awhyzip

Today I am home sick from work. And I took yesterday off as a planned day off. It was lovely weather yesterday, and I even managed to have lunch & catch a matinee at the Capitol with Gilly.

Too bad today is so humid I am sweating just sitting here at the computer.
And the reason I am home sick is because my foot hurts a lot. Which sadly cuts down on my enjoyment of the day.

"You are being a wimp! It is not that bad, and you can even walk around if you'd just focus on ignoring the pain. Pain which is relatively NOTHING! Other people would probably think this is nothing..." I tell myself, in between periodic whimpering.

I am glad I decided to call in sick. Even though it's not a contagious sort of ill, it was the appropriate call.

And, you know what I am the most glad about? The discomfort is finally starting to taper off a bit. There's a good chance I'll be all better by tomorrow morning.

Yesterday, when I had the day off work, Gilly & I saw "Waitress" at the Capitol. I hadn't heard of the movie before, but it was pretty good.

The story follows a pie-waitress who is in a bad marriage. She is pregnant and unhappy about it, but planning to have the baby. She is trying to make plans to leave her husband, Earl. She falls in lust with & starts an affair with her OB/GYN. Oh, and she keeps inventing bizarre pies. (She's a very talented pie-maker.)

Those of you who know me can probably guess what I thought about the bizarre pies. :-)
(I am gung-ho for unusual ingredient combinations. Here it was being celebrated!)

But, more than the pie-fillings, what I really enjoyed about this movie was the bad husband, Earl. He was CLEARLY a controlling, abusive, not-good husband, and creepy to boot. But he was written/played as a real character, not a cartoon. He had sympathetic moments -- and the inappropriate behaviors seamlessly grew from them.

This was the first "bad husband" character that DIDN'T leave me going "why in the HELL did she even start up with him, anyway?" That impressed me.

So, I'd recommend this as a pretty good movie.
(Overall, it's a lighthearted movie, too. )

A few weeks ago, I went back to Northampton for a friend's birthday party.
This was great.

The party was in a bar (the VFW, practically across the street from my parents'! --- it has karaoke :-D). So, I brought beeswax tealights, and snuck them into each one of the birthday girl's drinks. They float very nicely... even if Lisa was like "the vodka tonic is going to ignite!"

I sang a couple rounds of karaoke with my friend. The other guests' musical selections were heavily towards the country spectrum. (With some classic rock, too.) I don't mind listening to that... but I was worried they'd hate the songs I could sing. I was feeling very Yuppy. :-/ Especially when the bartender apparently didn't have all the ingredients to make the drink I asked for (chocolate Martini -- thnx Pup), or had never heard of it (Chambord margarita -- thnx Gilly).

Lisa made me sing Before He Cheats with her. I just sorta tried to act out the lyrics, because I sure didn't know the tune. Nothing worse than a karaoke singer who doesn't actually know the song they are killing.

Later, we sang Summer of '69, and that was fun. A blast from the past because she & I used to sing that one most of all, walking on the bike path home, back when she had a laughably intense crush on Bryan Adams.

My friend Sarah also sang, with her amazing, wry, rich singing voice: "Me and Bobby McGee"
Of course, she knows the woman who was running the karaoke machine, because Sarah used to work with the woman's husband, doing karaoke in various venues around the area. Of course.

After the drinks, we headed out to the old Whately Diner for late night food.

Good times.

I was glad my old friend Katie was there. And Sarah, unexpectedly in town. (Unexpectedly to me, that is.) And Lisa, of course. And even Lisa's friend [M-i-am-blanking-now-on-her-name-oh-no], not ever really a friend of mine, but definitely a presence in my life via Lisa & Lisa's house.

Jonathon came with me, and gamely drove me around. And I'm hoping we managed to find an effective-enough way to reduce the allergen exposure he gets at my folks'. Poor guy.

Back in Boston, I'm still doing Monday-night geeky TV watching. We started a fun little series called Slings & Arrows.
I say "little" because it's a 6-episodes a season show. Far cry from the massive Babylon 5. Or Crusade, which we have ditched in disgust.

At work, I recently rolled out a complex new workflow that I developed for one of the dev teams. They started using it Monday, and I am pretty proud of it. Yay. That feels good.

I went to a Board Meeting at Eitz Chayim, per the invitation of one of the co-presidents.
It was interesting, but I do not want to go to another one.

So I will turn down their offer to join the board.
The Kitchen & what I do with the School, and hopefully I'll find a Meah 1st-year to join, is enough. (Oh, and the weekly Shabbat Dinner-out invites, although that doesn't take any time.)

Last, and actually least, my Fig Tree is ripening its figs.
They look so lumpy & gross when they are fully purple-ripe! But, mmmm.