Mishaps and other haps

I broke the seal today on Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion to World of Warcraft, which was released earlier this month.  Michael picked up snazzy Collector’s Editions for us the day it came out, so I have the little frost wyrm whelp pet, the card game, a book of art work, and the soundtrack (which might make an interesting diversion to listen to while driving to work).

Michael decided a while back that his new primary would be a Death Knight (there were reasons that tanking as a druid would suck in the new expansion), so he worked on leveling a Death Knight from 55 to 70 while I continued my vacation from World of Warcraft and contemplated whether my machine would run well enough to play.

I’ve been on hiatus from the game since May, essentially, which was about the time my computer started overheating while running dungeons.  The timing was good.  I was as far as I could get in the game without investing huge amounts of time a week and joining a raiding group that could handle Black Temple.  I’m a gamer, but not that much of a gamer, clearly.  Therefore, I was growing bored with weekly Karazhan and Zul’Aman runs and needed a vacation until the next expansion– so it worked out.

Right now, the iMac is in the shop, but I can run WoW on Michael’s recently-acquired Mac Mini.  And I should have a working iMac back in my hands in the next few days.

Now that the weather is growing colder and cruddier by the day, it will be nice to have a cheap, indoor diversion on those weekends/evenings when we don’t really want to be out.

Time to level to 80!

We ended up staying in Madison for Thanksgiving this year since Michael only had one day off.  It was a sunny, cold day and we spent most of the afternoon with Heather and Michael Lerner and Heather’s side of the family out in Sun Prairie.  They had invited several of their friends out for the week, so there was quite a bit of cooking and socializing taking place when we arrived.

I had fun helping Heather with a marvelous spinach-grapefruit-walnut salad (I will have to make it at home sometime) and adding the last few ingredients to the pecan pie– mmm, I hadn’t eaten a slice of pecan pie in years and this one was very good!

Yes, you can cook outdoors in Wisconsin when there is snow on the ground.  Granted there was not much snow left yesterday, but there were still some patches around and it was probably in the 20s outside while the turkey was cooking away in the smoker.  However, it may have been the weather that slowed down the turkey’s cooking.  Eventually it came inside to finish cooking in the oven to ensure that it reached the proper internal temperature before serving.

As it worked out, there was also an oven-baked turkey, so we had dinner and dessert while the smoked turkey continued to cook and then followed up dessert with more turkey!  Oh, it was all delicious!

We ate in Sun Prairie late in the afternoon (what a feast!) and by 6 or so we headed over to Michael’s Dad’s to spend time with Kim, Maretta, and Kyle.  Terry arrived a little later in the evening and we stayed until about 10, watching holiday movies.  Michael baked some cinnamon rolls we had picked up earlier in the day, so we had more dessert, not that anyone was hungry.

Thanks to everybody for making our Thanksgiving Day a fun occasion!  I think we have the opportunity to see Michael, Heather, and Evelyn Rose again this weekend (we had breakfast with them last Sunday, too).  It’s good to see them while they’re in town!

** Unrelated to Thanksgiving, I had mentioned that we were planning to have dinner with Terry and Kim at Samba on Wednesday night.  We did and it was excellent–  I highly recommend the dining experience.   However, while we were walking around downtown, we noticed that Sucre (the wonderful patisserie on the Square) has closed, which is sad.  Ben & Jerry’s is also “closed until further notice.”  I wonder if these are related to the recession?**

So far, the highlights of my first morning of vacation have been going to the gym and cleaning up from the miracle fruit party last night.

Our dishwasher is on the frits, so clean-up is going a little less smoothly than anticipated.  That being said, I think the tasting party was a success and I ate more than my fair share of sour fruit.  Some of the items Terry picked up were: lemons, limes, cranberries, pomegranate, oranges, strawberries, coffee, several types of cheese, pickles, pickled onions, radishes, tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard, unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder.  We generally agreed that the fruit was greatly enhanced by the miracle fruit tablets and none of us should be coming down with scurvy any time soon.

This afternoon I have another service appointment for my computer.  Hopefully it will be working well again before long.  We had some repairs made on Sunday, but it’s still shutting down when it shouldn’t be.

Tonight we’re planning to go to Samba Brazilian Steakhouse for dinner with Terry and Kim.  I have been wanting to try this restaurant for a while, so I’m looking forward to it.

We’ve finally figured out our Thanksgiving plans, I think.  It sounds like we will be spending part of the day with the Lerners and their friends/family and later we will be spending some time with Maretta and Kim.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there!

Enya– Stars and Midnight Blue

Memories we share together, moments no one else can know
I will keep them close to me, never let them go

Once you filled my hands with roses-then you gave your heart to me
When a kiss had followed, this Love was meant to be

Time goes by, and the snow is drifting- slowly in the sky cold, cold night
as you lie beside me, I can hear your heartbeat

You have lost yourself in dreaming, I have lost myself in you.
Now we lie beneath the sky, stars, and midnight blue.

It has been a pretty good week, following a pretty sad weekend– we had to cancel our plans for Thanksgiving in Florida.  This was pretty heartbreaking for me because I had hoped Michael would be able to meet my grandparents, who don’t travel and have some health conditions that will probably prevent them from being at our wedding.  I wanted him to meet my sister and other relatives, too.  Also, I haven’t had Thanksgiving with my family in ten years and I was really looking forward to it.

But we had to cancel for a reason that is pretty good overall: Michael has started his new job.

This week has been pretty mellow.  I have been working a lot.  There has been a lot to do.  This should result in a pretty fat paycheck on Black Friday.

Michael started his job on Wednesday.  It’s going well so far, although he hasn’t actually been able to do much yet.  Apparently, they already have him signed up for some web server training.

We had a delicious, early Thanksgiving dinner with the Dotzours, Terry, Tom, and Kim on Monday night.  Tuesday night was a pretty quiet night spent at the house– we watched a movie, had tacos for dinner, and then Michael played a video game and I read.  Wednesday night, after Michael’s first day at work, we did some fun shopping at the gaming store, the bookstore, and Best Buy.

Tonight I cooked marinated chicken (balsamic vinegar + olive oil, spices) and we watched TV for a bit.  Michael is currently killing zombies and I think I am going to read again.  It’s a nice, quiet night.  We are having friends over for a board game tomorrow night.

I bought my wedding dress last week.  It is on order and I will not have it until February.  I’m excited about how it’s going to look.

This weekend should be pretty good.  I have an assortment of random plans on Saturday, including a stop at the Women’s Expo.  We have gaming on Sunday and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone.  It’s been a few weeks since we had the whole group assembled.  I feel like I should take photos or something.

I am still planning to take a couple of extra vacation days to round out the week of Thanksgiving.  I am working Monday and Tuesday next week, but I will be off from Wednesday through the following Monday.  I’m also taking a full week off (two weekends, three vacation days, and two days of company holiday) at Christmas.  I think I will feel better about work and life after having some time off.  Hopefully I will spend a lot of it baking and shopping

I really do feel bad for people who don’t have great families.  I have a great family.  I miss them terribly and wish I could see them more often.

It’s not easy being green.

In the land of minor occurrences, today I decided that my fingernails were long enough to paint and decorated them with a coat of nail strengthener and OPI’s “Happy Anniversary”, a clear polish with a ton of pastel glitter and a slightly opalescent sheen.  This is a milestone since I have been known to grow my nails briefly, only to bite them down to the nubs again.

The nail polish purchase and application happened after going out to dinner to celebrate that Michael was hired for a new job today.  He will provide high-level tech support for Lands’ End’s e-commerce group– I suppose the sort of problems a person might encounter when ordering merchandise from their website.  After previously being a call center manager and an IT manager, this is a bit of a different role, but certainly something that will add experience and skills to his resume.  Given the potential salary range, I think it’s a step up, even, from the management roles he held before.  We’re not certain yet when he starts, but he should find out in the next few days.

This news came on the tailend of a pretty neat weekend.  We had a fun gaming session on Friday night at the Dotzours’ house with Bryan and Wes, who spend more time being dads nowadays than playing computer games, card games, or board games, much less RPGs.  Maybe we’ve got them hooked on 4th edition D&D now– who knows?  It was a good time, anyway.  Athena and Guffey joined us for the game and Sarah and Charlie came along to hang out and relax.

Andrew spent some time reading books with me and rolled his very first 20-sided dice.  He knows all of the numbers — good job, Mom and Dad!

We celebrated some birthdays this weekend with a Saturday night dinner at Pedro’s, followed by board games.  Alice, Matt, Josh, and Betsy all have birthdays that fall in late October or early November.  Happy birthday, guys!

Work has recently been stressful due to a number of deadlines coming up before the end of the year and the absence of my new co-worker, who has been out of the office quite a bit for medical reasons (herself and her husband), weddings, and funerals.  Wow, it has been a crazy couple of months for her and I hope things start to calm down a little!

It has also been hard trying to run a one-woman show (essentially) at work.  My productivity levels have been soaring, but projects are far from complete.  It looks like I will be doing some overtime here and there to make sure we stay on task.  This is OK.  With a wedding coming up in less than a year, the opportunity to earn extra money is very welcome indeed.

Our roommate, Alice, was home for the weekend between work trips to South Dakota and Hawaii, but she’s off again so we’re at home alone until the middle of next week.  It’s going to be pretty quiet.  I need the time to study for my financial products exam next Monday and Michael will be playing the new World of Warcraft expansion non-stop when it comes out on Thursday.

After Obama’s victory announcement last night, there was a spontaneous parade in downtown Madison.  I wasn’t there, but I read about it this morning:

It made me think of “On the Pulse of Morning” (you may remember this was the poem Maya Angelou wrote and delivered for Bill Clinton’s inauguration in January, 1993).

I saw Oprah Winfrey and Jesse Jackson on CNN after Obama’s speech, in the crowd at Grant Park in Chicago late last night– tearful and jubilant.  It was an amazing night.  It was a night for the heart and for hope.

Thinking more critically this morning, I am perplexed about the votes to ban gay marriage in states that Obama carried, Florida and particularly California.

Here is my opinion on the issue: I am an advocate of monogamous, long-term relationships.  I think they are good for individuals and for society as a whole.  They provide stability for the kind of family-oriented lives most people choose to have and I think that anyone who wants to protect their partner (of the opposite gender or the same gender) with legal rights should have the ability to do so by marrying them.

Marriage is *not* solely or even primarily a religious convention.   I am not personally affiliated with any religious group, but I am choosing to marry because I want to spend my life with a person I have chosen to love and I want our lives to have the legal and social binding that marriage provides.  It’s a rite of passage, a civil right and a social tradition.  It’s a nearly universal provision of being human.  The opportunity should be universal.

Marriage is a legal and social choice.  It is also a choice based on individual, personal emotions.  So why are we letting religious bigots define marriage in the United States?  Why are we being bigots, ourselves, by denying gays civil liberties with our votes?

America grew up a little last night.  We elected our first African-American president.   I think he is going to be a great leader, perhaps the sort of president whose legacy will rival that of John F. Kennedy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

Now we have more growing up to do as a nation.  It’s time to put on our big-boy (and big-girl) pants and stop clinging to our self-perpetuated, childish fears.  We have to work for the best we can give ourselves and each other– as lucky individuals who have the chance to live as free citizens in a democratic society.  Choice is key here.  Our country will be as good as we choose to make it.

More about this when I am not on the verge of keeling over.

Wow, what a night.  I am wiped, but happy.