today is a rather good day

and not just because it's my dad's birthday (ahem, happy birthday).

i started out at the doctor's office. she said, "40? you don't look 40." i said, "give it time; it's only been six weeks." then we looked at the model thyroids.

at home, the mailman brought my 2012 calendar, in the nick of time, and my bar card! of course, the bar card came with a bill.

then it was off to the aforementioned interview. i talked feral cats with the HR person, who also remarked on the unfortunateness of my law school graduation year in general, and talked shop with the partner with whom i may be working.

on the way home, i stopped by the natural history museum instead of the art museum and checked out the Birds of DC display. this display was not particularly popular with the hordes of holiday tourists, but i did find a wild parakeet?! the fine print: "extinct. there is a single record for this region - a flock seen in September 1865, from which several were shot." (therefore, i'm going to assume this is not Lunch's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-ancestor.)

possibilities

hmm. so i have an interview tomorrow for a 4 month temporary position as a non-attorney. normally, i'd bounce the pros and cons off of a couple of people, but they are not currently available. so it's just me and the animals trying to figure out what to do. what to do. blind cat's answer is to sit in the kitchen and mrowl in hopes that more food appears. the other three cats are sleeping. buddy alternates between licking his elbows and snoring. bird is strangely quiet.

i know. i'll go to the art museum. ok, i had to do the paperwork at the agency downtown today, so i did go to the art museum. i wanted to see if i could find Mountains and Sea by Helen Frankenthaler, who inspired the Washington Color School, but i couldn't.

of course, now i have had feelers from other agencies, but i'm not in a position to do doc review until after the bar exam (really must study). this job would be full-time, but just that, not the crazy hours of doc review. i also tend to believe working in my chosen field would be better than doing more generic doc review. and, as i told the agency, the mortgage demands payment regardless of what i'm called on the job. anyhow, i think i know my answer. and i can go to the art museum again tomorrow after the interview. 

happy Christmas!

You may recall that about this time last year I attempted to participate in an online project called Reverb10. The idea was to take daily prompts and use them to create blog posts that reflected on the past year and/or the coming year. You may also recall that I fizzled out not too far into the project. too much reflection.

The benefit to the project was that I found folks online, through blog posts and comments and through Twitter, that are just interesting, funny, sharing, kind, snarky and different folks. This year, there was initially no organized Reverb11, but more than a couple of those folks took it upon themselves to create prompts and weave together several versions of the project. I've been reading along sporadically, but not participating, until today. one of today's prompts reads: What's the most memorable gift you've ever received?

i've been receiving a new memory every Christmas for the last thirty one years. it seems i'm missing 1982 (ahem, momsie?) and have a couple duplicate years (circa 1999-2002), but nonetheless i have a collection of ornaments that instantly bring to mind snowy days at home in Indiana and milder days in other locations, filled with laughter and some tears, food and more food, songs and sharing. most of all, i have a collection of ornaments that reminds me that I am loved. i haven't had a full-sized tree in far too long, yet at least some of the ornaments make their way out each year. 

this year, the oldest and newest made their way to the mantel, along with handfuls of basic ornaments in glass vases and cards from the family and friends.

thank you, grandma and grandpa.

mistitling and a note re the snakes

ok, so the last post was not very well titled. it is, unfortunately, very true that the indoor furry creatures tend to leave unwanted gifts. speaking of the indoor furries, i wish i could get a picture of ferra that truly shows how special she is.

that's her back leg above her head and her front paw at the bottom of the sleeping cat.

in other news, the snakes at the zoo were being fed white mice or maybe rats. in the prior picture, if you wanted to look closely, the snake's head and the meal are towards the bottom. it was grotesquely fascinating. and the zookeeper used the longest pair of tweezers i've ever seen when poking the rattler to encourage it to strike the mouse/rat.

speaking of looking closely, i saw a downy woodpecker and a tufted titmouse at the lake the other day. at least that's what i'm calling them, based on my little bird identification book. i'm certainly no birder, but it's kind of fun to spot birds that are different from the more ubiquitous cardinals and mockingbirds.

some[furry]body is leaving me little gifts around the house

which is a good thing because I'm feeling a little bit discouraged at the moment, wondering if I made and am making the right decisions and waiting for more test results. oh, and i got a rejection email in response to my most recent resume submission. on the bright side, at least they were kind enough to respond promptly.

zoo day

i met an old friend for lunch last friday near the zoo, so we decided to pop over for a bit. a few highlights:

note the two moms sitting together at the top of the enclosure, watching the seven cubs (not really cubs anymore, maybe 15 months old?) playing on the lower levels.

the armadillo would not stop moving the entire time we were there, in stark contrast to the sloth who shared the enclosure.

somehow we managed to be there for feeding time at the reptile house. i've never heard so many people say, "that's so gross, but i can't stop watching."

the holiday zoo lights were coming on as we left. tonya ran off to take another picture and i'm sure jordan was updating social media somewhere....

i lost Wednesday

For about three hours this morning, I thought today was Wednesday. I was bopping along, making mental plans to do this and that and even getting some of those things done. Then I realized that it's actually Thursday. That's ok and all, but what happened to Wednesday? Oh right, I spent the day on the couch watching a Law & Order UK marathon and napping. I just needed a day of nothing. I've had a migrating cold since the weekend and a doctor's appointment on Monday that went fine, but apparently stirred some things around a bit.* Add in taking four cats to the vet (it takes two sets of appointments) and realizing I completely forgot to pay last month's electric bill, and I was just done. 

Now that I know it's actually Thursday, I'm adjusting my mental to-do list and getting to work, right after lunch. 

Yep, a little plate of comfort food with Campbell's tomato soup made with milk and grilled cheese with processed cheese food slices and homemade bread and butter pickles.

*The migrating cold goes something like this - day 1: scritchy throat, day 2: sneezing and dry cough, day 3: head congestion, day 4: nasal congestion, day 5: chest congestion, with a little lowgrade fever thrown in sporadically throughout. Hopefully it's almost gone.  And the thing about the doctor's visit is that they always seem to lead to just one more appointment. Now I've got to schedule a mammogram. Good times ahead.

the results are in

This *was* fun. I didn't expect to enjoy running with 4700+ other people in 35 degree weather, but once we got started, it went really smoothly. There were Christmas trees, Santas, a Grinch or two, toy soldiers, elves galore and a dreidel running through the streets of DC this morning. I should have worn my reindeer antlers, but they're still in the attic with the rest of the Christmas decorations. I just haven't felt inspired to decorate yet. 

My goal was to finish in less than an hour, and I did. My clock time was 59:31, squeaking in under the wire there, but my net time was just 53:51. I definitely need a t-shirt that says "fear the tortoise," as I am nothing, if not slow and steady.

Now it's time for turkey noodle soup with stock and meat from the Thanksgiving bird. I'm hoping it will banish this cold/flu that's been creeping on as the day progresses. 

she's crafty*

Spent the day in an old gymnasium with a stage at one end, accessible by a slightly curving, brief staircase. The ceiling lights were encased in iron cages that might have contained a fierce bird or two, but were instead protecting distant light bulbs from errant basketballs. The creaky, striped floor was scuffed with years of games, plays and potlucks. 

I think Jordan enjoyed her first experience as a vendor at an arts & crafts fair. And, perhaps most miraculously, I did not buy things from the 73% of the vendors who had really neat stuff (the other 27% were also good, but not necessarily to my personal taste). I did not buy the adorable felted wool ornaments or the hand turned wood bowl or the floofy scarf in variegated greens or the cyanotype print or the notebook in a map cover or the wooden spoon with an intricate pattern burnt into the back. The caterer swore she knew me from somewhere. Based on the food we ate, I'm glad I met her and would not mind seeing her again, especially when she asked if we'd met at the blueberry farm. mmm. blueberries.

There's so much more that goes into setting up a booth at one of the events than just the actual creation of the art. I enjoyed having a front row, er, behind the booth, seat today.

*bonus points if you know the next line to that song. ;-p

why yes, i spent my friday night making and eating cream of clean out the vegetable drawer soup

I went downtown today to pick up my bib (and jingle bells) for Sunday's race. I'll admit I'm a little nervous because there are apparently five thousand people signed up to run eight kilometers around DC. That's a lot of people. And I don't know any of them. Oh, and the start/finish area is in the same space as one of the OccupyDC camps. That doesn't seem to pose much of a logistical issue though, as I didn't see anyone outside their tents in the two days I've been downtown this week. Weird. Maybe they were all up at the other camp location or otherwise out and about? The pickup location was the Old Post Office, so I went up to the top of the tower to see the views. I didn't know you could do that. And for free. Thank you, National Park Service! Anyhow, my mandatory ethics class this past Tuesday was in the building in the foreground, and OccupyDC is camped towards the middle-right there.

Meanwhile, I had one turnip, a piddly portion of a head of broccoli and three mushrooms lingering in the vegetable drawer. Now I'm pretty sure that if you add Parmesan (especially the real stuff) and pumpkin seed oil at the end, almost any soup is tasty, but this really did turn out well. Yay, me?!

I have one more day of scheduled appointments (the four cats and I are going in for our respective feline and human annual poke and prod visits), and then there are no more excuses for not pounding the pavement. Of course, I mean that figuratively, but I have been putting off and putting off sending out my resume because of my fear of rejection which really only masks my fear of failure which is rather legendary. I have sent the resume out to a few places, but I need to be more focused about the search and more crafty in composing cover letters and, at the same time, less critical of my self. I've got to get out there. I am going to be rejected. And I am going to find a job. Right?

a big day

and yet, i feel more than a bit like this photo from my morning walk around the lake appears, in that i am still more than a bit out of focus and paddling like mad under the surface. although, in fairness, this bird is a diver and doesn't suffer surface fools like me gladly.
in other news, we had a nice lunch in the 'burbs (which resulted in leftovers for dinner!) and then found meter parking near the courthouse (yay!). the judges conducting (i almost typed performing, which, in a sense, it was?) the swearing-in ceremony were gracious and kind. one remarked how, prior to the completion of renovations, their courtroom had been the highest in the [jurisdictional] land; however, the current courtroom is in the basement of the finally renovated, historical courthouse. therefore, the effect is really no longer the same. 

at the end of the day, i still felt and feel a bit of goosebumps - i've sworn/affirmed to uphold the Constitution. that's really cool. even if  i never figure out the best way for me to practice law, every moment i spend thinking/doing/trying is, at its base, to uphold the Constitution. i like that.

while i'm signing up for things

i signed up for an 8k next Sunday. it seemed like a good idea at the time. after all, i ran 7.5 miles, walked the dog, mopped the floor and had the trash and recycling out by noon; so i was listening to Christmas music and feeling groovy. i even checked the calendar for a half marathon to coincide with the barzam, but the dates and locations are not quite aligned. and i'm not quite that crazy. yet.

meanwhile, i tried a new pasta dish for dinner, using thinned hummus as the sauce with sauteed mushrooms, black olives and wilted spinach. i'd eat it again, which is a good thing as there are leftovers as usual. fat santa's the only Christmas decoration out so far, but he's a good start.

last night, we had a quiet dinner at the house (mushroom soup finished with heavy cream - so good) before heading out to a local production of Alice in Wonderland with just five actors. i have to remember not to sit in the front row as i somehow ended up wearing a boa and shaking my head, no, no, no.

in for a penny ...

in for a couple thousand dollars. gulp. hopefully, my sister will let me stay with her to save on the hotel costs (ahem, hint, hint, please) and i can use the rest of my credit card reward points to rent an automobile (wonder if i can get something fun for SoCal?), so now it's back to watching for reasonable bi-coastal airfares again. i suspect i got some key advice on how to prepare for this round from the momsie, but i think i'll hold that close to my vest for the moment. study books arrive Monday, coinciding with my local bar swearing in ceremony. good times.

"global weirding," as my friend calls the weather,
leads to prematurely flowering quince.