Voice Mail Archives

The best part about it being New Year's Day, besides being one of a handful of people on the planet not hungover today, is that we can all go back to normal now. Thank god, the holidays are now, finally, behind us.

I hope everyone else had a holiday weekend as mellow and nice as mine was. It's amazing how peaceful life can be when you give in to your basic misanthropic feelings, pull the shades, and turn off the phone.

Last minute shopping. Why?!

The Grinch has apparently stolen all the Christmas trees, this time before they even got into people's houses, hung and strung and jammed underneath with presents. Good thing I don't have room for a tree in my wee cottage anyway.

Last week I spent a couple of pleasant evenings working on a scarf for a friend of mine, made out of soft, furry purple angora-blend yarn and some silver iridescent eyelash yarn. Sounds like a fright, you say? Correct.

I gave myself an early Christmas present yesterday and bought a membership at the Y. I've been dying to start swimming laps again, something I did a bit obsessively in college. I am generally obsessive about all that I do, really. And the thing that was killing me was that I had a relatively new racing suit languishing in my sock drawer at home, having bought it a few years ago on a whim. And I also still own a very nice, rather expensive pair of goggles with prescription lenses in them, so that I don't bump into the sides of the pool, as I am blind as the proverbial moonbat without my contacts or glasses.

I was at the store the other day getting my daily fix of this tasty beverage and not much else, maybe a magazine. Two 2-liter bottles and a magazine. It was after the dinner hour, so the place was pretty deserted, but it wasn't so late that they had already closed down the self-serve registers, so I headed for the nearest one of those so I could zip in and zip out.

I have spent WAY too much on yarn and needles since I took up knitting a couple of months ago, but because it's the holiday season I am able to justify it all as "gift expenses." As if I ever spend this much money on anyone I'm not currently sleeping with. Or hoping to. Wait, I'm married. Never mind that last bit.

I grew up in a crumbling old Victorian house, in a neighborhood of crumbling old Victorian houses. At the time, ours was no more falling-down that the rest -- this was the seventies and none of the families had the wherewithal to gentrify anything yet, least of all this gang of old sea captains' houses clustered around the cove. But the house that the Cross family lived in was particularly nice.

Man, I have tried five times to write about something other than work tonight and each and every story turns into a work story, so I delete it and start over. It's all good, they're happy, funny stories, and I love my work, but I'm pretty tetchy about discussing work too specifically here.