a journey pendant on a box chain that I proceeded to break almost immediately. Luckily we weren’t pressed for time and could stop at the jewelry store on the way to dinner to get it replaced. We dined at Victoria’s for the first time since a three-on-three wrap up dinner three years ago. I kept it simple with salad and some rigatoni and meat sauce. A lot of rigatoni. I ate some there and had three more meals at home from it. Adam was kind enough to walk my leftovers back to the car and then rejoined me inside the PAC. We took our box seats on the right side of the stage. Unfortunately this left us with no view of the performer’s hands, which I think would have made the night much more interesting.
So, George Winston. First off, not at all what I expected. Second, definitely not my thing. Although I suppose when my mom compared him to Yanni and John Tesh I should have considered that a warning. A few of the pieces in the first half were easily fifteen minutes long. On and on, repeating the same rather unexciting “melody” over and over. *yawn* The second half had mostly shorter tunes with some semi-recognizable songs. But mostly the same old stuff. He could just be improvising up and down the keyboard for two hours and no one would know the difference. He seemed very uncomfortable on stage. He bowed in a very quick and jerky manner. He said very little aside from “thank you very much” and “the next song is…” He didn’t have shoes on. He stomped his left foot quite aggressively while he played. I will admit he had some interestingly unconventional piano-playing techniques. At one point he reached up into the piano and held the strings down so all we heard was the banging of the hammer rather than any notes. And if I were into the new age music scene, I’m sure all the names he dropped while introducing his selections would be impressive.
Christmas Eve morning I did some prep work for lunch, put the ham in, and relaxed. The Dodds crew showed up a little later than usual but luckily our meal choice was flexible. We ate, did a gift exchange (yay for fun holiday socks!) and observed some strange kitty behavior. Catherine even managed to get Carly to sit on her lap for a little while. Everyone left to go to a birthday party and I cleaned up. I’m not even sure what else we did the rest of the day. We did open our gifts. Well, the few that we hadn’t already opened - mostly the ones from my mom. I considered using the Santa cake pan for the party but decided I was already being ambitious enough. We left for church early since it was snowing still and we wanted a good parking spot. This also gave me an excuse to leave early since I set everything up. For the first time the concert didn’t go over its allotted time. It was also not unbearably hot up in the choir loft. We wished everyone a Merry Christmas and then went home. It was way past my bedtime.
Christmas morning we lounged in bed a little. Adam made some Chex Mix. We left early for lunch down in Falls. This was a good thing since we saw an accident on northbound 41 near Oshkosh and then got stuck at another on 23. We turned around and took a detour that went up and down some mighty scary hills. We made it in one piece, arriving a little early even. We gave Gus and Max their Christmas gifts. We said hello to Catherine’s cat. This is the first time I’d seen him since, well, forever, and compared to our behemoth monsters, he is TINY. Brooke was there (minus Tom, which we found a little weird) but we didn’t really interact much. We had lunch, which included an absolutely fabulous chocolate cake for dessert. We looked at Catherine’s pictures from Argentina. We discussed movies. Then we left to get home and feed our cats. They were appreciative.
Friday Adam had to go back to work and I had the day off. I went up to my hair appointment and since Adam had told me the roads were horrible I left myself a lot of time and ended up arriving half an hour early. I sat in my car and played solitaire. After my haircut I stopped to get the perishable ingredients for our party food. I spent over an hour and a half looking for wonton wrappers. I went to four different stores before I found them. Apparently everyone in the Fox Valley was making wonton stars. This made me kind of crabby. When I finally returned home I spent the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen baking cookies and making meatballs. We also had our loveseat swap to wait for. They were to show up between 4 and 8pm. What time did they arrive this time? 9:15. I guess they were having a bad day. Again. But hopefully this is the last time we’ll have to worry about it for a while.
Saturday morning I started in the kitchen pretty early prepping veggies and cheese. I had planned my day so I made things in a logical order while enabling myself to clean up in between. I think I sat down for maybe twenty minutes between 8am and 3pm. My feet hurt. But everything was ready for 3. No one showed up until after 4, but things were ready. Everyone had left by a little after 7. We put food away, I loaded the dishwasher, rinsed off other dishes, and called it a night.
Yesterday I did round two of dishes. We looked at ads. Went to Menards (where we got new barstools that actually fit.) Adam’s parents came over to eat some food during the football game. I did my best to be civil. I finished washing all the rest of the dishes and put everything away. We took down the tree. I did laundry. We watched Mamma Mia. Ate leftovers.
And today I was back at work. I spent most of the day catching up from being off for almost a week. The rest of the day was spent preparing for The Longest Day of My Life (aka Wednesday, the day of year-end inventory counts with an auditor trailing me all day.) I have a feeling I’ll need to drink heavily to ring in the new year.
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