my baby's got a secret

Tonight was great--some of my friends at work have a holiday gift-exchange tradition, and this year we decided to exchange gifts over dinner at Lizzie's house, rather than over a rushed lunch during the workday. Since most of the people involved (well, everyone except me) has a horribly hectic schedule right now, no one really had time yesterday or today to cook, so it was a take-out potluck. This worked for me as well, since I couldn't leave work very early and so was able to skip making a casserole and take a pizza instead. Anyway, it was really nice; I got a Christmasy book that I'm looking forward to reading on the plane, and I gave Lizzie a fiber-optic bonsai tree that I found on eBay so that she will give me back the fiber-optic bonsai tree that she was babysitting while I was in India. She has refused to give back my bonsai tree, but I found a completely identical one to replace it with, so we're both happy.

It's hard to believe that this is my third Christmas at my current job. When I started a little over two years ago, I'd only been out of college for three months, and I intended to apply to grad school and go the following year. My, how times change. Since graduation, I've lived in eight different places (Phi Sig, Walter's room, Adit's room, that condo in Palo Alto w/the random craigslist roommates, the sketchy MV apartment with Walter, my current condo in Menlo Park, and two different apartments in Hyderabad) and two different hemispheres. No wonder I hate moving so much. And every time I move, I accumulate even more stuff, since each move has given me slightly more space which I promptly fill with more ridiculous possessions. I think that I'm going to have to do a slow, massive purge of my room. I may move at glacial speed when I try to dispose of things, but I need to harness the power of the glacier to sweep everything away.

Anyway, that's life. Tomorrow I don't have an early conference call, which means that I can sleep in a little, and that's v. exciting. Even better, a week from now I will be in Iowa! Of course, it will be completely frigid there and I will be on the brink of hypothermia, but it will still be nice. It would completely rock if I got to go sledding while I was home, but I haven't had a truly white Christmas in awhile, so I don't know if it will happen this year. However, my chances of having a white Christmas in Iowa are significantly higher than the odds in the Bay Area, so I'm hoping that will work out in my favor.