vacation

i've been dreaming of pool-side umbrella drinks and jodi piccoult novels for months now, pretty much since the may 2009 cruise sunburn wore off.

get your bowl on

i'll admit it - my reaction when seeing the words "department outing" on the meeting invitation was to let out a little sigh.  no, little whimper is more like it.  it's not like i don't like the people i work with - i think they're great.  i just haven't fully developed into one of those people who can just make small talk and be the life of the party yet.  i'm working on it.  i hesitated as i pushed the "accept" button.  i don't think you're actually given a choice there - if you don't go to the department outing you are considered to be a social deviant and you will probably not have your job a year from now.  but i guess i was considering the pros and cons of the situation.

pros:
you do not have to work for the afternoon
free lunch
you get to leave work early

cons:
you have to talk to people you barely know for 3-4 hours

obviously there are more pros than cons in the lists above.  however, the weight afforded to the cons makes the two categories almost equal.  let's just say that i have a crippling fear of slight aversion to talking to people i barely know.  i'm pretty much an idiot and i say the wrong thing all the time.
but in the end i decided that it would be worth it to keep my job and get out of work three hours early.
we went to this place that was (for lack of a better description) embarrassing to stand in.  the alley had been recently remodeled to be some sort of upscale "club" or something.  there were a lot of swankiness attempts, but it just felt wrong.  just because you have new carpet and a full service bar doesn't mean you're not a bowling alley.  and what's with the manager wearing an eighties suit (complete with mock turtleneck)?  the atmosphere of the alley only compounded the awkwardness i was already feeling just being around all those people.  i had a mantra going in my head "you only have to do this for three hours...then you get an afternoon all to yourself...three hours...you can do this".
i managed to make some small talk with a few members of my team (randomly assigned) and even ventured over to the lane beside me, where a girl from my row of cubicles was bowling.  i talked about basketball (everyone watches the ncaa tournament, right?) and the weather.  i was no social butterfly, but i endured it.

and then, even though we got to leave early, i was still stuck in traffic on the way home.

our thing

a few weeks months (because it takes me forever to finish a blog post, apparently) ago,  i needed to get my car inspected (since it was embarrassingly illegally overdue), and since there were still two feet of snow on the ground (remember the great blizzard of '09?  and then '10?) we decided to make it our "trip of the day", if you will.  we dropped the civic off at the car place and headed over to one of the fine arlington county libraries.  he serached out a few detective novels (he has read all of the pattersons, grishams, and theotherguywhoican'trememberrightnows) and i gathered some photography books.  i managed to score a chair next to the window and sat turning the pages and drooling over talented photos until andy was ready to leave.  it felt so good to get out, and it sort of felt like i was participating in the elusive thing they call "the community".
in the weeks since, we've loosely made it our habit. i'll be the first to admit that he is more likely to go than me (shocking because i'm more the bookworm type - or so i thought) and sometimes i find it hard to muster up the strength to walk all that way if the weather is not 72 degrees and sunny.  we've also added breakfast/coffee to the mix, and occasionally a stop at cvs. 
i've always wanted a routine.  i didn't want to force it upon anyone, because i'm not sure at what age people start adopting routines (i've always been all too eager to grow up).  i always just hoped that one day i would be one of those happy people who does things like go to the library and get coffee on weekend mornings.
and while sometimes i let my laziness get the best of me, on the mornings that i do drag myself out of bed and put clothes on before 10 a.m, i'm glad that i'm finally at least a little closer to having a normal life.

he's a little bit country

when we moved in together about 2 years ago, the first thing that was painfully obvious was that we both (well, mostly me) had accumulated a lot of crap over our short lives. my boxes were mostly full of books, cds, a handful of dvds, kitchen gadgets, photo albums, and lots and lots of clothes. his boxes were full of country cds, hundreds of dvds (he's mostly an action guy, with a soft spot for the occasional chick flick), football t-shirts, video games, and more football t-shirts. i'll be the first to admit it: we didn't have much going for us.

the "theme" of my apartment is what i like to call "shabby". not to be confused with "shabby chic". excluding the kitchen table and bedroom set, everything is made out of particle board. moreover, most of the said particle board is being held together by copious amounts of carpenter's glue. i like to think that i was striving for something pottery barn-esque, but my attempts at being the apartment decorator type have proven futile...so i stocked up on neutrals and beiges, threw in the occasional red pillow and called it a day.

then andy began adding his own decorating style to the apartment, such as the bed pillow on the couch, because it's much more comfortable than the red pillows (don't worry, i hide the pillow when people are over), and the bright purple football helmet that is proudly displayed on an end table. little bursts of maroon, orange, and purple suddenly popped up all over the place.
while i can't say that i've always dreamed of having a football helmet on display in my house, i can say that it's now part of the room.  i could even say that it's growing on me tolerable.
we turned in our lease renewal last night.  i have mixed feelings about it, i guess.  i really thought we'd be out of the apartment by this time, but neither one of us is dying to put a down payment on a house/condo in dc...what with the atrocious house prices and all.  so it looks like we'll be sticking around for at least a little while longer.  i'm going to try to keep these years ingrained in my memory.  Hopefully we'll look back on our time spent in little 308 as "just the beginning".

home for the holidays

cousins!, originally uploaded by lizzybee122.

there's nothing like home for the holidays. for me, "home" is my parent's house in ontario. i've never "lived there" per se, but i have spent a couple of christmases there. it's funny because i think of all the places my parents have lived, their current city is the one i am most comfortable with. i always felt like we were outsiders when we lived in GA and NY, like those places were other peoples' "homes" and i was just there temporarily. when we'd go to canada during the holidays it always felt like my mom was going home, so in a way i thought it was the whole family going home. it feels good to have a place to finally call "home" and mean it.

there is hope

i finally heard back tonight. i have a phone interview in the morning, and then a real interview probably later this week. god, i hope this happens.

the wait is kill.ing. me.