the countdown starts

I spent too much of today being lazy, which is not going to help with my ability to sleep this week. I dragged myself out of bed just in time to have dim sum at Hong Kong Flower Lounge with Heather and Salim, who are newly returned the Bay Area after a year-long stint in Boston. In fact, the whole day was exactly what I would have liked to do if Tammy was here, since it consisted solely of dim sum and the Olympics, but unfortunately she's not here and so I must persevere alone.

Anyway, dim sum was delicious, and so I came home and took a nap to sleep off the shrimp coma. Then, I did some desultory cleaning of the apartment before spending a substantial amount of time on the phone with my parents; I barely talked to my mom while I was traveling in India, and so we had a lot to catch up on. After that, I settled in to watch the Olympics and do my work, and I also successfully convinced Vidya to come over and share in my hermitage with me (helped substantially by the lure of leftover chocolate chip chewies). So, we ate sammiches, ate a lot of cookies, and watched the entire evening's coverage, seeing the results of the latest men's downhill combined race and a whole lot of ridiculous ice dance. I'm not a huge fan of ice dance, but their costumes are amazing. And, as Vidya pointed out, the IOC or the international skating federation should have known better than to make 'ethnic/traditional dance' the theme for the original program; the Russian team dressed as 'natives' looked totally absurd, and could never have gotten away with it if they were Americans.

So, we had a fantastic time laughing at them, even if I wasn't quite as productive as I would have been if the Olympics weren't on. But I got through the most pressing of my deadlines, and as I like to tell myself, there is always tomorrow (although tomorrow and Tuesday will be brutal, to say the least). To make it less brutal, I should probably go to bed; I want to get up a little before six so that I can get in the office in time to do some stuff before my half-day staff meeting starts at 8, so I should really sleep. Goodnight!