James' birthday week and its ensuing adventures

This has been a particularly festive week leading into Christmas. James' birthday was Friday, and since he's my favorite person ever, I was extremely excited to make it a good one for him, even though we didn't have a lot going on, gift-wise.

Tuesday, I had a mystery shop at Barton Creek mall. Typically, I don't like going to the mall, but this particular job involved purchasing a personalized ornament. Daphne picked one out especially for James (in which we are all depicted by cacti), we had our names put on it, and then I stopped by Godiva to get a free truffle.

Godiva has a program for which you can sign up and get one free truffle a month. I am not there every month, but when I happen to be at the mall, anyway, it's a great way to consume $3.25 worth of chocolate for nothing. The kiosk was pretty busy, so we waited in the shorter of the lines. However, it ended up taking forever because the ladies in front of me were purchasing for their boss's employees. We didn't mind waiting; it was pretty fascinating to watch them pile ballotin upon ballotin of chocolate next to the register, and watch the employee scan box after box. They had a sale, buy one/get one half-off, but even so, their total amounted to $887 and some change. Which made me giggle when I stepped up and asked for my one free truffle. Salted caramel, by the way. Delicious. The middle is entirely molten. Great. Now I will have to go back in January.

Wednesday, I spent most of the day baking. I blogged about that over in my more public blog here. I made cookies and pull-apart bread, spending five hours on my feet while still managing to crank out a good hour or two of work.

Wednesday night was our small group's Christmas "gift" exchange. Although it was white elephant gifts, Daphne and I ended up with some pretty sweet stuff. We finally got a cork board to serve as our "Wall of Awesome," something we had in the trailer but not yet at the Nuthaus. Also, Daphne ended up with some assorted things that included a sign that says "The cat lives here; you are just visiting," which James hung on the back of his office chair; a garlic chopper that looks like a little car; and then this thing (which my friend Mallory will be unsurprised to learn that I was able to find online by searching for "worst salad chopper").

Thursday, I took Daphne to my sister's office as she was getting off work at 9 AM. Daphne went with Sarah to Waco to pick up her cousins and spend the night with them. I went to the Grosses to do our cookie bake/exchange. Since I'd already baked my cookies, I spent several hours painting them with glaze. Then I went home to work a bit and get ready for James' office Christmas party.

This is one reason I love the future (which is now). I just Googled "elegant hairstyle for long layered hair" and found a really simple one that I was able to fashion almost effortlessly.

The party venue was less than a mile from James' office, so instead of his coming home, fighting traffic, to get me then our fighting traffic to get back, I fought traffic alone to go to his office to retrieve him. It was more than a little frustrating, and helps me appreciate my man even more. I went under the "2 1/4 miles" to my exit marker, and half an hour later when I looked up, I was just going underneath the "1 3/4 mile" mark.

Once I got off of the infernal Loop 1, the drive wasn't bad at all. James' office complex is beautiful, and sprawling, and they have a gym and cafe. The party was at eleven plates, and there was a lot of great food. Unlike James' old office, where he'd talked to me about several people, giving them characteristic nicknames so I'd remember about whom he was talking), I didn't really know much about anyone there. But I met some very nice people... and, oh yeah, the food was great. My favorite thing was probably these little shots of truffled soup. Or the Caribbean shrimp. Or roasted fingerling potatoes. I don't know. It was all good. And James won $75 in a raffle.

Friday was James' birthday! After he watched the video I made him, I drove him back to work. I'd expected the worst, traffic-wise, so we left early enough to have breakfast together at the office in order to avoid people... who never materialized. I am glad we did that, though, because I got a tour of James' workplace, and we actually took our breakfast to go, eating it in his office.

Then, I went to my sister's house, as my daughter was there. The evergreen trees along 360 are decorated for Christmas, so in addition to the surprise of not many cars at all, I got to enjoy that festive touch. I worked for a few hours at Sarah's, then Daphne and I went to Rework to have lunch with the Reworkers.

When we got home, I made James the lemon meringue pie he'd requested. When he got home from work, we walked up to 24th Street and had dinner at Sushi Niichi. It is in a strip mall, and although it's clean, it's pretty nondescript. What it lacks in stereotypical "upscale sushi" ambiance, however, it makes up for in quality of the rolls. They gave James a giant scoop of green tea ice cream with chocolate syrup and whipped cream for his birthday!

Saturday morning, James and I wanted to eat at Kerbey Lane. Daphne wasn't hungry, so James suggested that we ride our bikes. This was perfect, because we'd gotten a late start and I had a movie mystery shop to complete, so needed to be home to leave again by 11:15. The day was already cooler than Friday, which was muggy and warm (mid-70s), and I could feel the breeze on my arms, even though I had on a light jacket over my sleeveless sweater.

During our excellent meal, James was looking outside with consternation. It had begun to rain. Over the course of breakfast, it poured, it sprinkled, and it just plain rained. By the time we were ready to go (our left-overs in a paper bag for ease of carrying), it was barely misting. We dried off our seats and took off. Two blocks away, it started pouring again. We were being pelted by cold rain, and could barely look up enough to see where we were going. It was actually very funny and fortunately the ride home is mostly downhill, so we didn't have to work too hard; we only had to brave the elements until we arrived at the porch of the Nuthaus, soaked through to our skin, ready to be warm and dry.

As soon as I'd changed clothes, Daphne informed me that it was 11:16, so we took off. We were going to see "Frozen," but the time had changed, and so we ended up seeing "The Hobbit" again, something Daphne had requested the day after we saw it the first time.

When we left the theater, it was a blazingly sunny day; if not for the puddles everywhere, you'd never know it rained at all.

After the free movie, we came home to free pizza, another mystery shop. Then James and I went to film part of our Christmas video. Daphne wanted to be home for a while, so I suggested to James that we ride bikes to our first location, now that it was so beautiful out. We did, and I realized that I had on too long a skirt when it felt like my bicycle was "self-braking" (which is what I told James until we realized why it was slowing to a stop). My skirt had gotten caught in the brake, and dragged forward by the tire. After a couple of trials and errors, I realized that it would work if I pulled the back of my skirt up to the front between my legs like a diaper. I was glad for Daphne that she was not with me; she would have been mortified.

Meanwhile, at the location, you COULD tell very much that it had rained. When we returned home, we had to put our shoes out on the back porch to dry out so that we could clean them... at some time in the future that has not happened yet.

Today, after working video for church, grabbing Raising Cane's take-out for our lunch, and buying my first full set of groceries since before Thanksgiving, we all piled into the car to meet a man about a horse. Or 190, actually. After years of wanting and months of looking, we found a too-good-to-be-true-but-everything-checks-out Chevy Astro on the Craigslist. We've done all of the research, even bordering into stalking. For instance, I ran the VIN. I was able to verify the story of who owned the car before and how he came to buy it. But then today, I asked him his last name for the cashier's check, and he'd already told me the vicinity in which he lived, and I was able to verify where he owns property and his exact address so we can hunt him down if it turns out to be a lemon. Or if he kills us when we take him the cash tomorrow (I have sent the information to my sister, who will most certainly avenge my death). We did end up suggesting that we meet at Krispy Kreme, which is good because it's a public place and also because James got a free hot doughnut.

This evening, we watched a Christmas move you might have heard of called "Die Hard," which was released 26 years ago in a world where smoking was allowed in airports and the swankiest limousines had tape decks.

Looks like tomorrow, I'll be buying a van. It, too, has a tape deck, which means I'm definitely trading up. Tomorrow I'm also making stromboli. And working. James will be working from home the rest of the year, and we had such a fun week together that I'm really looking forward to it!