A Flea on a Griddle

This weekend went past like a whirlwind;

Friday night, Elysia had made an appointment to show the apartment in the front house to some prospective tenants. She had gone out and bought some blinds that had to be put up before the folks arrived to look at the apartment.

When I got home from work, I immediately noticed that she had been a busy bee all day! The windows were decorated beautifully for the holidays, and she had done a bunch of other stuff around the house.

One of the things was that she had taken all of the left-over turkey, and had made a big batch of turkey soup, which was just what the doctor ordered for a cold, windy, damp night!! When I walked in the door, she put a bowl of steaming, delicious turkey soup in front of me, served one up for herself, and we both sat and wolfed down our respective bowls of soup! That done, we headed over to the apartment to get the blinds put up before the people arrived to look at the place.

Working together, we got it done just in the nick of time. The folks arrived just as we finished up and had a look at the apartment. The real estate agent was a character, and the prospective tenant was a tough elderly woman who struck me as somebody who would most likely be rather.. um.... difficult to have as a neighbor.

My take on the whole thing was that she didn't find the apartment to her liking. Actually, my take was that she didn't find much of anything to her liking.... ever!

Once they took a keek at the aparment and cleared out, we locked everything up and went out to get our Yule Tree.

We go to the same place every year, and have a 'tree guy' who we enjoy seeing each year. He is a rather hefty, red-faced lad who sort of reminds me of a rougher version of the character George Castanza from TV's 'Seinfeld'. We generally spend about an hour joking and talking and basically laughing our asses off.

The place always has gorgeous trees, and somewhere along the line it has become our tradition to go there. This year was no exception in the tree department, and we picked out a beautiful fralsam (fraser/balsam hybrid) who we named 'Claire' (Yes.. every year we name our tree... no laughing!)

When we got home, we were just about to set it up when we discovered that the stand had a huge crack in it, in the place where it is supposed to hold the water for the tree... so, we put our coats back on, braved the cold, and headed back out in search of a tree stand. Not just any tree stand, either.. but a strong, beefy, hefty, bad-assed tree stand that wouldn't let our tree tip over, even in the event of an earth quake! (Okay... the earthquake part is a wee bit over the top... but, we wanted something sturdy).

We stopped at Harrows, which sells trees, but we didn't take into account that most of the trees they sell are made out of materials with nineteen syllables, will be here longer than rocks, and come with their very own stands built-in as a rule. We waded through the crowd of crazed, frantic, lunatic shoppers only to learn that they basically had a choice of two types of stands; 'flimsy', and 'complete shit'. Being unsatisfied with either, we breeped back out to the vehicle and headed towards the local K-Mart shopping center where we knew there was a moderately well-stocked garden center full of Christmassy goodness this time of year.

Upon our arrival at K-Mart, Elysia wandered off in search of some crazy PJs for her impending PJ sleepover party hosted by a fellow 'Stitch & Bitch' member. For my part, I was on a mission to find a stand. I managed to find a mongasso stand that looked like it would hold the Eiffel Tower ramrod straight if you upended the thing and stuck the top of it into the stand. I headed back over to the PJ department in search of my wife, where I found her with an adorably cute frustration wrinkle smack in the middle of her brow.

THE PROBLEM: She had found some PJs that fit the bill perfectly insofar as the design, colors, and material were concerned.... the problem was that the sizes of the top and the bottom were mismatched, and there was just the one set left on the shelves.

THE SOLUTION: I indicated the mannequin, and asked her whether she had checked the size on the PJs that the mannequin was wearing. She had not. Soooo... I accosted the mannequin, quickly undressing her and then redressing her in record time. Elysia got her PJs, the mannequin got a change of clothing, and I got to save the day. So everybody was happy.

We paid for everything and rewarded our remarkable diligence with a stop at the Paneria Bread place in the same shopping center. After being on my feet for 16 hours, it was heaven to sit with my wife and eat a tasty meal and listen to the laughter and light hearted conversations of all of the patrons, who, for some reason, always seem to be nice folks in that place. We had a conversation of our own, finished our meal, and headed home, where we finally got the tree into the stand.

That done, it was time to head up to bed at last. I was scheduled to work on Saturday morning, and had to be up early.

I got my sorry, tired ass up early Saturday, and headed in to work. It was a crankin' morning, but it wound down at around 11 o'clock. The bosses daughter came into the shop and during a conversation she suggested that we hold our own 'biggest loser' competition where we all weigh in on specific days, and through our own individual programs of diet and exercise, compete to see who will lose the highest percentage of body weight, the winner receiving a small cash prize and considerable word-fame (i.e., 'bragging rights'). We decided to have our initial weigh-in on Monday 12 December. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

After work, I blasted home, had another bowl of Elysia's turkey soup, and got ready to go to a bartending gig. It turned out to be a wedding, and the night went smoothly. It was a sort of limp, nondescript crowd, to be honest... and there isn't really much to tell. They were sort of beige. I finished up the night, came home to the last bowl of that turkey soup, and polished it off. We watched the end of a Frank Sinatra movie, and I began fading fast, so we headed up and I believe I was fast asleep before the mattress stopped moving from me flopping onto it.

Elysia woke me up with kisses and hugs and after looking out the window at the snow that fell during the night, and the squirrels and birds playing in it, we headed downstairs to start coffee and breakfast (waffles!), after which I dug out my highland attire, ironed what needed to be ironed, and then hit the practice chanter and pipes for an hour or so before showering up and dressing to head out to a bagpiping gig that I was scheduled for.

This job was an ordination ceremony for a new minister in a local presbyterian church.

I played outside the church for the arriving congregation, and then we headed in so that we could get seated for the ceremony. There had been some discussion as to whether I would play at the reception as well, but, in my experience with bagpipes, a little goes a long way. I opted to simply play before the ceremony. Since this was an ordination ceremony for a new minister, (I was hired by his mother...), I opted to defer any payment to me. I asked the mother if she would instead simply give the payment to the minister's (her son's) new congregation as a gift, instead. I think that there are certain occasions where accepting payment is sort of cheesy. He will be giving a great deal to a lot of people for a very long time. The least I can do is give him a small thing such as this to make his ceremony feel a little bit more special.

After the reception (we only stayed for a little while, actually....), we headed home, changed into sweats, and sat quietly for about an hour. Elysia worked on a crochet project she is planning on giving as a Christmas gift, and I sat and thought and browsed a magazine and listened to 'Echoes' on NPR.

Elysia began to fade at around 9 o'clock, and we turned everything off and headed upstairs... her to bed, and me to blog for a little while...

It seems to me that I just left work on Friday, and here I'll be heading back in in about six short hours. That's the way it goes, though, I suppose.

Tommorrow night, hopefully, we will be trimming the tree... which I am looking forward to immensely!!