Slugtown, Population: Me

I had great and grand plans for my crazy 11 days of no work. They weren’t terribly luxurious plans, but I was going to get stuff done. I was going to meet up with friends, and write Christmas cards and get my house organized and play chess with John and all sorts of stuff. Well, here I am on day nine, and I think I’ve accomplished exactly two of the things on my list.

Day one was a total bust, as I ended up working pretty much a full day from home. And that’s on top of putting in a 12+ hour day the day before. Whatever, there were a couple of projects where I had to wrap up my piece and pass them off to someone else before I could put them out of my mind and truly relax. So I got them done.

Days two and three were spent making cookie dough, baking cookies, decorating cookies, and wrapping presents. Oh yes, and let’s not forget making a last minute lasagna.

Day four: Despite my best efforts to ruin Christmas by “doing it all wrong” I managed to save the day with my thoughtful and delicious salad, lasagna and garlic bread. No, we actually had a pretty nice day. The weather was good, and we had a nice visit with John’s dad and then my mom. I cleaned up in the gift department. I now have so many cookbooks we had to rearrange some books to open up a new shelf.

Day five: I woke up exhausted and feeling like crap, and spent most of the day sprawled on the couch, watching TV, whining and feeling out of sorts. I did see The Price is Right for the first time in my life. For those of you just tuning in, my parents had a pretty restrictive TV policy, so there are many, many TV shows that the rest of the world has seen that I have not. I knew who Bob Barker was, and I had seen bits of the show, but I had never watched it start to finish. John tells me Bob Barker made the show more interesting than Drew Carey does. I did start to have fun rooting for people though, particularly this one kid who finally got his shot to go guess the price of something, only to have it turn out to be some lame painted dresser and radio/flashlight/storm kit combo…or so he thought! It turned out there was a car back there too. I was pleased for him when he won. Then it was on to watching Running Scared, which, really America? Did we think that movie was funny in the ‘80’s? Because on Wednesday, it helped me decide that what I really needed was a nap. A nap, followed by more time on the couch, eating way too many cookies, takeout for dinner, and then bed.

Day six: perked up enough to leave the house for a quick trip to Barnes & Noble. Got sucked in to watching part of the Biggest Loser marathon on Bravo. I’m not sure which season it was, but the guy who won lost 214 pounds. 214 pounds! It was pretty darn impressive. Ate leftover lasagna and salad, followed by more cookies.

Day seven: Did some reading, and actually made it out of the house to go running. Wow, did that suck, since I couldn’t breathe half the time. At least they had the gym down to a normal temperature.

Day eight: loaded a bunch of new music on to the iPod, thus accomplishing one of my goals for the week. Went down to my mom’s for her annual Christmas party, which was fun. John and Seamus and I mostly hung out in the basement, watching the Patriots-Giants game, providing score reports for the people upstairs, and eating large amounts of dumplings, spring rolls, empanadas, fried raviolis, crepes and brownies.

Day nine (today!) ran errands and met a friend for brunch. I had orange and vanilla bean French toast with roasted potatoes. Orange and vanilla bean French toast turns out to be very, very good. Even better: Catching up with a friend I hadn't seen in a year. There's something special you have with long time friends that just can't be defined.

That may not be a complete rundown of all of my activities for the last few days, but it covers the high points. Now, I have two days left, and a whole long list of stuff that I haven’t gotten done. Still, I think I’m just going to take it easy, rather than running around trying to cram all that crap in to a very short time frame. Sometimes, you just gotta know when to chillax and embrace your slughood.