Sleeping through Spokane. Can you blame him?

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Dreaming of a white Christmas, but still enjoying a brown one.

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Presents under tree: check. Flannel pants and hot chocolate: check. Entire table covered with cookies, fudge and pies: check. Festive gingerbread train: check.

Danielle and i (and Ferris, and our mound of luggage, and my now-filthy pathfinder, and the gingerbread train) are home and ready for a fun, relaxing family holiday. We survived the rain, the fog, the mountain passes and the odor of spokane yesterday. I hope everyone else has safe travels this weekend and a joyful Christmas practicing whatever traditions you traditionally do. If you're so inclined, be thankful for all that you've been blessed with and pray for peace in our homes and in our world.

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Our Christmas crew is on the road!

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She’s back home where she belongs and looks fantastic. Merry christmas to us both!

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My conference call with internal recruiting just ended, and i'll be headed 5 blocks north and 3 blocks west sometime in early january to a new, more exciting, better paying, more “me" job with a small, energetic division of my current employer. It’s been a long time coming - more than a month of waiting rather impatiently - and they stretched out the decision as long as humanly possible, but the rumored transfer is finally official, so i have to stop griping about it (and stop stressing about it) and let myself celebrate.

It appears it will be a Merry Christmas after all…

Technorati Tags: career, promotions

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I was supposed to volunteer today at the Salvation Army, thru work. A couple hours after lunch helping transport and organize the unwrapped gifts that have been gathered in office lobbies like ours for the last few weeks. Both Danielle and i had fun buying kids' presents, but i still wanted to do more even though my gift budget is shot. The loosely-assembled plan passed around via email involved volunteers from the three different locations meeting at an unspecified south entrance to Qwest Field; i guess they expect a football field worth of toys. It’s now 20 mins past meeting time, i've been walking around a football stadium alone in the rain since 20 before, and i'm cold, deflated and going back to work. I guess 40 minutes in a rainstorm is all that separates charitable, ambitious volunteer from discouraged, bitter misanthrope.

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The rain returned yesterday, which means it’s mercifully back above freezing. I was wearing three shirts, a sweater, a scarf and a wool coat and still couldn't stay warm - and it’s not for lack of bodyfat. It was only a test of my cold-weather hardiness - which i failed and which indicates i'm not ready to cross three mountain passes friday and spend next week in montana for the holidays. If there was any lingering chance i might be the next antarctic blogger this winter has put that soundly to rest. Just thinking about it has me wishing for a hot drink.

I'm ready in nearly every other way, tho, or getting close. My Z should be back home in it’s garage, safe and warm, by thursday or so. All the quibbling between the body shop, the insurance company and myself (you can guess which of those three was the royal cheapskate causing all the turbulence - no, shut up, it wasn't me) has finally subsided and the hood will be replaced proper with a factory aluminum one, which you bet your ass i'll be inspecting very carefully in person on thursday morning to verify it’s the *real* aluminum deal and not the steel ripoff. If it weighs more than my garage door, heads will roll, people.

Other than a couple of gifts that will have to be belated due to my slacker friends taking off for the holidays already without warning me ahead of time to adjust my shopping deadlines, everything is purchased, wrapped, distributed and - in some cases - already unwrapped and covered with sticky fingerprints. I've had so much fun shopping this year for everyone; it’s really a bummer the rush was so brief and the high so expensive. ;) At it’s peak (before the distribution phase) my plastic evergeen looked all kinds of festive. People with january birthdays can expect cool gifts, as i'm sure i'll need another hit off the pipe by then.

I'm not packed, but i know what i need to pack (lots of wool). Also, ski gear. Hopefully i'll get a chance to use it proper, but if not i'm sure goggles and a full face mask will come in handy walking out to get the paper for Dad. I'm hoping there will also be some seat time on the 'rents' sweet Honda ATV’s, and enough snow to plow the driveway with the big one, which is always 95% fun and only 5% chore, especially in ski goggles and a funny hat.

I'm ready to unplug for a bit, as well, not in a move to deflate my budding interweb stardom but just to live at a montana pace for a week, where my phone doesn't work so i won't get those daily SMS low-checking-balance warnings from my bank. To stop thinking about resumes i've sent that have gone unanswered, about bills that need to be paid with money that doesn't exist, about house-buying and traffic and overdue auto repairs and not spending enough time at the gym. It will be great to think about everything but my regular life for a few days, even if it will all be waiting to greet me on my return. For 9 days, though, normal life will be frozen, along with everything else outside my parents' four walls, so in that way the cold will be a welcome change.

Technorati Tags: christmas, cold weather, vacation

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A quiet evening at home listening to Christmas music, wrapping gifts that i bought yesterday (and one that was waiting on the doorstep when i returned), and doing some light reading by the glow of a twinkling plastic tree. I did very little actual work at work today, between meetings down the hall, meetings in the corporate building several blocks away, walking to said meetings, and kicking into party mode at about 3.30 with the rest of the building for the second day of “slush week", the official unofficial Christmas party. Each day is themed - today was gin and tonics. Monday was beer - several of the crew actually make their own, so it was a very involved affair to start the week, tomorrow is scotch, i think, unless scotch is thursday and tomorrow is vodka, leaving friday for wines. As my department is lazy and not actually sponsoring a day (which is too bad, since i have an iPod full of great Christmas music and party provisions just begging to be shared), i'm really not sure of the schedule until the last hints of daylight depart the conference room windows and the merriment begins appearing from desk drawers and mailroom cupboards. Unlike for real life modern pirates, there is no shortage of free booty at the office this time of year.

My whole world seems a bit upside down this week. After several years of alternating between admitting i'm broke and living accordingly, or denying my lack of funds in temporary (and usually oft-regretted) splurges, i'm finally looking down the barrel of a comfortable salary after the new year begins and that combined with prodigous Christmas money stockpiling has me purchasing gifts based on other criteria besides sale price this year. It’s a great feeling, and the festive - and larger than usual - pile of paper-wrapped good intentions accumulating around the concrete-filled terra cotta pot under my plastic evergreen has me in a perpetual Christmas mood.

My garage is empty. I tromped in there this evening in search of empty boxes to contain my purchased expressions of merriment and, like i always do, took a large step straight in and then turned quickly on my heels to avoid hitting my car that - ack! - was not there this time. I stood silently aghast in the empty concrete space, momentarily concerned that i had misplaced something large and automobile-shaped, then concerned for my own sanity, and finally prodded with a twinge of guilt for forgetting already, as my poor Z - out of sight and apparently all too quickly out of mind - sleeps in a strange, lonely bed tonight. I delivered it to the body shop monday morning, where it’s panels will be exorcised of the ghost of garage doors past. The logistics of the hand-off involved reviewing my two-page typed list of quirks, repair guidelines and operating requirements with both the service manager and the lot attendant - including a copy for each of them and another in the car - and then walking a few blocks to alderwood mall to catch a bus home, to fetch my pathfinder and expend a half tank of gas driving downtown to work, alone, so that i would have transportation to the doc in bellevue after work and then back home again, in order to complete the most inefficient commute cycle possible. Apparently community transit did not receive that memo, however, and felt it would instead be an opportune monday morning to test the “random chaos" theory of bus scheduling and completely disregard any printed timetables in favor of buses driving haphazardly around snohomish county wherever their drivers felt would be scenic for the passengers, or wherever discounted breakfast specials could be combined with unfiltered tobacco. After waiting 30 minutes on north hwy 99, feeling what ugly hookers must feel when they stand on hwy 99 waiting for a ride that never comes, i finally gave up and walked the last two miles home in disgust. I kept my unused transfer ticket, though… so i can staple it to the flaming bag of canine excrement that community transit will be receiving for Christmas this year.

I went skiing on saturday. The Summit was a bit crunchy compared to what i'm used to and i worked my body really hard on some tough runs, but it was sunny and fantastic up there and i had an incredible day. Other than a couple of freak days out in Europe in 2003, i hadn't skied - or physically engaged any snow that wasn't at the business end of an ice scraper - since i was in college, and never in a west coast climate, so i had no expectations and figured on being a total noob; finding that some semblance of confidence and ability still lingered was a welcome surprise. Driving up by myself and spending the day following my own desires and energies on the hill took me back to MSU, to the days of decade-old gear and “HHD 161 - Alpine Skiing", except this time my gear is all new (save the sticks) and a season pass hung around my neck. I felt like a king. The king of the mountain.

Technorati Tags: skiing, bus, christmas gifts, slush week, Z

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Left my car at the body shop this AM, but not before going over my Z’s list of quirks & particulars. I don't expect to sleep well for a bit.

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