eight days a week is not enough to show i care

Last night, I went to the city for Vidya's housewarming party. As of the latest report (three minutes ago), she was not fined for the riotous ruckus that ensued, which is great. Claudius and I went up around sixish to have dinner with Vidya, Sri, and Mini beforehand; we had crepes, which may have almost gotten me over my hatred of the Dutch equivalent (pannekoeken, which I had in Amsterdam and absolutely loathed--but then again, when I was in Amsterdam, I was predisposed to hating everything around me, so maybe I judged it a bit harshly). My crepe was stuffed with cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms, and avocadoes--and my mouth is watering just thinking about it. As I told Vidya, I'm not any more likely to visit her more than once every three months--but I will now have to insist on eating there every time I do visit her.

The party was fun, if you like parties where you don't know anyone. Actually, it did get better; John and Jess showed up, followed by Tom and Julie, and so we had a grand ol' time. I wasn't drinking since I was driving, so perhaps I didn't have as much fun as some of the other people in the room, but it was nice nonetheless. And, the benefit of leaving at 1am was that there was no traffic coming home, so I made it home in half an hour and wasn't stuck watching someone else's bumper while creeping along at twenty miles per hour. Bonus!

Today, I woke up at the insanely early hour of eleven a.m., leisurely read the news (online, natch), then ran to the Stanford mall for some essentials that I had been avoiding picking up for weeks. By 'essentials' I mean 'foundation' and 'moisturizer', which of course extended into a lipstick and two tubes of lipgloss. I also paid my utilities bill and grabbed lunch, then came home and watched some figure skating thanks to a heads-up text from my favorite dealer of all things tangentially related to the Olympics (you may know my dealer as Tammy). None of the skating was particularly appealing; it was one of the first competitions of the season, so everyone seemed a bit rusty. There was an interesting interview with Johnny Weir, however, who has said that he wants to stop concentrating on offending people and start working harder to improve his skating. His method of not offending people includes a long program in which he portrays Jesus Christ (grown-up Jesus, not 'sweet baby Jesus' of 'Taladega Nights' fame). Actually, I don't know if he was grown-up or baby Jesus, since his program made very little sense conceptually. He ended up coming in third, unfortunately; this would have been acceptable if he had spent the entire interview showing off his Gucci purses and dozens of pairs of designer sunglasses, but since he's supposed to be working now, I demand that he land all of his jumps!! Just kidding, I can't wait to see whether he improves this season--and I must say that his interview put he more in line with the rest of the obviously-gay male figure skating crew. His interview during the Torino games made Brian Boitano look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but this one made him look like your average closet case. I'll miss the old Johnny, but I'm looking forward to some good skating this year.

After watching some skating and fulfilling my weekly obligation to my parents (always a pleasure, particularly when I discover the unmentionable things that they're now adding to their to-do lists), I did several loads of laundry, then folded those loads of laundry while watching several episodes of 'House'. Granted, I could have folded all of my clothes in twenty minutes of silence, rather than 2.25 hours of 'House', but where would the fun have been in that? Then I caught up on some work that came in over the weekend, wrote the paragraphs above, and am now ready for bed. This week is going to be hellish--I have three pre-nine-a.m. meetings, plans to see Jasmine Tuesday night, an offsite and a conference call Wednesday night, and class on Thursday night. Then I need to spend the weekend plotting my next story for class, if I don't have to spend it getting caught up on work before the short Thanksgiving week. Ugh. The last thing I need is to get a late start tomorrow, so I should go to bed. Goodnight!