commas and ampersands

Well, I'm back. My little blog-cation has served its purpose, and it's time to re-enter the world of the communicative. It's been a full few weeks, with Esther's visit, more hours at work, the semester gearing up to the end and winding down at the same time, and the various and sundry day-to-day things that happen.

There were a thousand little things that I thought of to write about while I was away from lj-land (at least, away from the posting side; I kept up with everyone else's journals), but, of course, I didn't write them down, so they're lost in the netherworld of the space in between my brain and my keyboard, never to be recovered. Most of them. Some of the ideas will likely resurface at some point--I find that I mull over certain entries for quite some time before writing them--but many of the trivial, fleeting ideas are gone.

That's okay, though. Not everything that passes through my head needs to find a voice on the internet.

So, what's new? Well, my laptop's keyboard is pink now. I have pictures of my own computer, but they're still on my camera, so in the meantime, you can look at that and envision. My favorite is that the backspace key is now a magic wand. The stickers are removable, so the fun won't last forever, but in the meantime, it's very exciting. ;o)

Mariah and I are discussing our options for our apartment, the summer, and the fall. We need to come to a decision in the next few days, and suffice to say, I may be having to make different arrangements than I'd originally planned for.

I leave for a weekend in Calgary tomorrow morning. I'll get to see the show that Colin composed the orchestrations for (and which numerous other people that I know are in, but that's all kind of secondary for me). I'm ridiculously proud of him, and having heard the various pieces in their electronic incarnations as demos, I'm excited to hear them as done by real instruments played by real instrumentalists. It's the biggest project he's ever done, and he's certainly put the work into it and should be very, very proud of what he's done. I know I am. :)

We'll have the usual kind of holiday weekend. Colin has both Friday and Monday off work, which is absolutely fantastic, so I don't have my usual dilemma of having time while he's at work. Usually, when that happens, I try to schedule coffee with my girlfriends, but I'm completely okay with not having time for that. We'll have Easter dinners with both our families (Saturday brunch with mine, Sunday dinner with his), two performances of the Easter show, Easter Sunday morning service, and Monday to just chill and hang out. I fly out on Tuesday, but not until early evening, so since Colin's back at work, that's when I've scheduled my meetings and things to get done. Bank meeting, internship meeting, and probably coffee with my mom (y'know, since my parents paid for this flight...).

Today--my birthday!--has been pretty normal. It's a regular Thursday, with school, work, more school, more work. The girls in the Public Affairs office made me cupcakes, but that's about it. I work tonight, and I still have some packing and cleaning to do when I get home, so it'll be a short night before I head to the airport in the morning.

I'm very excited. Since our visit last month got cut short by about 6 days, I really need this weekend.

Anyway. Hopefully there'll be lots of pictures. Lori promised to have her camera on hand. :)

Two days is never enough time, but in this case, it was definitely the best decision to shorten Colin's trip down here and make it just a weekend. Both Saturday and Sunday were long days, in the good way; Saturday night was a long night, in the "we didn't get up until 1:30 Sunday afternoon" way; and it was relaxing, especially for Colin.

Saturday, his flight got in at 11 a.m., and we just hung out for the afternoon--had lunch, went for a walk, started watching Everwood season 1 (which is going to be our next marathon, since Colin has never seen the series). We headed up to the school at around 6, and then after the show, I was there until 2 for strike. Colin was, too, but he went out to the car and fell asleep at around midnight, since he hadn't actually slept, except for a bit of dozing on the plane, since he got up at 9 on Friday morning...

... which explains why we decided to be heathens on Sunday morning and not even try to get up for church. Instead, we got up at around 1:30 and decided that we'd go for a walk to get some lunch, come back, and watch some more Everwood. And this is where the weekend gets interesting.

We left the apartment to have lunch, planning to walk there and back, about 2 miles each way. Not that far, but far enough that I didn't really want to carry my purse with me, and since Colin had his wallet and phone, I didn't take anything with me. Including the keys to the apartment. Which I realized when we were about three steps out the door, which was firmly locked behind us.

Mariah was in Vegas for the weekend, and she wasn't going to be getting home until around 10, so we called a locksmith to see how much it'd cost to get in, but decided that the $60 was more than we wanted to pay, and we'd just figure out something else to do. Colin had his car keys in his pocket, so at least we had a wallet and a set of car keys, so we could entertain ourselves for the rest of the day.

Except that it turned out that Colin didn't have his keys with him. So, we had an afternoon and evening to kill with a wallet and some decent walking shoes. Instead of walking to the restaurant we'd originally planned to go to, we went to the mall a little further away (about 3 1/2 miles), which has more sit-down restaurants and a movie theatre, and figured that we'd see a movie, and by the time that was over and we walked back home, Mariah would be getting back.

That part of the plan worked beautifully. We walked to the mall, had lunch, wandered around Borders for a while, saw Coraline, and walked home, getting back at around 10... only to find out that Mariah's flight had been delayed, and it'd be at least another couple of hours before she got home.

And, of course, I had to pee. I figured we should walk to the 24-hour grocery store, since nothing closer was open by 10:30 on a Sunday night, and wait there until Mariah got home. So, off we went, walking about a mile to the store--and when I was finished, Colin figured that we were going to just head back. I'd thought we could just wander around in the store for a while, but he didn't really want to, and I told him that as long as he was going to keep me warm (fortunately, it was a mild night, although sitting on the cement steps outside the apartment was a little chilly), that was fine.

We sat on the steps outside for a while, then decided that we wanted to go to 7-11 a few blocks away and get some supper, since it was about 11:30, and lunch had been quite a while ago. Mariah came home at around 12:15, just as we were finishing chili dogs from the Tommy's beside the 7-11. (Chili dog and hot chocolate. Nice combination, no?)

If nothing else, the day was our first really good training walk for this year's breast cancer walk... we did about 9 miles (almost 15 km) over the course of the day.

Once we got inside, we ended up watching another episode of Everwood and not going to bed until almost 3. Of course, the alarm went off at 5:30, since we had to leave for the airport by 6, but I was back home by 7:30 and in bed for a couple more hours of sleep before heading out for the rest of my day.

Now Colin is back in Calgary, likely working on music by now. He's planning to still take this week as a vacation of sorts and not go to the rehearsals that he's already planned to have covered by someone else, so he'll have enough time to really work on the show. He might go back to work on Thursday and Friday (and save those two vacation days for some other time), but that'll partly depend on how the music is coming. Even if he does, though, this is a "days" week for him, and it's always easier for him to get work done outside of work when he's on days, rather than nights.

So, like I said when we first decided to do this, it's the best decision. He got a couple of days away from the work, and we got to spend some good, uninterrupted time together for a few days. Easter weekend will be a little longer and a little busier, with a lot more people to see, but it was nice to have this interlude that was just us for a little less than 48 hours.

So, yesterday was Ash Wednesday.

Last year, I talked a little bit about my own personal history with Lent, so I won't reiterate most of that, although I'll probably digress a little bit into the reasons for the whys behind it at times.

Where to start? There are few trains of thought that I want to follow here, so... let's just jump in, shall we?

( This season )

Random:

My pants are just a little too tight today. I bought a new suit for work, and I was right in between two pant sizes. The jacket's fine, but the pants are the kind that are just that little bit too snug. The next size up was just a bit too loose, though, so I'm hoping that these will be okay. Still, I hate days like this. Thankfully, I brought jeans to change into after work.

If my mom, sister, and I do the Weekend to End Breast Cancer, they should be fine, since I'll actually be getting a lot of exercise in getting ready for that.

I need to go back to the gym. It looks like the Gold's Gym near me is doing a promotion right now. Hmmm... I was with them for 2 years before I moved, and really liked it. I should call and find out what the promotion itself is, and also what their month-to-month membership rates are like.

***

I told my parents about grad school last night. My mom was slightly offended that I'd waited two weeks to tell them, but I think she got over it pretty quickly, after a snide remark or two about "Well, we know where we fit into the heirarchy of your life." Heh. Not really; I just wanted to a) talk to Colin first, and b) have some idea of what I was going to do before I told them. Well, (a) was accomplished; (b) is nowhere close, but that's okay. I figured they should know before they heard through the grapevine, or before the news was leaked some other way.

***

The company I'm working for right now has about five different offices in Calgary, and I keep getting phone calls for people in other locations. That means I have to flip through a staff directory of all the locations, and then I look like an idiot because I can't find the person right away.

***

We're working on implementing a drama team at church, not just pulling in a cast for the shows that we're working on, and we have a meeting/training session for them tonight. It should be good--we'll get to do some very basic training and teach people some principles of acting, but right now, it's cutting into my rehearsal time for Easter, and I could use the extra rehearsal tonight. Since we're trying to target as many of the same people as possible (i.e., we want our cast to be on the team), we have to let this pre-empt rehearsal, at least this week. Drama team is only meeting once a month, so it's not a huge deal, but Easter is coming very, very quickly, and I need all the time with my actors that I can get.

After this meeting, however, I've got a meeting with my sound and light guys to discuss their designs, so at least I won't feel like the evening is a total loss when it comes to the show.

***

Yeah, that's about it. I'm just biding my time for the next 45 minutes until it's time to get out of here.