I got home from Cali on Sunday night. I still have a lot of entries to write and backdate, so stay tuned for that. Boy, it was easy to forget I even had a job. I'm really good at completely letting go while traveling. That's both an advantage in aiding in true, stress-free relaxation, and a disadvantage when it's over. Coming home is kind of deflating.

Anyway, one of my oldest friends got married in a hip, stylish, 1950s wedding poolside at the retro Del Marcos Hotel. I wore my fabulous new dress (photos to follow when I eventually get my act together on Flickr) and had an awesome time.

The newlyweds, Elizabeth and Micah, are now honeymooning indefinitely in their 1958 Yellowstone trailer, Pixel Dust, complete with original appliances and furnishings. Did I mention Liz is heavily into the 1950s? They are mapping and blogging their adventure, so check it out: Pixel Dust Post.

Tonight I encountered someone who harmonizes with songs freestyle in the exact same way I do. That has never happened before in my life. It's impossible to explain what I mean in words, but believe me that it was a decidedly eerie experience.

Said singing occurred at Scrap Mania, where I went with Heidi after work. It was a frugal evening -- I spent a grand total of $0.51. OK, not including the $15 I paid Heidi back for signing us up.

8 hours of work + 6 hours of scrapbooking = one tired girl. 'Night.

Jonas got his car back today, and it looks PERFECT. I only got to see it in the dark, so I'll have to take a closer look during daytime, but it looks like they did a great job. You would hardly know any work was done at all on it! He is super-thrilled to have it back, of course. The rental was a Dodge Neon which, despite being a new car, was awfully clunky to drive. It even sounded clunky when accelerating -- like it was struggling. I guess that's why they're relatively inexpensive.

He surprised me by showing up at the library about 15 minutes before close (9:00) and starting my car so that it would be toasty when it was time for me to leave. I followed him home and he picked up some Culver's while I stopped to get gas and clean my windshield. My wiper fluid dispenser leaks like a sieve, so I pretty much have no cleaning function with my wipers. Every few days, especially with the messy winter we've had so far, I have to pop into a gas station and clean them manually. We met at home and had dinner while watching some Just Shoot Me reruns. Why did they cancel that show, anyway? I thought it was great.

Tomorrow night I need to head straight home at 5:00 and do some rapid tidying up before Liz arrives at 6:00 to get the official New House Tour. This is the first time I'll have seen Liz in at least a year since I missed her last time she was up from Texas. She just got a new job, too. So once she sees the house we'll head back to Eden Prairie to meet up with Heidi and Steve, and Jonas when he arrives, for dinner (I think at Hops). After that, if we can get a lane among all the leaguers, we'll do some bowling. It should be a fun time! Jonas actually went bowling yesterday with his boss and co-workers and got a 156, his new best! I'm still at 148.

Wednesday should be nice and quiet. Even though it's Christmas Eve, it turned out that we have no plans with anyone. It will be lovely to just be cozy with ourselves. Maybe we'll do a cheese, olives and wine night? As long as we don't make it too expensive an evening -- some of those cheeses are really expensive!! We bought a fol epi last time that was at least $12 for what amounted to only about one cup of cheese. It was good, though! I wouldn't mind doing an assortment of what have been our favorites so far. I know my #1 would be a big, glistening hunk of Asiago. *drool* OK, now I'm just making myself hungry.

Yay! I've finished both calendars! The 7x7 turned out so great, I can't wait to give it to Jonas. It turned out that the reduction in size counterbalanced the fact that I was making a copy of a copy. It is very cute. My own, larger one also looks great -- I am looking forward to hanging it up at work. Right now I don't have any personal items in my work area.

Dad got his steaks yesterday. Apparently he didn't notice them on the step when he got home from work, but Maddie found them around 11pm and started barking to let Dad know to come outside. I just hope they were still frozen! They must pack them pretty well if they are going to endure 3 days of shipping in the first place, but I'll call him tonight to make sure.

Gwendolyn is here! Jonas picked him up at the airport last night when I was at ScrapMania, then they met me when I was done at 11:00pm and we went to grab some food at Champps. Smoky place! I had some delicious but undoubtedly unhealthy cheesecake with berries. Yum. Just after midnight we headed home -- I had to work today, remember! I had thought that the air-bed sprung a leak because about 30 minutes after I inflated it, it was deflated again. Jonas cleverly pointed out that it has two "out" valves, and one of them was still open. So it wasn't leaking after all! Whew. We showed Gwendolyn the house and fixed up his bed and stuff. I went to bed right away after that, but I think they stayed up for a while.

I don't know what's going on tonight. Gwendolyn went visiting today with some other people he knows in the area.

The meteorologists have been saying all week that we're going to get dumped on this weekend. I am looking outside every few minutes, but so far I don't see anything!! A little while ago some tiny, tiny bits of snow or rain were falling, but that stopped. I would be thrilled to get a foot of snow -- it seems like it's been ages since we've had a real, heavy, snowblower-worthy snowstorm. We don't even have a snowblower, but I'd look forward to shoveling at this point. A few hours earlier it occurred to me that we had not yet bought a shovel, so I called Jonas and mentioned that he might pick one up today while he was out. Unfortunately, I'm so excited about the impending snow that it probably won't even happen, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Last night Heidi, Steve and Emily came over for dinner (well, Emily brought her own dinner, being just 14 months old!). It was an educational experience to spend several hours with a toddler, I have to admit. Probably a good thing for us as we are getting to the point of thinking about having kids. Emily was great. She surprised me by the extent to which she is able to happily play and entertain herself. Toward the end of the evening she was a bit put out at having to go in her crib, and she was slightly miffed at not being able to climb the stairs all night, but she seemed to have a good time otherwise. :) We got to play a little Trivial Pursuit, but it got late pretty quickly and we quit the game probably around 10pm (before I got any pie pieces, I might add, although Jonas had three!).

Jonas made plankstek, and it was sooooo delicious!! Can't tell from the picture what it is? Plankstek is the quintessential contemporary Swedish dish, consisting of a nice cut of beef (filet mignon works great), mashed potatoes (squeezed out in a lovely design by a cake decorating kit), a few stalks of asparagus, a tomato half, all topped with yummy béarnaise sauce and served decoratively on a large plank of wood. I could eat it every day -- béarnaise is heavenly.

Our vacuum finally got fixed, so I could actually do the floors before company arrived. Three cheers for the Best Buy 4-Year Service Plan!

NannyMUD's Gwendolyn is coming to visit next weekend. He's (yes, he) arriving Friday night around 9:30pm and flying out again Monday evening. I've got scrapbooking with Heidi on Friday, but I'm done at 11:00pm and if Jonas has collected Gwen by then we can all maybe go out for food or drinks or something. I do work the next morning, however, so we can't have too much fun!

I missed the recycling guy this morning. Grrr. By the time I remembered to put it out I noticed all the neighbors' bins were already emptied. That sucks because our bin was full this time. I was in time for the garbage still, so I wheeled that baby out before I left.

Jonas is sick again today, so he stayed home. I told him it's because he hasn't been dressing properly for the cold. He has some bizarre theory that if he doesn't wear his coat now when it's just starting to get cold, the more severe cold later in the season won't bother him as much. Now maybe there is something to that psychologically, but on the other hand it seems to me he's just allowing himself to be more susceptible to getting sick. Not really much of a tradeoff if you ask me.

I've invited Heidi and Steve over for dinner on Saturday night. I'm going to try to get Jonas to make plankstek. It's been a year or so since he's done that, and it's really yummy. Makes me hungry right now just thinking about it. Our house isn't really babyproofed, but we don't have a lot of small stuff lying around as it is, so hopefully Emily will be fine.

I'm going to swing by Target again on my way home in a second attempt to retrieve the reprints for Georgia. They'd better be in today! Grrr.

After our banking adventures early in the day, we drove out to Rockford, where Becky, one of Jonas' co-workers, was having a crayfish party. They'd had three huge boxes of pre-cooked, pre-seasoned Cajun crayfish shipped up from New Orleans, and a lot of people brought other kinds of Cajun dishes to add to the menu. It was pretty fun to meet many of the co-workers and their wives, especially to be able to put names to the faces I've heard stories about. I did not eat any crayfish, but I have to say that Jonas certainly had his share! He must have eaten about forty. He said they weren't as good as the dill-soaked crayfish they make in Sweden, but they must have been at least somewhat acceptable! I've had crayfish just once, in Sweden, and one bite to try it was enough. It wasn't so much the taste as its appearance that I have a hard time stomaching. I like my food to NOT still look like a creature that used to be living.

Becky's parents were also in attendance, having brought along their team of draft mules and wagon, and so there were wagon rides around the neighborhood. The funny part was the reaction of the neighbors -- it wasn't exactly a rural neighborhood -- upon seeing a team of mules drawing a wooden wagon filled with partiers down their residential street. We just smiled and waved, and the mules left occasional deposits in the street.

We stayed at the party for about three hours or so, then said our goodbyes and thankyous and headed home. I did six loads of laundry late into the evening, thinking it may be possible to not do laundry again until we're moved into the house with our own brand spanking new washer and dryer. I also spent some time tidying up the place, and felt good. Jonas and I watched an episode of America's Test Kitchen, which was about guacamole, fajitas and margaritas. Once again we both felt inspired to cook, but a look at our sucky kitchen in this apartment squelched that fairly quickly. God, I can't wait to use my new, huge kitchen with more cupboards than I could ever fill, brand new appliances and my beautiful center island! Still 10 more days ...

Today I've been married four whole years! Yay, us!

Sounds kind of corny, but there isn't much I would change. It's been a great ride so far! We went out last Saturday night and considered that our anniversary celebration, but decided to pick up D'Amico takeout tonight as well. While eating picnic-style we watched parts 2 and 3 of Pioneer Quest on PBS, then finished up the last 50 or so minutes of The Pianist. Unfortunately, my evening has been somewhat spoiled by a lingering headache, despite Excedrin.

Went out to the house this afternoon to show Heidi around. She'd just picked Emily up from daycare so she brought her along. She is cute as the proverbial button -- 9 months old already! She's learned to click her tongue -- very endearing. :)

And on the house: The doorbell is in place, but nothing happens yet when you ring it (I tried). Light fixtures are up in the foyer, dining room, kitchen and two of the bathrooms. They've fixed the vinyl that was mixed-up last week. The carpet is due to be laid tomorrow, so it was sitting in rolls in the livingroom today. Exciting! We still have 4 weeks (exactly!) left to go, but it seems like they're practically done! I guess the last few weeks will be fine-tuning.

Off to read. Very soon I will backdate some entries I haven't had time to write but for which I have been keeping copious notes on various bits of scratch paper.

Currently reading at home: The Fiery Cross (Diana Gabaldon)
Currently reading at work: Midwives (Chris Bohjalian)

I've got a bit of a headache at the moment, but wanted to write at least something for today.

I woke up about 10:30am and tried to rouse Jonas, who just mumbled and turned over. I reminded him that last night he said he'd get up whenever I got up, but no answer. I wandered off to the computer room for a half hour then went in again to drag him out of bed. It was turning out to be a gorgeous day, and we were not going to waste it!

When we finally got going, we headed out to Cleary Lake park in Prior Lake. They've got a 3.5 mi loop of biking/hiking trail, and it's relatively flat most of the way so excellent for skating as well. I wore the heart rate belt today and had a terrible time staying in my "zone" (the rate at which you burn the most stored fat, instead of burning what you just ate). Having gotten out of shape over the winter I kept going above and having the damn thing beep at me all the time. We did the loop twice, so 7 miles. Not too bad, it felt great to be out in the sun -- I think I got some color in my arms too. One cute thing -- while skating we passed a woolly bear trying to cross the trail. I circled around, picked it up and deposited it on the other side. There was so much bike, rollerblade and pedestrian traffic out there today I was afraid it'd get run over.

After heading home to shower and make ourselves more presentable, we headed over to Heidi & Steve's for an Indy BBQ. I brought a couple of cute baby books for Emily -- she's a cutie. I hadn't seen her since around Christmas, and now she is about 8 months old, sitting up and playing by herself, and babbling away in her own private language like there's no tomorrow!

Kris and Ron are in town this weekend, so tomorrow we're all heading to Dad's for some more grilling, then off to the cemetery in St. Anthony to visit our Van Zanten ancestors.

Currently reading at home: Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon
Currently reading at work: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Woohoo, finally it's weekend.

Work was relatively un-noteworthy, just a regular day. For dinner Jonas and I picked up Leonardo's Florentine. Soooooo yummy. Munched on that while watching TV, then spent the rest of the night putzing at the computers -- Jonas playing games and I surfing and spodding.

Speaking of spodding, we had a rolicking mini reunion on Cut this evening. Somehow at least 10 of the old Ohio fest/Lakeside crowd all managed to be online around the same time. God, it was hilarious -- really felt just like old times. Everyone so far thinks a real-life reunion is a fantastic idea, so it will just be a matter of when and where.

Thinking of getting my webcam working again. Took it down about a year ago for some reason. I guess I got bored with it, but I sort of feel like putting it up again now. We'll see if that happens this weekend. Jonas would have to mess with it.

Watched Law & Order later in the evening, and we actually went to bed at a fairly decent time for a Friday night. The other day we decided we really needed to regulate our sleeping habits better (i.e. no staying up really late and then sleeping in late on weekends). It's going to be hard -- I love to sleep myself out on Saturday and Sunday mornings!

Back in the fall of 1995, a bunch of of spods decided to get together for a meet over the long Thanksgiving weekend, and so in Columbus, Ohio we all converged.

Attendees included Cliffy, Vlad, Hypo, Mona, Chrisi, Hazard, Puma, Essexlad, Badguy, Quartz, Twit, Cat, Woodenspoon, Elena, Swissmiss, Pinkie, Ryner, Brina and Teela (who generously offered to host and put everyone up in her home). (A side trip to West Virginia was also made by some of the spods to visit Bethiah.)

Just recently several of us have bumped into one another, mostly by accident, at one of several talkers. (What is a talker? See my last entry.) The idea of a reunion meet for all the participants back then is being tossed around. Of course, we're all almost 8 years older now, and many of us have married, had children, etc., and it would undoubtedly be impossible for everyone to attend whether for familial, financial, or other reasons, but it's maybe worth looking into in order to gauge interest.

The most amazing thing is when I mentioned it to Jonas (this was all before we'd ever met), he thought it a great idea, as long as he didn't have to be there. *smirk* He was also unopposed when I mentioned the the idea of hosting it at our place. Wow! :) Really wasn't expecting that. Of course, the entire idea is still in its infancy, so I don't want to get too worked up, but seeing everyone again would be an incredibly fun thing to look forward to.

Pretty quiet day today. Jonas has been studying and I've been bouncing around online. We just had roast beef, potatoes, beans and half a cookie each for dinner.

25 days! Yay! But it's taking FOREVER. *sigh*

Well, the good news is I am making good progress on John Adams. 2 days until book group and I have about 200 pages to go. I know, it seems like a lot, but I've been pushing hard and have done about 200 pages in the last 2 days alone. So even if I don't finish all the way, I'll be close enough to done to have formed a pretty good opinion of it for discussion purposes. And it's not actually due back until Saturday.

Up there I've made it sound like there's bad news to come, although there isn't. Not that I can think of, anyway. Tomorrow after work I'm meeting Sonja, one of my former roommates, for dinner at Punch (which, by the way, is an excellent new pizza joint opened not too long ago here in town). I haven't seen her for at least a year so it will be fun to catch up a little.

A few weeks ago while cleaning I came across some "travel logs" that my friends and I made back in high school on a couple of our baseball roadtrips. In 1992 we went to Milwaukee, 1993 was Chicago, and 1994 was Kansas City. The log from Milwaukee appears to have disappeared to the Great Outfield in the Sky, but I found the ones from Chicago and Kansas City. I typed them up and sent them on to Liz and Heidi and they appeared to have gotten a big kick out of seeing them again, judging from their replies this morning. Then Heidi suggested that we do a sort of reunion roadtrip sometime (after all, it's now 10 years since Milwaukee!!! -- hard to believe). It would be awesome if we could do that, maybe next summer -- another baseball roadtrip, just for us girls!

After spending the morning lazing around, we finally went out in search of (finally!) new winter boots for me. First we went to REI, a sporting goods store, who didn't carry the one I'd had my eye on, so we went to Galyans, another sporting goods store. They carried the correct brand and style but were completely out of my size and one of the salesclerks suggested we try Nordstroms at the Mall of America.

Hahaha. Little did we know that everyone and their uncle was going to the Mall today. We easily spent a half hour in traffic just waiting to get into the parking ramp and Jonas was getting really pissed. Eventually, we did manage to secure a parking spot and ran into Nordstroms. Miraculously, they did carry the boots I wanted and I tried them on and then wore them out of the store! :)

I still needed a winter coat, so we headed to a place I thought would have a lot of coats, Burlington Coat Factory up in St. Louis Park. I'd been there once when I was little and either I remembered it incorrectly or it has changed a lot -- this place was a dump! We took one quick stroll around and then headed right out the door. They had a lot of clothes, but the whole place was trashy. So no new coat today.

We headed home to relax for a few hours before heading over to Heidi and Steve's house for a small party. They were having just an after-the-holidays party with some friends and to perhaps play games. We seemed to be the only ones who brought a game, so we all ended up playing Trivial Pursuit again. It was pretty fun. Since Steve was a year ahead of Heidi and me in high school, some of his friends are people I'm familiar with but never really knew, so that's fun. It ended up being a much crazier game of TP than we'd played last night with alcohol added and some interesting variations on the standard rules, but I had a good time. I was even winning in the end, until someone decided we'd been playing for ages and needed an "elimination round." Haha. :P~ A little while after the game had ended Jonas and I decided to head home for the night.

Well now. I'm writing this several days behind so I may forget something that happened.

My friend Kristina had called last night to see if Jonas and I wanted to get together for dinner with her and her boyfriend Chuck, so we decided on tonight. I had to work all day, so when I got home I quick did some tidying up of the apartment as we were going to meet here before deciding on where to go to eat.

They arrived a little before 6pm and we decided to head to the Green Mill restaurant here in town. It was really fun to see them again. Kristina is a really old friend from elementary school and Chuck is a guy she'd met online 6 years ago and they were even engaged at some point but had broken up. Now they've gotten back together again and seem quite happy. He's visiting for a week over the holidays from England. I'd met Chuck 5 years ago when he was visiting her in Madison so it was a second meeting for me too. I had a calzone and Jonas had one of their specialty pizzas.

We invited them back to our place afterwards and we played Trivial Pursuit. Jonas and I ended up battling to land on the center space first, but he eventually did and answered the question correctly and won. I really love that game. :) The game ended pretty late and afterward they headed back home, where Kristina lives with her parents in Maplewood.

Well, after much anticipation (and whining!) Jonas' new computer finally arrived today. I was talking to him online when the delivery guy called up to the apartment from the lobby and then when I told him it had come he was so excited he came home on his lunchbreak to open it up. Then he even decided to take it back to work with him so he could play with it for the rest of the day. Silly boy.

While I was doing laundry Heidi called and said Liz was in town for the holidays and wondered if Jonas and I wanted to get together for dinner with them and Steve. Sounded great to me, but I mentioned that it might be tough to peel Jonas away from his new machine. :) Nah, he had no problem going, and we all went to Chevy's, a local Tex-Mex style restaurant. Everything was really good; Jonas and I both ordered steak quesadillas. It was so great to see Liz again since she's living in Texas (designing for Fossil watches) now. She had a lot of funny stories to tell us, it was hilarious. I had a fabulous time and I'm pretty sure Jonas had a great time himself, even if he would rather have been home playing with his new toy, haha!

We got to meet Mortis and Yaleah today. Mortis is some guy from the UK who is over visiting Yaleah, a girl in Iowa. It was supposed to be a big get-together with a lot of the Minnesota mudders, and Yaleah had mailed us all to meet at Khan's Mongolian Barbecue. Then Thaadd mailed everyone and said she's a vegetarian and didn't want to eat there. So Yaleah ended up mailing everyone again that we would now be meeting at The Good Earth, a vegetarian-friendly restaurant in Edina's Galleria. We showed up at 2pm and it was just Yaleah, her husband, their friend Jake and Mortis there so far. We stood around chit-chatting for a little while and then Lonewolf and Thaadd showed up. Ethel, her boyfriend and Beldin also came so we were 11, which caused the restaurant some distress in trying to seat us all. It turned out OK, and we all fit and had a pretty nice time. While I thought the restaurant was kind of fun, I sort of lost my apetite as far as my own meal was concerned. I ordered chicken quesadillas. When it arrived, I spotted a black hair in my food. I could handle this, so I picked it off. Then I spotted a piece of fuzz/lint right smack in the middle of my sour cream. Now I was slightly annoyed, but still OK to eat. Then about halfway through my meal I bit into a fairly large (as far as I was concerned) chicken bone and that was the end of it for me. Since everyone else was raving about this place I guess I just had some bad luck.

The rest of the group was all planning to go out to the bars in the evening, but we weren't really interested. After we left we stopped over to Macy's and picked Jonas up some winter boots. Then we just came home and played games the rest of the night.

Worked all day until 5. Earlier in the morning I was feeling kind of strange. My right arm was aching around my elbow and my feet were aching, although I'd not been on them that long as it was only about 11am. To top it off I felt completely exhausted in my body. I don't know what it was, I felt like I must be coming down with something, but after I went to lunch and ate I felt better the rest of the day.

Jonas got home a few minutes after I did, after stopping at Best Buy to pick up a microphone. We considered going out to eat and I let him decide where, so he chose Cattle Company. I called up and made reservations for 5:45 (in 15 minutes) and we were off. We both had the New York strip dinner with potato soup to start with. That soup is soooooooo good!! I've never had a better bowl of soup in my entire life. I'd almost consider going there for just their soup! Well, the rest of the meal wasn't that hot. We both thought our cut of meat was of poor quality. I know mine didn't taste that great, either. It was the same thing I got last time we went there in July when it was delicious, but today it sucked. I don't know.

We went home and Jonas went in and took a short nap to gear up for his intended night of gaming. I putzed around at my computer until I went in to wake him up at 9pm, at which time he decided to call Gurk using his new microphone. It was with the same site I mentioned the other day, the one that Gurk called up here with. Jonas really likes it too, now. So they babbled on for an hour or so, and I have to say it was pretty damn funny to watch Jonas sit there, staring at and speaking animatedly to the microphone. Jonas plans to call his mom with it tomorrow, but I suspect she may not be too fond of the lower quality in talking that way.

I went to bed fairly early, it was about 10:30pm when I went in to read and I only got to read about a half hour before I was too tired to continue. I woke up at one point about 3am and Jonas still hadn't gone to bed yet.

Book group this morning at noon for Catch-22. Since I'd actually read the book this time the discussion was a lot more fun than the first time. I was relieved to find out that nearly everyone had the same frustrations with it that I did, namely with so many of the scenes being absolutely absurd. Once I could accept and get past it, it was a lot easier to concentrate on the rest of the book. Selection for next month is The Christmas Memory (Truman Capote).

After the meeting I went to check out PO Box and had a penpal letter waiting for me. Then I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things. Since our milk went bad from our stupid fridge going wacko I bought new milk, but in a smaller container in case it goes bad again. Then I got home and started on the laundry. Whoopee.

Evening now and I just watched a 'lost and found' show on the History Channel. Still doing laundry, yawn. Later.

Haha. I saw Gurk on NannyMUD and he was talking about this site where with just your computer speakers and microphone you can call long-distance for no cost other than what you're paying to be online anyway. So he called up and we chatted for like 15 minutes, it was fun. He's going to call again sometime this weekend when Jonas is home.

By the way! Gurk (ok, maybe I should start calling him Andreas, since that's his NAME!). Andreas and his wife Camilla are expecting a baby next May! Woohoo!

I went into work at 8:30 and intending to go have lunch with Jonas before he left (he's leaving tonight for Sweden and returning Monday night), so I asked Katie if it would be all right for me to take an extra hour at lunch if I were to work an extra hour longer in the evening (until 6). She said it was OK, so I called Jonas and we made plans. At noon he picked me up and we headed to The Lion's Tap for burgers, only after we had ordered and while we were waiting for our food I realized I had made plans to meet Heidi at Applebee's at 5:30!! Stupid planning! As a result I was stressed out during the meal and didn't really get to enjoy it that much, although the burgers were delicious as usual. After we finished eating we quickly stopped back at our apartment and I tried reaching Heidi on her cell phone. She didn't answer, so I tried emailing her and asked if it was OK to meet at 6 instead, hoping she'd call me back at work sometime during the day so I'd know if she'd gotten the message. Thankfully(!!), she called me at work about an hour later and said it was just fine to meet a little later (even better for her, in fact), so everything turned out OK. Whew.

After work I walked over to Applebee's and a little while later she arrived and we had a pleasant dinner. She had the cheesesteak and I had some chicken fajita wraps. It was really nice to get together and catch up, just the two of us. At first it was a little bit awkward since we've been a little bit out of touch over the years, but we found lots of things to talk about, the first of which was all the goddamn election crap. After dinner I invited her back to the apartment for a little while. There was apparently some power outage here as the lights in the parking lot and lots of places in the building were out. Luckily, I had all my power in the apartment, and we hung out in the livingroom chatting about this and that. She borrowed my Monopoly cross-stitch pattern to make for her brother, and then she had to get to Wal-Mart before too late since it was a regular weeknight and she works tomorrow (I'm off, haha!). It was fun, I'm glad she called to suggest getting together. Not only to see each other but it also got my mind off being alone overnight here for the first time since we moved in. Not like I'm terrified or anything, but when you're alone you hear all of the sounds of the building much more acutely (and perhaps nervously).

After Heidi left I went into the computer room and discovered Jonas had left me a little present on my desk, the Cleopatra expansion pack for Pharaoh. What a sweetheart. :) I was too tired to play, so I surfed around a little and then went into bed to read.