too much alcohizzle

Hello, friends. I'm sorry that I haven't written since I got back to California; I know that I use the phrase 'insanely busy' a lot, but this time it is no exaggeration. In the past two weeks I have:

1) worked 12-14 hours/day for two weeks (ugh)
2) found a new apartment
3) attended a karaoke/dress-up birthday party
4) went to Tahoe with the Loro mafia kids
5) came to San Francisco for the sales conference

I will address all of these issues as follows...

1) Working 12-14 hours/day sucks. There's nothing more that can be said about that.

2) Claudia, Terry and I are moving next week! We signed a lease on a three-bedroom condo in Menlo Park, two blocks back from Secret Safeway in Sharon Heights. It's lovely--quiet, beautiful, tree-filled setting; sparkling pool; great bedrooms; jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom; wonderful kitchen; built-in display cabinets (and liquor cabinet!) in the dining room; patio; etc. And, it's v. close to Stanford for Claudia, which also means that I can visit Stanford people more easily. Yay! I'm moving my stuff starting as soon as I get back from Tahoe Friday afternoon (more on that in a second).

3) The karaoke/dress-up party was surprisingly fun; I normally don't have a fantastic time at the boys' parties, but this time I really loved it. I got drunk off of sangria made with wine and bacardi 151 (potent combination), as well as some vodka and cranberry juice that I had in a canteen labelled 'chemicals' (an homage to Gavin Rossdale/Bush's 'The Chemicals Between Us'). We sang a lot, and Bon Jovi was included in the mix. I saw all my friends, slapped Ritu's boyfriend (hard!) after a mock argument heated up, and sang 'Take Me On' by A-ha in honor of the two members of the School of Ruckus (!) who were present at the party [for those of you in the know, the School of Ruckus members there were Vijay the SLE tutor and the drummer whose name I can't remember]. Fun times were had by all.

4) The Loro mafia ski trip was everything that I could imagine it to be and more. I missed the cataclysmic final act, but I participated in all the good stuff--and the group had started drinking, which was really weird and unexpected, and meant that I've gotten tipsy/drunk 4 of the past 5 nights. We played 'never have i ever' as a drinking game, and interesting tings happened Friday night. Saturday, I hung out with Michael and Jasmine all day, and we had lunch with my friend John; then Jasmine made tasty enchiladas, and we played indian poker as a drinking game. Indian poker was ridiculously fun, considering how ridiculous it is. Then, Shedletsky, Doug, Curt and I played four-person mafia and kept the whole house up, much to others' chagrin and our absolute amusement. I hung out there all day Sunday, and made it home from the Nevada side of Heavenly in 3hrs 59mins. There are many many fun things that came out of this trip, but for the sake of sensitivity (which I don't use very often) I will not recount it here. Sorry.

5) Sales conference/ski trip is this week. So I got back from Tahoe at 1am Sunday night/Monday morning, slept for six hours, repacked my stuff, went to work on Monday, and then took a bus to San Francisco Monday night. I'm here now and am having a great time, although I'm tired, and I drank Monday and Tuesday night. Tonight is the closing banquet (banquet=alcohol), and tomorrow we take a bus to Tahoe (tahoe=alcohol). Then we come back Friday and I have to work Friday afternoon before beginning my third move in fifteen months. Ugh. I bought Dramamine to fight car sickness on the bus and drug myself into blessed slumber, so I hope it won't have a bad reaction to any leftover alcohol in my system :)

And that's all for now! Time to change for dinner. Take care, friends, and I'll start checking in more regularly in the near future.