Corner of Bourbon & Division

I've kind of spent the last year coasting along. I'm not especially pleased with myself for this.

So I'm working on a plan to be a more active participant in my own life next year. A little less, or maybe a whole lot less, passive when it comes to the important things in life: family, friends, and my home and professional life too.

I'm actually foreseeing a pretty major overhaul in a lot of ways. I hope I can make it work.

With the exception of last year, December/January is usually when the nesting/revamp my life bug hits me the hardest. It's partly to do with the New Year, but it also coincides with my birthday, which generally makes me want to re-evaluate things.

In only slightly-related news, the permanent positions at work are tentatively meant to open up on January 5th, which, coincidentally, is also my birthday. Sounds auspicious enough to me.

I've been too busy to post. I keep telling myself that I should write posts in here that aren't "here's what I did while I wasn't posting" entries, but I never seem to get around to writing those meaningful, insightful entries. I rather think that I don't have any to write. I've lost the knack of writing analytical text ever since I left university. Besides, I don't know that I'd want to inflict my essay-writing skills on my beleaguered flist, as I seem to recall that I bored myself silly with my own academic writing. I remembered wondering who would ever want to read such dry stuff as I was able to produce. It's not that it wasn't good —it was just really, really dry going.

Anyway, I've had a busy couple of weeks.
I saw an old friend of mine from high school last Saturday, although we didn't have much time to actually catch up as he had to go back to his office right after lunch (he's a lawyer). We did have a nice chat, and wandered through Atwater Market before he had to go, and it was really nice to see him again. Of all my friends in high school (of which there admittedly weren't many), he was the one with whom I got along the best. We're supposed to meet up again at some point in the near future, which ought to be nice. After that I got treated to a lovely private concert in the living room of some family friends, and spent the afternoon and better part of the evening making slightly awkward small talk with three roomfuls of people I didn't know and with whom I had nothing in common. Still, the concert was quite nice. The violinist was a young man, somewhere between nineteen and twenty-one, and he's quite promising. His playing was very adept, although it lacked depth and intonation, but with time I'm guessing he'll turn out quite well.

Sunday was spent hiding from the world recovering from that stupid migraine which started late on Saturday. Annoying in the extreme, as it was a gorgeous day out.

Monday was a writing jam with owldaughter, in which I got more writing done in one morning than I had in the past four weeks combined. I'm finally getting back into my ongoing YA novel, and I'd like to have it finished by the end of the year. I might "cheat" and make finishing it my NaNoWriMo project for this year. Either that or I'll write another horror novel, since they appear to write themselves for me.

I forget what I did on Tuesday, but I do remember that I had to be out of the house stupidly early to do it. That's probably why I don't remember: I was still half-asleep. ;)

I met up with ai731 on Wednesday morning, and she taught me the mysteries of canning. It's a really fun process, I assume more fun because there were two of us. We went through about three-quarters of the 20lb bag of apples I'd picked, and made apple sauce, apple butter (so very yummmy!) and an apple cake based on her grandmother's recipe, which was so very very delicious that I brought it to work with me so that I wouldn't be tempted to eat the entire thing by myself. I brought half to work, and ai731 kept the other half, naturally. I had to abandon ship just before the end of the session, as I had to go to work, and I just received the last three jars of apple sauce last night. I am very pleased with how the whole thing turned out.

Thursday was spent driving my mother around so she could get some errands done without spending the whole day doing it. Since she doesn't drive, and generally gets around pretty slowly anyway, it's easier for her if I occasionally spend a morning driving her around, and I don't mind doing it in the slightest. I tend to lose my mind if I spend too much time with my parents, but a couple of times a week is enough for me to keep my sanity.

Friday's Ubisoft lunch got canceled for me due to the (not unexpected) passing of my great-aunt Margot at the age of 93. I have very fond memories of her, and of going to her apartment in the Linton for a New Year's Day luncheon every year until I was about eight or nine. After that she moved to a smaller place (I believe it was a residence for relatively independent retired folk who only needed minimal amounts of help to get through the day), and she became a little too frail to be able to put on the spread she really wanted to. None of her three daughters ever kept up with the tradition, and so I sort of lost track of her for a while. We still saw her at the larger family gatherings, but it wasn't really the same.

The funeral itself was interrupted when my cousin Ophelie (the youngest of all the cousins, and one of the two cousins near my age with whom I actually keep up and get along) suffered some kind of seizure or syncope in the middle of the service. She was sitting right next to my father, and the next thing we knew she had turned a horrid shade of green, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she slumped forward. Luckily my aunt (not Ophelie's mother, but another aunt) is a nurse and took over immediately. I was rather grateful not to have to step in and apply my limited first aid skills to the situation. Someone produced a cell phone (a blackberry, I think) and called 911. I spent most of the time keeping people from crowding around, and reassuring people that no, it wasn't taking as long as they thought for the ambulance to get there. I timed it, see, and it took nine minutes from the moment the call was placed to the time the paramedics got there. In times of crisis, people's perception of how quickly time elapses gets seriously distorted.

My mother spoke to my cousin yesterday, as well as my aunt. Ophelie is doing okay, as it turns out, but she's going to have to see a neurologist, as her symptoms were quite alarming (swelling in the throat, stiffening of the extremities, extremely elevated heartrate, etc.). My mother, in true keeping with her nature, has invited her to dinner next Sunday.

After the funeral I took my mother to Juliette & Chocolat for lunch. Egads, it should be illegal to make chocolate that good. I have rarely had anything quite that sinful. I must go back.

Yesterday I got shanghaied by my parents into helping them shop for appliances. God help me. The less said about that, the better. The day improved immeasurably by the time I got to luvenditti's for dinner, and had a wonderful time with all my friends, chatting about movies and books and games and food and all the usual things we end up talking about at these events. I borrowed the movie "Clue" and watched it last night: it's a great deal of fun.

All right, the rest of my day beckons. More updates when I have something to say. ;)

This whole getting-up-really-early thing is starting to wear on me a bit. The excitement of the first week has worn off, and so now I have in front of me a slightly uphill slog to get used to getting up at Oh-My-God!o'clock.

Today wasn't so bad. Set the alarm for 5am and managed to haul myself out of bed at 5:20.

I made bran muffins. They are in the oven now. I'm following karine's recipe, but I realised a little too late that I have no baking powder, so I'm hoping they'll still turn out okay.

Thank goodness for the fact that ashforestwalker is giving me a lift to work today. Otherwise, there would be no muffins and I would as of right now be running exceedingly late. If I'm taking the bus to work then I have to be outta here by 6:20 at the very latest. As it is, when I get a lift, I can laze around for a whole extra 40 minutes. Long enough, in fact, to make muffins.

Okay. I have to go prepare my sandwich and finish getting dressed. Oh, and take my vitamins. I forgot yesterday.

Have a good one, folks!

I swear I'm going to bed.

However, I needed to make this GIP to brag about all the good stuff I got done tonight. Lots and lots of bogganing got accomplished.

Okay, so I didn't finish washing the floors the way I intended, but I got lots of cooking done. I even made a loaf of banana bread. I'm vaguely concerned that it's underdone, as it stuck to the metallic thingie I used to test it, but I don't dare cook it longer, as it's already stayed in the oven ten minutes longer than the longest time allowed by the recipe.

I'm going to test it out on toughlovemuse tomorrow when she comes here for our writing jam.

I also made shepherd's pie. I think it turned out well, though we won't know until we try it tomorrow. I nearly made a hash of that as well, because I overestimated the size of my pot and nearly made everything overflow. However, I saved it from an ignominious death, and, like I said, I think it's turned out well.

This is a multipurpose GIP post. I'm going to use it for commenting on B12, too, whenever that starts up again. It appeals to my sense of irony. Or something.

Tomorrow I shall was the floors before toughlovemuse shows up and clean out the litter boxes. I made another icon for cleaning stuff. I shall post another GIP in a moment to show it off.

Whee! Bed soon.