It's not several times a week, but...

...Since Eddie was lamenting the decline of the blog, I thought I'd regale you with another boring post.

I'm not sure what the deal is this winter, but I've been sick TWICE. I rarely get sick, I even got a flu shot this year, and yet? Sick. The first round was a cough that defied all over the counter cough medicine and would only respond to Robitussin with codeine, which was great. I'm a fan of the codeine. The most recent round started on Tuesday night and has resulted in body aches that defy all over the counter pain medication, as well as a fever and chills. It's so much fun, especially when I have about 5 big deadlines at work this week, therefore, I've dragged my ass into the office the past two days until today when they pretty much sent my outwardly sniffly ass home. I love when people are trying to be sympathetic and are like "Oh sweetie, you look like shit." I'm not sensitive enough to be offended by that, it just makes me laugh.

Stay tuned for future posts about my health -- I'll tell you all about my gout and arthritis. Neither of which I have, by the way, but isn't that what old people talk about?

Next week, I'm headed to somewhere in middle America for our annual company meeting, and so I've been shopping for clothes befitting the corporate marketing girl. Jeans are fine for the office, but at the meeting, jeans are not allowed. I'm also getting my hair colored before I go, because I can't be introduced to the entire company with ROOTS. Nobody wants to be that girl.

I had help with my clothes shopping this weekend - Chris' daughters were with me and his seven year old helped me pick out some stuff. It was pretty funny when she's looking at me very seriously and saying "That color looks GREAT on you". Too cute. The three year old helped me sign the credit card keypad, which resulted in my last name being completely illegible, but she wanted to help and I wasn't about to say no. Especially after she drew me a picture and even wrote my name on it. His girls are totally cute and sweet and we had a great time.

Anyway, that's about it for now. I'm going to heat up some soup and drink some Gatorade -- last night I had Chris here to take care of me, but tonight I'm on my own. I'll have to actually get up off the couch when I want something. Hmmph.

Stuff about things

So Chris took me on a date the other night to this restaurant called Opus. I had heard from multiple sources that it was delicious and had excellent service, so of course I wanted to go. As it turns out? My sources were NOT kidding. Best dinner I think I’ve ever had. We started with cocktails, and when I was perusing the wine list, I believe I let out a little squeal when I saw that they had my favorite wine ever – a wine I haven’t seen in sooooooo long. And a wine that I just finished calling around to find. I’ll be going to buy a few bottles in the very near future. Anyway.

I won’t get into too much detail, but let me just say a few words: Seats by the fireplace, filet mignon, lobster Wellington (buttery lobster in a flaky pastry shell? Are you kidding me with this deliciousness?), and some sort of dessert in which they put chocolate torte in a bowl with strawberries and raspberries, cover the top of the bowl with a dark chocolate shell and then pour hot chocolate soup over it, melting the chocolate shell. I kind of wanted to smuggle the bowl home where I could lick every bit of chocolate off it in peace. I didn’t do it though. But I wanted to. But I didn’t. It was the best date – not to be all “Ha ha – I have the best boyfriend!” – but I totally have the best boyfriend. See, I didn’t even say ha ha.

Guess what? It snowed this weekend. What a novelty.

I hate pigeons. I realize that some people think they’re cool and keep them as pets of a sort and I’m sure carrier pigeons are very impressive, but the pigeon that lives outside my bedroom window is neither cool nor impressive. Unless you define impressive as a loud ass bird who feels the need to coo loudly and incessantly every morning before I’m ready to wake up. I’m not even sure that “coo” is the word to describe it. “Coo” insinuates that the noise is soft and maybe a little sweet. This pigeon noise is not soft or sweet. It makes me want to break my window and beat that damn bird to death with a bat. I won’t, mostly because I don’t feel like paying for a new window. I mean, because I totally don’t believe in animal cruelty. Stupid pigeon.

I’ve been filling in with our band at church for the past two weeks and it’s been totally fun. What was not fun was Sunday when we were doing a song and I completely forgot every damn note I was supposed to sing. I made up a few and tried not to sound totally out of tune, but I’m thinking to myself “I was practicing this perfectly less than an hour ago. Have I lost my mind?” In my defense, the other girl who sings with us was sick and so I didn’t have her harmony to build off of. And also no sheet music. That’s my excuse. However, if there was one thing I’ve learned in all my years of performing, it’s to never let your face betray a mistake. So I pretended as if everything was fine, and NO ONE NOTICED. Not even my mom, and she ALWAYS catches even my minute mistakes, because she’s listened to me so often. I couldn’t believe it.

I’m officially hired AND promoted at my job. And I got a raise. Hopefully by the end of the month I can move into my permanent office and have a phone and everything. Although I feel pretty official – I got a hard hat and business cards. Clearly it takes very little to make me feel official at my job. Stay tuned for what can only be a fascinating recap of the upcoming company meeting in which we fly to a less than desirable destination and sit in meetings from 8-5 for two straight days. Apparently there will be no easing me into the actual corporate world – they’re throwing me in headfirst. I’m ok with that though.

And so ends the Amber update. I’m going to check on my pathetic black cat – the pads of his left paw are totally swollen and so he’s gimping around as if he might soon need an amputation. I would be more worried, but it’s happened before and the world’s best vet couldn’t find anything wrong with him, so she bandaged his foot so he couldn’t lick it. That was effective, and also humorous, as he would hop around and shake his foot every once in a while in a vain attempt to shake the bandage off. It wasn’t humorous however, when he would shake his paw unexpectedly in the vicinity of my face, whacking me so hard that I seriously thought I’d get a broken nose or black eye. I think he’s fine – he looks very pathetic when he knows I’m looking, but I’ve also seen him jumping off the bed and bounding through the house, so I’m thinking amputation won’t be necessary.

If you give a mouse a snow day...

If you haven’t been living under a rock, you may have heard that Denver has gotten some snow over the past few weeks. If by some, you mean “85% of our normal snowfall and March and April are the snowiest months”. I’d like to say a couple of things here. One is that if the past month is just a taste of what our “snowiest months” will bring, well, we’re screwed. The other thing is that actually, besides being tired of snow in general, I’m pretty tired of staying home.

The first blizzard was a novelty. I didn’t have to go to work, Chris came home early, and we spent the next couple of days in our pajamas watching t.v. and taking naps. It was pretty fun. The second blizzard I kind of groaned about because Chris was out of town and so I had no one to amuse me while I was snowed in. Didn’t have to go to work, watched t.v., took naps, read a lot. Eh, whatever. Third time, I was like “you have GOT to be KIDDING me.” Chris was still out of town and frankly, I was tired of being trapped in my house. I didn’t have to work and I was bored out of my mind.

I talked on the phone to my mom a lot, and during one of our many long conversations about nothing, she suggested that I put my oven on self-clean, because it would add some warmth to the house and I wasn’t going anywhere anyway. I did, and that’s when the madness set in.

Have you ever read the book “If you give a mouse a cookie”? It’s basically saying that if you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll want some milk, and then each thing you give him makes him think of something else he wants until it comes full circle and he wants a cookie again. Everyone has done it – you paint a room and then decide that you need new curtains. The curtains look great, but now the bedspread looks kind of icky. A new bedspread means new throw pillows, etc. etc.

This was what happened to me when I put the oven on self clean. I decided I’d just clean off the top of the stove and it snowballed into cleaning the counters and the sink and the floor. Not just the everyday kind of cleaning, but BIG TIME cleaning. After cleaning out the fridge and reorganizing the pantry, I then moved onto my bathroom (which included using an old toothbrush on the grout and the baseboards and the dusting off of the lightbulbs, among other things), the guest bathroom, the living room and my bedroom. It took me most of Friday and some of Saturday, but was it ever tidy. The whole house had awesome vacuum tracks, which to me just says “clean”. And luckily, there weren’t even pine needles anymore, as my brother finally rescued me from my personal Christmas tree hell. The best part was that on Friday night, “The Princess Bride” was on – twice – and so I could listen to it as I compulsively cleaned and said the lines to myself. Actually, the best part was all of my cleaning supplies, but I thought saying that the movie was the best part made me sound less lame. Did it work?

It’s supposed to snow tomorrow, and so now I’m wondering what the hell I’m going to do if I have to stay home all day.

Hi, I'm Amber. Have we met?

I was just wondering seeing as how I haven't really been around lately. For which I apologize. Profusely.

So this is my third attempt in the past week or so to write an entry that isn’t so mundane and boring that I put everyone to sleep and then when I read back over it I think “Whaaa?” Nobody likes to look at stuff they’ve written and think “Whaaa?” Am I right? That being said, here's to hoping that I didn't just jinx myself into a completely mundane and boring post.

So. Merry Christmas! Hmmm. A little bit late for that. Sorry. Hope you all had a good one! I did – and I got tons of great stuff because as we all know (and have come to terms with), I’m spoiled – but of all of them I have three favorites. The first was a set of beautiful crystal champagne flutes from Chris, which he thought of with no help or hints from me. So awesome. I will now spend the rest of my life being totally paranoid that somehow they’ll get broken. It’s the gift that keeps on giving! The second was a book that Karen made of our Vegas pictures. Also so awesome. And the third one was this totally cute thing Sally got me in Mexico. In other holiday news, I am still chock full of Christmas spirit, and the reason I know that is because my Christmas tree is still up. Yes. Up and merrily shedding pine needles EVERYWHERE. There are no longer decorations on it, just a seemingly endless supply of needles. Neeeeeeedllllllllllles. You see, Chris went out of town right after Christmas, and therefore, I have no one to help me get the stupid thing out of the stand. This is a time when the cats are just no help at all. I called my brother to see if he’d help me, but apparently it wasn’t something that interested him as I haven’t heard back from him. For five days. And my dad can happily shovel practically his entire neighborhood out of three or four feet of snow (twice), but somehow helping me with the tree is pretty low on his list. My mom called tonight to see if maybe I wanted him to come over and help me get the tree out of the stand and onto my balcony (because the other issue is that due to near constant blizzards, I’m fairly certain they haven’t emptied the dumpsters here forEVER, hence, where to put a six foot tree?) but I was like “no thank you – I’d rather not have needles strewn to hell and back-- I mean anywhere they don’t need to be.” I’ll just wait until Chris comes home on Saturday. “HihoneyIreallymissedyou (breath) fortheloveofallthat’sholypleasegetrid (breath)ofthisdamntree!” I had to take a lot of breaths because of the level of hysteria I'll probably be experiencing at that point. Because of (in case I haven't mentioned it) the neeeedlllles. Ahem.

Today I got an email about a meeting on Friday from one of the guys I work with. The time was 10:00, and the location? DOA. Huh. Never been to a meeting like THAT before. So I went into his office and said “Did you reserve a room for our meeting on Friday?” And he said “No – could you get one?” And I said “Sure – but when you put ‘DOA’ on the email, did you really mean ‘TBA’? Because there’s kind of an important difference there.” And he said “No, I meant DOA – Denver Area Office.” I said “No, that’s DAO. DOA is totally different, and really, not the kind of meeting I want to come to.” He laughed, I reserved us a room that will hopefully not cause any of us bodily harm.

So I think that’s about it for now. If you’re still hanging around here even though I haven’t written in almost as long as it’s been since they picked up my trash (and seriously, that has been a loooooong ass time) I thank you. And I swear that in 2007 I will write more. Swear.