Merry Christmas Eve!

I hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas with family and friends... here's something to get you in the mood :D

The longest week

Even though I've been super busy this week, I feel like it's draaaagggggeeeedddd on :( Finally the end is in sight though... tomorrow is Friday!!

After a busy weekend things have not slowed down at all. Monday night I celebrated my birthday (yes, AGAIN) with Ms. Lindsay. When I first left work, I wasn't sure I wanted to do anything... a nap sounded awfully good to me. But after a nice relaxing pedicure, I was up to a little more celebrating. Lindsay and I went to dinner at La Fogata, this little Mexican restaurant in Walnut Creek. Afterwards we hit the new Walnut Creek hot spot 1515 for some drinks.

Tuesday I squeezed in a little more Christmas shopping after I left work, and before I had to be at Sports Basement for our TNT Spring 2008 Mentor and Captain training. I've been through this training MANY times over the year so I don't really learn anything new, but I do like meeting all the new mentors/captains who are going to be on the team with me. I think we have a really good group and I'm excited about captaining with Ms. Jeanette!

Wednesday I went straight from work to Alameda to do a little MORE Christmas shopping. That didn't take me too long so I met up with my coworker Ann for dinner and drinks in downtown Alameda. The food was very yummy but the Pomegranate Margaritas were even better. They serve them with a stick of sugar cane, which Ann did not know wasn't edible! Thank god I was there to stop her from eating more than a couple of bites of it! I don't think it sat too well in her tummy :(

Tonight I have MORE errands to run after work and then I'm dropping off some Christmas gifts before I can go home, put a load of laundry in and finally start packing!

Birthday fun

Wow, what a weekend! After all the activity, I feel like I could happily hibernate for the rest of the winter (and with all the food I ate I think it would actually be possible)! Friday night was my company Xmas party. It was a smaller group this year because a couple of people already had plans for the evening. My absent coworkers were missed, but it was easier to talk to everyone at dinner! My boss and his wife put on a wonderful dinner, as usual. We has yummy appetizers, and a dinner of pork loin with a pomegranate rub, string beans, salad, rice and the best desert ever. At my first Xmas party with this company, Nancy made the most delicious desert-- Godiva raspberry white chocolate ice cream in chocolate cups drizzled with Chambord and topped with fresh raspberries! I ate 4 servings. Seriously. So every year since then, we have the same thing :D We all had such a fun time chatting, eating and drinking wine, I didn't get home until around midnight!

Saturday morning I woke up and right away started to get the house ready for the birthday/holiday party. I moved one of the couches into another room, set up the tables, decorated them, and started preparing some of the food that I could do ahead of time. I popped Tex and Rex into the oven around 12:30 and then made the brushetta and stuffed shells that I was cooking later. Funny thing about the tables... I had borrowed two card tables from my mom, and then rented a 6 foot long table from the party store in WC. I figured that would make a nice square table for us to eat at. Problem... all the table were different heights. Solution... books :D I raided my bookshelves for a bunch of books (thank god I read a lot) and then spent at least a half hour figuring out which books to use under each table to make them all the same height. It worked out and during dinner no one knocked the tables off their book perches :D

Between 4 and 5, Claudia, Rocky and Lindsay showed up to help me with the final touches--putting out the wine/glasses, making the hot cider, putting out the last few decorations and making the salad. At 5:00 I got dressed in my party clothes and was ready for everyone to start showing up! The party was a blast! We went through most all the wine I had (at least 9 bottles... eeek!) and of course had too much food, but I think everyone enjoyed it! For desert we had this amazing cupcake cake that my roomy Christina had gotten. She knows how much I love cupcakes! THANK YOU!! And THANK YOU Claudia for everything you did... the cooking, cleaning, and general helping out :D

Because I had done a lot of cleaning up Saturday night, I thankfully didn't have too much to do Sunday morning. I just had to take down the tables, do a little vacuuming and put away some dishes. :D The left the rest of my day free to do some Christmas shopping. The combination of the crowds, no parking, a lot of walking, and two late nights made for one tired girl. Once I got home I plopped on the couch for the rest of the night, watched some TV and did all my Christmas cards!

Missing Man

A couple of weeks ago my coworker Ann told me that her sister's boyfriend's best friend in New York was reported missing. Tony Devine was out visiting a few Manhattan bars with his best friend, Andy, on November 30th and since then no one has seen him or heard from him. :( Tony is a recent transplant from Ireland, and didn't have any identification on him. Andy and Tony's family have been working with local authorities and a private investigator but haven't gotten any solid leads yet. How scary to think that one minute you're out hanging with your friends, and the next minute you're gone. Just vanished. Tony's parents and a couple of siblings are still in Ireland-- I can't imagine what they're going through right now being so far away :(

Everyone keep Tony and his family and friends in their thoughts and prayers during this holiday season...

Beef brisket... It's what's for dinner

Last night Amy hosted a Stitch N' Bitch get-together at her house. Because of all our crazy running schedules, we hadn't gotten together for quite awhile. Even with many people not able to come due to holiday committments, it was fun to get together for the evening to enjoy some good food and wine. Notice I left out the knitting part? That's because I didn't touch ANY of my knitting :D Once we were done eating, I didn't want to even bother with the hat I brought to knit on. I think I'm going to rip it out anyway since it looks like it may be too small, and start over with something else! I'll probably start something easy so I can bring it on the plane with me to Hawaii. It'll give me something to do for those 5 hours, AND I can torture my brother with the knitting needles :D

Before we left Amy's, Claudia gave me all the fixen's for the beef brisket that she's making for Saturday's shindig. She got two BIG pieces of meat, and all the ingredients for the marinade. It has to soak for 24-48 hours so we thought it'd be easier to let it marinade at my house since that's were we'll cook it. We have already named the briskets... Tex and Rex :D (I know, it's wierd, but funny too... after all, we have to continue the tradition after Betsy and Patsy, the sister piggies). I took Tex and Rex home and now they're soaking in a yummy bath of soy sauce, lemon juice, and LOTS of garlic!

Birthday countdown

I know, I'm a dork. At 30 I really shouldn't be all that excited about my birthday anymore. For the past few years I've joked that I'm going to start counting back down the years, instead of up. Despite that, the kid part of me still gets excited about celebrating my birthday! I love getting together with my friends and, of course, I LOVE the cake!! And now the countdown has started... my 31st birthday is less than one week away!!

This year I am departing from the usual birthday celebration tradition (usually involving braving the holiday crowds to go out to dinner somewhere) and I'm hosting a small birthday/holiday party at my place. This means that my time lately has been spent planning, making lists, obsessing about the planning, cleaning, shopping and, of course, making more lists :D Thankfully Claudia is helping me out with some of it... THANK YOU!!!

This past weekend I spent mostly participating in the above mentioned activities, but I also managed to squeeze in some fun. Saturday Claudia and I spent the early part of the day wine tasting in Livermore. She just joined the wine club at Tamas Winery and since they were having a little reception/party we decided it would be a nice excuse to go out there for a little wine tasting and restocking of our wine stashes. I haven't been wine tasting there before and I really enjoyed it! I didn't LOVE all the wines (some were VERY sweet, I guess due to the soil there) but it was still fun. Claudia dropped me back off at home in the afternoon so I could get ready for Brandy's company Christmas party that night. She had invited me as her "date" for the night. It was a fancy shmancy party at the St. Francis, complete with a cocktail hour, really yummy dinner, and dancing! I had such a fun time... and even came away with one of the gorgeous centerpieces! Boy did my feet hurt though!

Finally I took some pictures of my Christmas Tree and the wreath that I just got... Enjoy!

Happy Happy Friday!!

I'm so happy it's Friday :D I can't believe it's already Dec. 7th... it seems like Thanksgiving was just yesterday!

Last night I went to Havana's and met my co-worker, her cousin and a friend for some dinner and drinks. Traffic was AWFUL!! It seems like there are just more people on the road now, and the rain didn't help matters :( Thankfully the evening's company made up for the frustration on the road and dinner was yummy as usual :D

Tonight I'm looking forward to taking it easy. My winter allergies just kicked into high gear so I'm going to rest up so they don't get any worse... I don't have enough time to get sick right now! Tomorrow I'm heading out to Livermore for a little wine tasting with friends, and then I'm my friend Brandy's date to her company Christmas party in the city!! I know, those aren't very restful activities but I don't have any plans on Sunday so I'll have plenty of time to rest then!

Other going-ons...

I was so excited to post about my Christmas tree earlier this week that I forgot to mention much else! It's been a pretty busy week so far...

Monday night I met Pam and Amy for a short run. We did their short, short route and the weather was just perfect-- not as cold as the week before! I started out feeling a little sluggish and trying to keep up with Amy, who was setting a pretty good pace. Once we turned off the streets and onto the trail, she slowed down, and I sped up :) I must have finally warmed up, or I just wanted to hurry through the darkest part of the trail :) Amy and Pam were right behind me, even though afterwards Amy complained that I had been running too fast :)

Tuesday night Claudia came over for a crab dinner. I had opened an unchilled bottle of white wine last week on accident when Linsday was over and I was complaining to Claudia that I didn't want to drink it alone, or let it go to waste. She said she would help me drink it and we threw in dinner too :D The local crab we had was SOOOO good :D It was very sweet, and MUCH better than the crab I got a few weeks ago from Whole Foods. We also stuffed our faces with some rice, salad, rolls and peppermint bark for dessert. Yummmm :D

Last night I just relaxed and took it easy but tonight I'm off for dinner and drinks with my co-worker and some friends. More yummy food :D With all this eating, I need to do a little more exercising!

Oh Christmas Tree...

I'm so excited... I now have a pretty (if I do say so myself), fragrant Christmas tree up in the corner of my living room! It's all lit up and decorated and there are even some presents at the bottom of the tree!

This past weekend was filled with lots of fun activities... Saturday I was suppossed to meet my friend Katie for lunch in Redwood City but she was on call at the hospital and got called in :( I was bummed that our lunch date didn't work out since our busy schedules prevent us from getting together often but it did give me a chance to do some errands.

Saturday evening I went into the city with Claudia and Rocky to see Kathy Griffin's show. We had dinner early at a Japanese place and then headed over to the Masonic Center in Nob Hill for the show at 7:00. Man, the city was PACKED!! We parked near the restaurant, and then drove over to the theater a few blocks away but all the parking lots were full. Rocky ended up dropping us off (so we wouldn't have to climb Nob Hill in our big heels!) and parking pretty far away :(

The show was a lot of fun, despite a rocky start due to some sound problems! Before I started watching Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, I didn't really find her very funny. But then I caught an episode of her show, and I've been hooked ever since! During her comedy shows she talks a lot about celebrities and reality tv. On Saturday she covered Marie Osmond, Oprah, her mother, her new BF Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), Britney and a bunch of other poor celebrities! After the show we didn't feel like going home to we headed out on the town. The night ended with a yummy grilled cheese at Mel's Diner :)

Sunday morning I recovered from the night before slept in and then went to pick up my tree!! After spending a fortune on a chopped down, soon-to-be-dead tree, I went home, drug it up the stairs, put it in the stand and started decorating. It didn't start out too well... I had a little problem with the lights but finally got it figured out. Last time I had a tree was when Claudia was my roomy... with our two sets of ornaments we had enough to cover the tree. I don't have enough of my own to do that, so my mom had lent me her stash of snowman ornaments. I improvised a tree topper with some gold ribbon and a gold sequined star, and my tree skirt is actually a $10 red fleece blanket draped around the bottom of the tree (I couldn't justify buying a not-so-inexpensive, but cheap looking one from Target)-- I think it works though! :D Now it looks so pretty and the house smells so nice! I keep forgetting to take a picture of it so I can post it... I'll try to do that soon!