Chaos Attraction
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The Birthday Weekend 2015-04-26, 9:14 p.m. |
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So, the birthday weekend. It was very busy and it took me awhile to get this done, hence why the entry is out of order. I took Friday off from work, primarily so I could avoid being stuck on the phones all day. As per usual to slightly worse than usual, apparently almost everyone else called in sick, so yeah, had I been there I really would have been stuck on the phones all day because only two customer service lackeys were left--one for the counter and one for the phone. Ugh, so glad I wasn't there. Instead, I went to a 9 a.m. therapy session with my shrink in person, since I had the free time and so did she. (Kinda sucked having to be up that early on a day off birthday, but oh well.) She wanted to teach me a lot of pressure point techniques for dealing with stress while other people are staring at you, which was good. She also grumbled at the clearly fake smile some poor bank employee who was getting yelled at gave her the other day, and I was all, "He probably HAS to be smiling like that or else he gets in trouble." After that, I had a bunch of Barnes and Noble book coupons and went off to use them. I was going to look for improv books but wasn't that impressed with their selection, or at least they weren't what I was looking for. I ended up getting a book on TED talks and much to my delight, I found that a series I read as a teenager has been brought back, so I bought those books. (Check the book blog in a bit for those.) I went to Safeway for sushi and cake and watched a few episodes of TV until it was time to leave for the train station--I took the train home early for a change in hopes of getting back earlier. Hah, Mom still got me an hour later...but whatever. We still made it back to town in time to go to this awesome fondue restaurant. Seriously, this place was FANCY. Tons of options for the cheeses. Tiny finger foods. The dinner special we got had cheese fondue appetizers, chocolate fondue dessert (tons of options for that too), and in the middle they had you grill your own tiny meats on the burners on the table. I would totally go back to this restaurant again, but I'd probably just eat the fondues and skip the meats because that took awhile with all of the individual grilling. They also had pages and pages of $20 fancy drinks, which were great fun and I got drunk pretty easily off them. And I got birthday champagne on top of that. On Saturday, Mom, Angelica, and I went to go see the musical Once, which I didn't know much about. It was interesting, though I'd probably say it's not going to be a favorite of mine because well, it doesn't quite have a happy ending like you might expect. It does take place in a bar, and they let the audience walk onstage and order booze. I did that--I should probably point out that I slept in that morning and we did NOT eat before the show--and got whoooooooo drunk just sitting in my seat. (I become a Woo Girl when drunk, apparently.) Which is fine while you're sitting, but when it's time for intermission and the bathroom...I did make it up all the stairs, but was thinking, "Hah, I probably shouldn't be doing this." And when I was in the bathroom, the roll of toilet paper bounced out of the holder and rolled down the aisle. Kind of embarrassing to have to admit that to the entire line when I got out. Ah well. After that, we went to Amici's for lunch/dinner/whatever and afterwards dropped Angelica off, then Mom and I hit a Half Priced Books so I could look for more improv books. I actually found a few useful ones, and other things, there and that was my birthday gifts. On Sunday, we woke up early again (ugh, but Mom insisted that she get A Nice Breakfast) and went to the Scottish Games for a few hours. We pretty much ended up hitting the shopping and not much else by the time our time ran out. Mom bought me some jewelry and I bought her some, and she also got some clothes, including her own Utilikilt! She got this silky soft red and blue model that's nice and lightweight for this area and goes on like boxers. I suspect this model won't last long, somehow, it seems like they don't use the colorful models for very long. I have a custom red kilt that when I go by the booth, people start eying and saying they don't offer it any more. And after that, we went to the big TEDx conference for the year, Hoo boy, it was long--15 speakers/acts and went from 1 to after 6:30. I have to say that was probably a bit too long because during the intermissions (one was a half hour long and one was ten minutes--dunno why they needed a dang half hour after the first five went), the full house was emptying out to about half a house left. I felt sad for the later speakers in the day when people were walking out in presumed exhaustion. I'll try to give a rundown: * "You Are A Museum's Most Valuable Asset" by Wendy Meluch --this lady works with museums to make sure that people engage with them and analyzes how people work with exhibits. |
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