i haven't really updated in a long while. if you want to see the strangest photo ever taken of me, go here. i don't think i'd ever seen these photos before. man! it's so strange seeing those people in the photos. a few of them became awesome friends. a few of them i just saw for the second time at the holiday huddle. man! it's 2:02 a.m.

i left work early on thursday and headed to o'hare. liz girlvii showed up not too much later and we conversed and decided to go to chili's too. the line was fairly long and the hostess asked how many people were in your party. when we said two she passed us by. quick thinking yielded in me asking how many she was looking for, so we banded together with the two boys behind us in line to form a party of 4, which was the magic number. it was truly strange. the two of them uttered possibly 4 sentences to one another while liz and i blathered on about music and our best of 2004 lists, etc. after dinner, we went to our gates, which were right across from each other. my flight was delayed, but they put me on a flight which actually had an earlier arrival time than my original flight. we shared my earbuds and watched the beginning of a terrible terrible a&e adaptation of 'the magnificent ambersons' which i had only rented because jonathan rhys meyers was in it. good times! i truly thought that i might die on my flight home. there was a rough patch where we dipped down really quickly and then jutted back up. everyone on the plane shrieked or gasped. me, i was listening to my newly acquired ipod (thanks freeipods.com) and i couldn't stop thinking about that scene in garden state. at first i was a bit panicked and then i felt a strange calm. i'd like to think that'll be what happens when i go.

my parents (and shadow) came to pick me up from dulles and then i went to safeway with my mom and waited for leslie _protocol to show up. she got here around 12:40 and we talked and laughed and caught up and she fell asleep on the couch while i was doing some awesome google image searches.

this morning she woke me up at 11 and dan immediatetongue came over and we went to arlington to get jeffy (formerly lj user glueslabs). we went to harmony cafe in georgetown and chowed down on crispy shitake mushrooms (THE BEST!) and our faux meat chinese food. nums! on the metro ride over leslie and i had started a game of destructo (?), which i had never heard of but enjoyed muchly. i just like seeing leslie's drawings which are as sweet as pie. in trying to get me home by 5pm, we cabbed it back to jeff's and leslie drove towards my house, but we decided to take a detour to springfield mall (fancy world!), where i ended up buying my cousin a few little things because all i had for her was a my guy.

i got back late, threw on dress clothes and went with my family to the chart house in alexandria, va. beforehand, i had asked my mom if this was a seafood place and she laughed and said no. turns out it was not only a seafood house, but it could not have been LESS accomodating to my diet. in case you don't know me irl, i have particular tastes: i eat poultry, but nothing else in the "meat/seafood" group. i don't eat food with gelatin either, SO going to a place where the menu looked like this, was awful for me. the one poultry item on the menu was covered in proscuitto, and didn't sound good anyways. i made do with a side of garlic mashed potatoes and the salad bar and ended up consuming two plates of fruit, which left me feeling terrible for HOURS! thanks mom! i guess i'm a little peeved at her because she was so insistent that it wasn't a seafood place. it was actually worse than red lobster, which is pretty close to hell for me. all in all, i came home, took a pepcid ac and went to bed. i woke up when my alarm went off at 9:30, i took a minute to assess how i felt and went back to sleep until 11. as you can see, now i am wide awake and full of energy, iming some random crazy person who probably saw my name on moc and i'm about to tackle wrapping everyone's presents. voila!

oh yeah, merry christmas!