thurday: i had to implement an alternate plan for amanda’s birthday since i have been so busy the past few weeks, and i had been unable to get her what i had been planning. of course, i cannot say what that was, since amanda reads this weblog; those plans will wait for another occasion. as it turned out, i got her a variety of little things:
– a cool handmade piggy bank
– a couple of decorative stones (“wisdom” and “love”)
– a little ceramic kitty, tangerine and sour apple altoids
– a selection of dessert godiva chocolates
– a gift card for new york and company
– sobe green tea, dragon tea, and strawberry daiquiri (ok, those were from work)
– a cool card
– a coupon allowing her to enforce her will! if she chooses, i will agree to not buy any junk food for the following year.
amanda, of course, choose to enforce her will when she opened her presents. i did get a king size reduced fat can of pringles in preparation earlier in the day as a final treat.
i left work relatively early at 5pm, and headed back to buffalo. amanda was hanging out with erika at home. erika was in much pain, but she had gotten an mri earlier in the day, and she and amanda decided that she had a slipped disc after perusing the images. even i could see that something was not really right in the pictures.
amanda was waffling on what to do for birthday dinner since i would be getting back late and we had gotten our first bunch of goodies from the csa (community supported agriculture) that we have joined. we got four heads of lettuce (different types), leaks, a bunch of herbs, and probably other stuff that i am forgetting. she considered just making stuff from our new bounty (especially since we were going to texas over the weekend� i am typing this on the plane right now), but she decided to get tapas at toro to celebrate. we drove erika back home since she did not want to risk screwing up her back more at dinner and picked up lainie afterwards.
dinner was good. i was not outrageously hungry since i had the king size pringles earlier, but we still got quite a bit of tasty food. the waitress knew amanda and i and that we were vege/fishytarian. the cheese plate we got was quite large and very elegantly presented (it had been kinda lousy the last few times we got it). a relatively new dish, shoestring potatoes with truffle oil and parmesan cheese and herbs was good good good and so bad for you. all of the other dishes were good as well.
we were amused by a couple who appeared to be on a date hanging out at the bar. they were clearly getting drunker and friskier as the night went on. lainie remarked that no sober person would stroke someone else�s tie like the woman was doing.
lainie was going to get amanda a gift certificate to a yoga place, but she could never get a hold of anyone there. either no one was there or there was a class. she ended up getting her a cube of eye shadow from the body shop, sour apple altoids, a shaker with four mixtures of spices for dipping oils, and a check that should be used for yoga classes.
we did not do much after dinner because by the end it was late, and i at least was getting pretty exhausted (only two hours of sleep the night before and not much more the previous night), and lainie was on call on friday. amanda said that i passed out within three minutes of the lights going out.
friday: amanda had the day off since her radiology attending was at a conference. i still had to work, tho, but i did not really get all that much done. i did get a 1.5 lifting sessions in since we would be shortly gone for the weekend. there are always road blocks to getting in shape. amanda ran some errands, did laundry, and other random stuff. carlos has started his summer hours and was home instead of in rochester, but he was taking advantage of the home time to run errands.
i had a meeting with various work people, and we were all in different places: buffalo, calgary, ithaca, and san rafael. it was cut short when we heard the fire alarm go off in calgary (where the meeting organizer was), so we rescheduled so that he would not die.
we took off for the airport at 2pm and bid farewell to our sad little piglet one. carlos has told us that he can hear her run for our door when he or karen come home while we are gone. sad little one!
at the airport, we were forced to wander about the long term packing lot looking for a space. we ended up finding one far away from the terminal, but a shuttle guy saw us parking and drove up to give us a ride. at the self checkin, i wanted to get aisle seats, but amanda demanded window and got what she wanted since i enforced by aisle preferences on our last flight. security was not that bad, either; amanda got the serious frisking on her last trip since she bought the ticket the night before.
there was a maintenance guy wandering about polishing the floor with a tennis ball attached to at pikstix (a wooden shaft with a spike at the end of it for picking up trash… i used these a lot in a job a long time ago). it was a startlingly effective and cheap solution for buffing the floor.
the first leg of the flight to pittsburgh was very short, maybe thirty minutes in the air. i still managed to fall asleep. we got there earlier than scheduled, so we had time for an early dinner at the wok and roll which serves sushi now as well. i noticed that they were cheating my using a rice mold thingy for the nigiri sushi, tho. we wandered about the skymall for a while, and then headed back to the gate.
while waiting to take off, we saw a groundhog nervously pacing about the edge of the runway. it eventually tried to cross over to another median, but was very fearful of our airplane. it was obvious that the pilot saw it tho, and stopped to let it run by in the middle of a turn.
now, we are perhaps an hour away from houston. as it turned out, we had both aisle and window seats on both legs of our trip since the second plane was not full and the first onlhy had two seats on each side. amanda is listening to music from my notebook whilst i type this entry. notebook computers are the bomb on long plane rides. amanda is pleased that she has a minimoo creamer for her coffee. i have not flown us air in quite a while, and i did not realize they now simply charge for meals, but that is probably a good idea. they still served complimentary beverages tho.
lainie told me yesterday that my weblog entries are so long that she feels she has to take a break reading them. i hope she enjoys this one.
… time passes…
amanda has never really known what i actually do at work. vishal described it to her a while ago in quite a succinct way: �we make obscure software for non-existant customers.� harsh.
… time pasess …
it looks like the weather is bad in houston, so all the arrivals are getting backed up. we are currently in a holding pattern, and will probably be an hour or so late. we will not get to her grandmother�s place until 11pm perhaps.
… time passes …
we finally touched down in houston. it took freaking forever to get to the terminal, tho, as we practically landed in another county. on our way out of the rental car shuttle, we heard this amuzing conversation:
shuttle driver: … and the baggage carts are free to use, so take one if you want.
passenger: are you sure they�re free?
shuttle driver: yeah, and there�s not much free in this town, so you better take one before it�s too late.
we got a white chevy cavalier for our rental. now that amanda is 25, she can rent cars with impunity. on our way out, the last rental car employee told us that the car was new and that we should �go wild.� it only had 15 miles on it. the only other time i drove a car with such little mileage was another rental car years ago (a green dodge neon that i proceeded to put 2000 miles on).
to be continued…