual. That meant a couple extra hours of talking and relaxing with Julia and neither of us minded that!

Thursday we took advantage of having nothing to do until a bit later in the morning and slept in, then had an excellent homemade breakfast burrito and went to a retirement center to wash dishes for their Thanksgiving luncheon. Julia's dad volunteers at the center and he asked if we'd be willing to help out. All things considered, it was a pretty short event, but we were moving the whole time. Julia handled cleaning off the plates and I dried and stacked and put things on shelves. We worked with a number of other people, including her parents, grandmother, aunt, brother, and a couple of other people. In all, I think we were there about two hours and the people who always worked there said we were the quickest they'd ever worked with. Hooray for us!

Afterward we went to Julia's parents' place for the afternoon and evening. We had a very good, traditional Thanksgiving dinner around four or five o'clock, I can't honestly say what time it was, and spent the evening cleaning up, talking, playing a game, and enjoying some dessert. It was a small group, just seven of us, which was a nice change of pace from their usual -- very large -- family gatherings. Julia and I both really enjoyed it.

Friday and the rest of the weekend we ran a lot of errands and managed to get a ton of things done at the condo as well as inside and outside the house. At the condo I had to install a new fan in the bathroom. I'd installed another one last year, so I knew it was pretty simple, but I also had to see about fixing the fan on the heater which was making quite a lot of noise. We finished off the fan pretty quickly once we purchased a new motor and installed it, then went to work on the heater. The issue there was trickier and we'd pretty much resigned ourselves to not being able to fix it, but on a lark I decided to try and tighten a couple of nuts (none of which seemed particularly loose) and that seemed to fix it! We were amazed. Really, the telling is much less exciting than it was in the moment. I received big kudos from my girl for that one!

Over the rest of the weekend we worked in the yard, transplanted some plants, put in a couple of lilacs, bought a new smokebush that was on sale for 75% off (we both like those, so that was a great find!), bought some potting soil for some indoor replanting we need to do, hung a "Welcome" sign we received as a wedding gift, and hung two big pieces of art/sculpture on the walls in the living room. 

Saturday night we had Shana, Jen, Seth, and Melissa over for dinner and the night before we decided to make it a little fancier than the pizza and soda we'd originally planned on, so Saturday afternoon we made an excellent salad with baby greens, toasted walnuts, prosciutto slices, and a dressing of equal parts real maple syrup and balsamic vinegar. Sounds crazy, I know, but the dressing is so good. Better than it has a right to be. Anyway, we also made some delicious turkey burgers with a spicy-sweet chutney, and key lime pie. None of which we'd every made before. And, wow, was it all great!

Monday morning we were up early so I could catch my flight back, but I was bumped to a later flight, which was then delayed a bit, so I didn't actually leave Seattle until 1:30. That was fine with me, though, because the airline bought me breakfast and lunch, and gave me a voucher that may cover the cost of two flights home, so I didn't complain one bit.

When I made it back to San Jose I had to pack up all the stuff at my desk because we're finally moving things around so most of the team can sit together. Hopefully when I get in tomorrow my things will be in the new spot and I can put all my goodies back on the walls and shelves.

Now I'm just prattling. I'm back and things are good. I'm going to watch a movie, read, relax, and collapse into bed.

Oh, tomorrow, December 1st, is the five-year anniversary of my and Julia's first date! No way it can be a bad day!

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