summer is winter and you always knew

I'm in that lovely, warm, full, happy state that comes after a four and a half hour dinner/dessert/drinks extravaganza -- and I must hope that I don't die of hypothermia in my house tonight, since I'm feeling so satisfied that I could go to sleep in my frigid, unheated bedroom and never wake up, just as Almanzo (that hottie) feared that Laura would in "Little Town on the Prairie". If I only I had an Almanzo around to take me out on his sleigh (which, in the 1880s, was not a euphemism -- although I suppose it isn't really now, either, unless 50 Cent has released a new song called "In Da Sleigh" for Christmas) -- but alas, Almanzo remains as dead as he has been for the last sixty years, and I'll just have to hope that I will wake up tomorrow.

But if I do freeze to death tonight, I had a good day to go out on. I didn't get out of bed until after ten, and then I putzed around for a bit, had lunch, and finally settled down to take care of a bunch of stuff that I had been putting off for weeks/months -- namely, sorting out all my insurance, medical reimbursements, bills, rollovers, etc, since my 30-day anniversary of leaving my job is fast approaching and some of that stuff expires at the end of thirty days. So I was wildly if boringly productive all afternoon, getting through massive swathes of the undesirable parts of my to-do list, which means that I will have health insurance and all sorts of other beneficial things during the next phase of my life.

Eventually, though, it was time to go to dinner, and I met my friends Jenni and James at Patxi's in Palo Alto. When James was working in the city and I was living there, the three of us would occasionally go to Little Star (home of the best pizza in the history of the world) -- but since we all live in the glorious south bay now, we're looking for new restaurants to call home. We had a lovely dinner at Patxi's, even though we got way too much food, and I got to hear all about the venues they're looking at for their wedding (they got engaged right before I left work). When we were done eating at Patxi's, we weren't quite done hanging out, so we strolled down to Joya, where we ruined our server's night by only ordering drinks and dessert instead of the full gamut of expensive entrees and starters. However, our dessert was churros (to die for), tiramisu (also amazing), and papas bravas (not a dessert, since it's basically a fried potato with some mayonnaise, but amazing nonetheless), and we all had at least one drink (I stuck to my fave champagne, the Gloria Ferrer blanc de noirs that I served at my party), so the guy couldn't complain too much.

So a good time was had by all, and I was glad to see them; I've worked with Jenni forever, and I was with her the night that she first got together with James at one of our sales conferences (the same sales conference/ski trip where Lauren met Nathan -- quite a week from a pair-up perspective), so I'm glad that Jenni and James are getting married. But finally it was time to part ways, so I came home, did thirty minutes of work for my freelance job, and am now ready to crawl into bed and let my breath freeze and turn into rime on my pillow. Goodnight!