I just got back from a very cool boat ride. Carl works in an office full of liberal techno-hippies, all of whom work for a rich dude who retired early from Amazon and now runs a little non-profit for fun. He has a beautiful wooden yacht and likes to go out in it as much as possible. Tonight he invited the whole office, including Carl, and including Carl’s girlfriend, and we all went and had dinner on the boat.
I got a little seasick and there were two very tired and slightly cranky kids on the boat…I felt for their mom; she didn’t get to talk to anyone else the entire time. We played Christmas carols and looked at the lights in downtown Seattle…pretend I have a digital camera and that I’m showing you a picture of downtown Seattle, okay?..and we saw a steam-powered boat from 1919 go by, full of people. The boat was really gorgeous (again, pretend I’m showing you a picture) and had a little tiny oven and special plates with bumpers on them so they wouldn’t slide around and a little tiny bathroom. Also there were several very cute boys on this boat, not to mention some very good spicy ornage chicken. A good time was had by all, I think. Possibly excepting the mom of the tired kids, but even she seemed like she was having a good time.
I’ve been looking forward to this little trip all week because work is pretty annoying right now. Not, thank heavens, because of “office politics”…can I just say how thankful I am that I can put that in quotation marks, there? I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed the people I work with as much as I do now. Just because what I do at work involves a lot of organizational skills that I…don’t neccesarily have. it’s really embarrasing when it turns out that I’ve lost something or forgot to do something or am late with something else because of some ridiculous mistake I’ve made. I decided to read a journal three months ago instead of tracking that a participant got paid, and what do you know, today I couldn’t find any proof that this participant got paid and it bolloxed everything up. I dozed during a meeting in August and it turns out that I’m late with an interview this week! I hate when stuff like that comes back to haunt me, because it proves that you should always be diligent and organized at work, and shouldn’t spend so much time sitting around the office eating candy and talking about birth control methods and making up clever screen saver quotes. So it’s all my own fault, and you know how I hate it when things are my fault.
In other non-work and non-boat news, my holiday season, with this inagural boat trip, is in what passes for full swing for me. I’ve mentioned that I don’t much like the holidays, but I have to say that I do like going to a lot of parties. I like baking and I even like sending and receiving Christmas cards. So maybe I was lying a little bit when I said I didn’t like the holidays. I’m not saying that I’m going to be rushing back to the mall again this weekend or anything, but I’ll give Christmas a chance. Charlie Brown would be so proud, right?
Going home ought to be interesting. Carl will be there for New Year’s, and while the key Girls have all decided that we’d all rather have a spa day together this year instead of giving each other presents, we still haven’t decided what to do for New Year’s. I have never in my life gone to a really swanky something for New Year’s and I want that trend to end immediately. Except that I’m kind of afraid to go to South Beach or somewhere actually cool. Like I’m afraid the South Beach Fashion Police, Cool Division, will immediately arrest me and immure me in an Art Deco prison somewhere. So maybe I am doomed to sit around someone’s living room (wearing my silver ball skirt, of course) and toast everyone with sparkling apple cider. I am doomed to be perpetually eight years old, it would seem.
It strikes me that it’s just about a year since I started this journal. I was talking about not feeling very hip when I’m Miami back then too. I’ll save the meta-reference for the journalverysary entry itself, but, damn, can you believe it? Christmas time again, and almost time to go home again, and here we all still are.