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five day weekend 2001-11-26 Sweetpeas. Beat the rush and start fighting amongst yourselves now, because I'm looking for an invitation to someone else's Thanksgiving dinner next year. Who among you will be brave enough to step forward and invite the Pupipani clan to dine with you? It's just the three of us, and The Boy doesn't eat much, and of course we'll bring delicious food to add to the repast. Let me tell you why I'm searching for an invitation in this shameful and embarrassing way. It can be summed up thusly: Hosting Thanksgiving is way too much freaking work. Francisco and I and Boy spent most of the day before Thanksgiving shopping for decorations, food, and folding chairs (we didn't have enough seating). We spent the entire day of Thanksgiving, right up until the guests arrived, working on the food, the table arrangements, and the house (mainly cleaning and yardwork). We then spent half of the day after Thanksgiving cleaning up from the day before, because the kitchen and kitchen floor were utterly trashed. Did we at least have a nice Thanksgiving dinner? Well yes--the food was really good, and it was enjoyable to see friends. HowEVer, two of our guests were a married couple who are apparently not getting along, and they kept shooting little (or sometimes not so little) digs at each other the whole time. It was uncomfortable for everyone, and I kept trying to send psychic messages to the female of the couple (who is the primary friend) to shut up, but she wasn't hearing me. [Simpson's digression-"I know you can hear my thoughts, Boy. Meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow�"]. The man of the couple pissed Francisco off by saying, when Boy made a tiny little denigrating joke (which I cannot now recall) about the good old U.S. of A, that our parenting must be lacking. I applaud Francisco for not lunging across the table at him, especially because, at that point, we'd had enough of this man's sniping at his wife and being, in general, a total anus. Otherwise re: Thanksgiving, we played Apples to Apples after dinner, which is a fun game, and I won. Also, Francisco, after arriving home from Denver, pronounced the 13 pound turkey I had purchased in his absence to be too small, so he bought a 20 pound turkey on Wednesday. And of course we have Tons of leftovers-the 13 pound turkey would've been plenty. You live, you learn, you pass it on and you make lots of turkey broth. And one last thing, I ate so much pie over the last 5 days. We ended up buying pies, because we knew we wouldn't have time to make them, and we bought a pumpkin and a pecan. From Costco, so they were enormous. Both kinds were good, but I ate more pecan pie, because I love it. So bad for me� Wednesday, before our huge pre-Thanksgiving shopping adventure, we went to see Harry Potter. It was good, I thought, but in a way it was boring too, because I had read the book and the movie stuck so close to the book that there weren't any surprises. What I enjoyed was seeing things like the Quidditch match and the big castle that was Hogwarts--things you can imagine when reading the books, but which are cool to actually see represented in pure living computer-animated color. I recommend. On Tuesday night when I got home, I had a birthday card from the wonderful Catie. It is one of her self-made cards and I really loved it. We should all be paying attention so that when Catie's online card store opens up, we can run over there and shop. It would be fun if, in our enthusiasm, we all got jammed in the store's cyber door, a la the Three Stooges. Guess what crafty thing I finally did this weekend. Well, why don't I just tell you--I made those marble magnets. And I can hardly believe it, but they turned out really, really great. I cut the pictures out of an old Glamour magazine, and it was perfect because it was a December issue, so there were lots of fancy gifts pictured, and clothes with shiny, opulent fabrics. What I concentrated on cutting were colors and interesting shapes-I cut out very few that were actual pictures of things. Now I can't look at a magazine or catalogue without my eyes zooming in and seeing things that would be fabulous � inch circles. I made a batch of 50, since I only had ingredients for 50, but they turned out so well that I went back to the Michael's Crafts right then and got ingredients for 50 more, which I made that day as well. The silicon gel I used to glue them smelled exactly like salt and vinegar potato chips, except more noxious. Francisco helped with the magnets-he came in at the gluing stage and squeezed the silicon gel out of the big tube onto the magnets. It came in the same kind of tube that caulk does, so it needed that gun thing to squeeze with, and Francisco handled it most admirably. While I was at the Michael's, I also bought a couple of large, plain wooden trays (on sale for $2.99 each right now) that I will paint and decoupage. It's lucky that 'decoupage' works as a verb, because otherwise there would've been a very awkward dangling participle on the end of that last sentence. I'm thinking of painting one of the trays either bright red or shiny black, and putting tattoo flash on it. That would look cool, no? Francisco rented some movies this weekend. He rented a Japanese film that is called (in English translation, at least) Pure Adrenaline, or something like that. It is about a man and woman who unwittingly get involved with the Yakuza, end up stealing a bunch of money from some Yakuza boss, and fleeing. It's better than I make it sound. Francisco also got a couple movies for just us to watch (unsuitable for Boy)---one was Bridget Jones' Diary (liked it), and the other was a documentary about people who are real, live swingers. That one was very weird but very interesting. I have no desire to partake in that lifestyle, but it is fascinating nonetheless. Finally (and it has to be finally, because I have a lot of work to do), I did something to my right arm/shoulder yesterday that makes it very painful to move. Sleeping was uncomfortable and I'm tired today, but I am at this moment extremely hungry, and it feels great. What with all that damn Thanksgiving food last week and this weekend, I haven't been actually Hungryhungry in awhile, and I missed it. I know I've forgotten a ton of things I wanted to report, so I'll write them down as they occur to me and will tell you later. Have a wonderful Monday afternoon! Love, E PS Oh yeah, I'm going to the first part of my two-part knitting class tonight, and I'm excited! I figured out last night that what I thought was a knitting stitch (the stitch shown in the November Real Simple magazine) isn't a knit stitch, and it isn't a purl stitch either. So what, I now want to know, the hell IS that stitch? I made two whole scarves with it, for godssake. I'm going to take the Real Simple tonight and a little sample I made with that stitch and ask. If I look crazy, then so be it. I hope the class is fun� |
come over some time & see me - 2011-02-25 |
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