It's Christmas TIme!

Merry Christmas Everyone! It's been a great holiday! I flew in Friday night and ran into Amy in the MSP airport. We were able to finagle seats together, and it was nice to catch up. Got in late that night and stayed up talking to Mom, Dad, and Grandma.

Christmas Eve I saw my mom's family, hung out with Smashley and Gretchen. Good Times! Smash has official agreed to update her blog from the Oct. 5 "baby it's cold outside..." I should have got that in writing. We went to the Wild Things Gallerie which has a little coffee shop, but they had a soup buffet and the soup was amazing.

That night we had a great dinner and watched Kain, Shawn's son, open gifts. I do enjoy having a little one around for the holidays. We played a mean game of Sorry that night. Damn, that game takes a long time.

Christmas morning Santa forgot to report. Perhaps I am too old.

We went to church and oddly enough I felt almost overdressed in dress slacks and a sweater. ND is SO casual. The service was nice and my mom and I ran out to see her family one last time. Her mom's sister is moving from the house that they all grew up in. My mom, one of seven, will no longer have any siblings in Minot. It's kinda sad.

We had a great turkey dinner and I was very happy with all of my gifts. Good job shoppers!

That night, Sara, Dustin and Tara (Sara's friend) and I played "this or that," a game I had given Dustin. It was so FUN! We were up until after 1 a.m.

Monday a.m. I had breakfast with the Brunner's, family friends of Mom and Dad. I then met up for lunch with Amy. We went to the Pita Pit, a new restaurant in Minot. It was good! We then got a cookie at Cookies for You. I showed her Josh Duhamel's restaurant, but it like many other things on main street, was closed. Minot's downtown is cute, and I am glad to see new businesses there.

That night we went to the annual Pinkerton's family Christmas party. Per usual, it was a fantastic frenzy of food, friends, and fun. I gorged myself and caught up with the Pinkerton clan and some of other people I only see once a year there. It was a great time!

After the party, I made my one and only stop to a Minot bar with Sara, the Dakota Lounge, which has moved from the mall. I basically knew nobody except for the people Sara was meeting. It was good to catch up with a few people, but it was so smokey that I was litterally getting sick to my stomach.

Today, I am meeting Karissa for lunch and we are all going out to Sammy's for supper. I am glad I will be able to squeeze a Sammy's run in. Other than that, I need to just pack up and make sure I have everything. I leave tomorrow at 8:00 a.m.

PS
Because I know it can be hard to follow who people are on blogs, I thought I should make a key:

Sara, Shawn: 1st cousins, children of my dad's only brother
Amy: good high school friend who lives in LA right now
Gretchen: good friend, former Minotian, parents have moved but in Minot because married to Matt whose parent's are still here. Key player in the Minneapolis friend's group.
Smash: aka Ashley friend through Gretchen and Danny, finishing up her degree at Minot State and thinking about med school
Josh Duhamel: Minot's favorite son who currently stars in the TV show Las Vegas
Brunner's: family friends
Pinkerton's: family friends
Karissa: former debate partner, good friend, getting Ph.D. in Iowa

Holiday Pics

Out in front of the White House Christmas Tree.
Angela as Mrs. Claus(yes my skirt is a tree skirt from Target)
Ed as Santa Claus for the Horton's Kids Holiday Party

Office with a window--sorta

Guess who is getting a new cube? Me! Guess what it has? A window!!!

Next goal: a real office with a door

Check out NBC Nightly News Next Friday

Hi all,

This is a note from the someone who works with Horton's Kids (the group that ran the giving tree). Hopefully they will air it:

I am happy to report that our gift collection & distribution was a huge success today! Because of you, over 100 children in Wellington Park now have beautifully wrapped gifts under their Christmas trees!

I wish you could all have been there today to see the results of your overwhelming generosity, but at least you might able to catch the highlights, thanks to the magic of television! :) A news crew from NBC News joined us today, and will be featuring your good work on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams next Friday night (Dec. 23). If all goes according to plan, it will air at the very end of the broadcast, in their "Making a Difference" segment. I hope you can watch!

Happy holidays to all of you & thank you so very much again!!!!

The Christmas party was actually really fun. I won a $150 spa package. I am still not sure if it is spa items or a trip to the spa. I have to go pick it up today.

I coordinated the giving tree at work, so last night after work, Ed and I had to hauled the gifts to our car. It was more work than I bargained for; we had well over 50 gifts. Ed bought bags that were scented and the scent gave me a headache. It took a while getting everything into bags and by that time I was super hungry. We left to go have dinner, and I had the brilliant idea of taking the cart from the mailroom. That saved us about 10 trips. Anyway, we got them all in the car and then we got home and were reluctant to leave a car full of gifts on the street so we had to haul them all into the house. Again, the scented bags made my head hurt. This morning we had to haul them all back to the car. I don’t mean to sound bah humbug because it is totally worth it, but man alive coordinating is more work that you think.

I was tagged by eelk0008 to tell five interesting things about me:

Five interesting things about me:
1 I take baths—not showers—every morning. After I am done cleaning, I will just sit in the water for several minutes.
2 I ask every dog I see on the street if it knows Abby (my dog)
3 I am obsessed with the cards at the flea market at Easter Market and have a card box where I pull cards on an as-needed basis
4 I have all sorts of "funds" to save for things you want to do/buy
5 I usually never apply a bar of soap directly to my body. I first wipe it on my hand and then apply.

I tag:
Anna
Mandy
Cynthia
Danny
Natalie

WHO HOO for the furry boots

12-13-05
So my furry boots are a hit. The dog who lives a few doors down gave them a funny look this morning and then let out a woof. Near my office, a random women called out on the street “Girl, I love your boots!” Who knew $10 boots could be so fun?! They kept my tootsie warm too!

I forgot to mention we saw Rent the movie on Saturday. Has anyone seen it? I enjoyed it but thought it lacked some energy. I haven’t seen Rent on stage, but something was off. I am curious to see the Producers as a movie because I have seen that on stage. I am just interested to see if musicals can actually make good movies.

Tonight is the company Christmas party! Should be fun?! Did anyone watch the Office on NBC last Tuesday?! It was about their Christmas party…hysterical.

Good and Bad

We had a great and busy weekend! To recap:

Good Things:
I am coordinating the giving tree at work and decided that I should participate as well as “supervise”. Friday after work, we went and got gifts for them. Target was really quiet and not ransacked like the other Target we go to.
We found a better Target that is almost as close as the one we usually go to
Ed played Santa to Horton’s Kids on Sunday and I was Ms. Clause. I made a skirt out of tree skirt that I picked up at Target on Friday. I might ask Ed to post pictures
We worked out twice this weekend. This is no big deal for Ed, who has been a gym superstar. I have been a gym slacker so this is huge for me.
I only have 2 more gifts to buy for x-mas
I found a pair of furry boots for $10 at payless. I need some boots every once and while here, but didn’t want to spend a lot
We at Cici’s pizza buffet on Sunday for $6.28 including 2 buffets and 2 sodas with the buy one get one free coupon

Bad Things:
I tried to call Cynthia in London on Sunday a.m. but at first couldn’t get the card to work and then it kept saying the number was not valid
I did the stupidest thing on Sunday when cleaning the bathtub. I was hot so I changed out of my sweatshirt and put on this nice t-shirt that I love from the Banana Republic outlet. I got softscrub on the front—which unbeknownst to me at the time had bleach it in! I ruined the shirt and was severely bummed!
I cut the tree skirt wrong for my waste so it was short in the back and long in the front. It needs to have elastic as well.
We went to Panera to get a coffee, desert and check email on Sunday (Panera has free wifi). I got my coffee and cookie and switched out with Ed who had been on the computer. I turned the computer and started to type in a web address. I hadn’t even finished when the screen went completely blank. Odd. I check the cords and nothing changed. I called Ed over and he did a series of things to see what it could be—NOTHING. I swear I didn’t do anything wrong.
Cici’s was out of the dessert pizza L

Since it is almost the weekend, I thought I would finally blog about last weekend.

Friday night we went out to this great restaurant, La Belga, down the street from us. For a while it was the “hottest seat on 8th street” when it opened last summer. It was decently easy to get reservations now though. We met up with our friends Erica and Wilson. It was really great food—European fusion and they specialize in Mussels. YUM!

Saturday was quite the busy day. We got up and did some minor picking up and things like that. Then we had book club; we read The Life of Pi, which I really enjoyed though was slightly annoyed at the ending. The discussion was great and everyone was enjoyable. We are reading Blood Meridian next, which I guess is supposed to be a gory western (can you tell I was the only girl present this time at book club). I am excited to be exposed to different genres and authors. It is good to leave your comfort zone. Please send any good book club reads on to me—we are starting a list of suggestions.

After that we had a dinner club—wine and cheese at Tonya’s along with some modified trivial pursuit. It was fun and I ate too much!

After that, we—Ed Sarah and I--rallied and left to go out at 10 p.m. like we used to do when we were young!! We met up with my co-worker whose sister was in town. It was the sisters 21st b-day. There was a little excitement when we were pulling up into a parking space and this guy who was pulling out of the one in front of us backed into us (so we thought). He peeled out and whipped around the next corner. I think I would have been in too much shock to react, but Ed whipped after him. We were in this quasi-high speed chase until he finally pulled over. No damage, but something was up because he did NOT want to stop to see if he had caused damage. Anyway, we finally got to the club and it was pretty chi-chi except as the night went on we realized maybe the clientele was not quite as hip as the locale. My co-worker was more drunk than her sister and kept losing her balance. The pinnacle of this was when she face planted it into the coffee table and broke like 3 glasses. She was fine so it was funny. It’s been a while since I have been around such crazy drunkenness—but it was fun. I played the role of the wing-woman for Sarah which was weird because Ed to have disappear for a bit. I felt like I was being a little deceptive, but I guess that is how the game is played. I then kind of left the group and left Sarah to chatting. I guess the guy Sarah was talking to commented that I am really into “that guy” (aka Ed). Um, yeah…you could say that. It was funny.

So we got home wicked late, but it was fun. Good to get out and be young and stupid, ya know? Needless to say, we slept in the next day and then resumed adult-hood: got groceries, did some x-mas shopping, etc. I started getting a cold which I had all day on Monday.

Monday was jury duty as you will recall from an earlier post. I didn’t get called and spent all day bored sitting in a room. If I had felt well, it would have been a great time to catch up on reading, but I didn’t so I was basically miserable. We got left out at 2 p.m. though, so that was sweet. I did NOT go back to work.

Does anyone watch the office on NBC? Erica recommended it to me so I watched it Tuesday night. SO FUNNY! It is produced kind of like Curb your Enthusiasm on NBC, but I think the content is funnier.

Last night Ed had Lions Club where we was the acting President because the current president is in the hospital. The old ladies are getting REALLY old. One of them commented to Ed that “we are all dying off.” For those of you who don’t know, Ed is in a Lion’s club with 20 or so women and the median age is about 85. He is the only male and the only one under 75.

Stinky Fridge Culprit Finally Found

So our fridge has stunk since we got back from Europe. I did a cursorily throw-out before we left, and in my opinion, did a decent job.

When we got back, it stunk a little at the time. I did some digging and found a rotten pear that had been pushed to the back of the fridge and amazingly wedged itself between the back of the fridge and the shelf. I thought "problem solved"--that was Monday night.

Tuesday the fridge still stunk. I threw out ANYTHING dairy or remotely old looking, but none of it smelled.

Wednesday, I walked into the apartment and could smell it the minute I came in--pungent!! What the? We began to wonder if something had fallen behind the fridge (like a piece of fruit that had been on the top). We smelled everything: the sink, the garbages etc. Nothing. It was a puzzler. We thought it could maybe be residual smell from earlier? It seemed too strong for that...

Thursday Ed cleaned (as in scrubbed the entire fridge) before I got home from work. He found the culprit--a hunk of French cheese we had bought on Sunday for our dinner club this weekend and didn't expire until 12/10. It stunk something nasty, though. I wondered if it is one of those "stinky cheeses," but Ed's opinion was that it was rotten.

Moral of the story: both old and new food can stink up your fridge.