Yay Thanksgiving!

We had a very nice Thanksgiving at the home of some of Boyfriend's friends from his internships. I made sweet potato fries, brown rice casserole, apple pie, and a cranberry tart. Everything was very well received, Boyfriend really liked the cranberry tart, which was nice because it was an experiment and I thought I might have burnt it a bit :)

His friends Kara and John have a really pretty house a bit south of here, and love to entertain and show off all the pretty dishes they got as wedding presents. They made a very moist turkey, awesome mashed potatoes, salad, rolls and cheesecake, and another friend provided stuffing, asparagus and pumpkin pie. I love Thanksgiving dinners like that, among friends who each bring something different. It'd be better with family of course, but since we're going up for so long over Christmas we just don't have time over Thanksgiving.

Also, poor Boyfriend had to go to work at 7 pm, and the woman who provided the stuffing was working that day until 4 pm, so we kind of had to squeeze dinner in when we could.

Kara has been doing archery for fun, she's participated in some competitions and is really getting good. She showed us her set-up, she had a very modern looking metal bow and target arrows, with about a dozen little bits of leather that you wear in various places to protect yourself. Boyfriend shot off 6 arrows and hit the target 5 times, though he was shooting left-handed when he's used to right. I shot off 4 before my arms got too tired, and I managed to hit my arm with the bow string on one shot and give myself a gigantic bruise there. I got used to a tradition of propelling pointy things at targets on Thanksgiving at my Uncle's, so it was nice to uphold the tradition :)

Travel

We had a very nice trip to Nebraska. The car ride is long, but I've always liked roadtrips. We switched off driving and sleeping. We left Thursday at about 7, stopped for dinner at Cracker Barrel so I could eat macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes, and arrived in Omaha about 12:15 pm on Friday.

We visited with Boyfriend's family and friends, it was very nice to see them. On Saturday we went to Des Moines for his cousin's wedding. The actual ceremony was nice, and since we had about an hour and a half until the reception we visited Iowa State University, half an hour away in Ames, where Boyfriend went to school. He had kind of mentioned it, but I hadn't really realized it: his campus is huge! Riddle was about a mile across, and then connected to the airport, but it could have fit inside ISU's campus several times. I don't know how he walked across it to go to class. We drove around it for about an hour or so, and I don't think we saw all of it. We did get to go inside his major building, and passed the dorms and apartments where he lived. It's always strange to me to see places that I personally have no connection to, that someone I am so close to has such strong ties to, so many memories of. It's odd the other way also, showing places where I have walked hundreds of times and experienced so much to someone who is seeing it for the first time.

It was a beautiful campus, full of old brick buildings and parkland. It seemed to be focused on the football stadium the way Embry focused on the airfield.

Then we went back to the reception, and I gummed some more potatoes and we danced the night away. I forgot my camera so I'll have to hope someone sends me some pictures to post. Apparently everyone liked my purple dress. Boyfriend said they don't give compliments directly in the Midwest, they give them to other people who then give them to you, which seems odd, but you know.

It is definitely a different world out there. I read an editorial in the paper on Sunday complaining that leftist college professors were leading kids into Communism, and that they should be watched more closely. Communism? Really? There are still people worried about that?

Speaking of being in a different world, on our drive back to Houston we decided that Italian would be nice for dinner, since I could definitely handle pasta by then. We were going to stop when we saw the lights in Wichita, which I still have a hard time thinking of as an actual place, but we missed it. There were no lights. I didn't have enough cell phone signal to search for a restaurant with it, so we asked for the closest place we could get pasta at the next gas station. The attendant looked confused and said, "Pasta? Oklahoma City, I guess." We had just passed a sign for Oklahoma City. It was 136 miles away! 136! I never in my life thought I would be over a hundred miles from an Italian restaurant! It was terrifying.

We ended up stopping at a very strange looking diner type place because we were hungry. There was a man wearing a huge cowboy hat sitting at a table with a straight face. I'm not sure how they do that. The food was actually ok though, I got roast beef which would have been really good on a hoagie roll with provolone but was still good over white bread.

We ended up coming through Houston at 6:30 am on a Monday, which was as much fun as it sounds. I had no idea traffic would be that bad that early, and I would never commute there.

The Kitten was extremely happy to see me, she meeped until I put down everything and picked her up and let her knead and roll around and purr on me to her heart's content. I hadn't thought to turn the heat on before I left, so it was 63 degrees when I got home, and she was a cold Kitten, poor thing. She was so cold she crept under the blankets with me and curled up against my stomach when I went to bed. She poked her little nose out so she could breathe and we slept the rest of the day. It was very nice to be home.

Solid food

So after 2 days of tomato soup, yogurt and applesauce, today I ate solid food! Yay! I had leftover raviolis for lunch, which I cut up into teeny tiny pieces. After an hour I wasn't finished them yet, but I called it a good effort. My stomach was a bit weirded out that I was suddenly asking so much of it, but it was nice to eat more than 90 calories at once.

My mouth feels ok, it was a bit sore after all that chewing but feels better now. I'm ok as long as I don't talk too much at once or chew very much.

Also, ice cream is a bad idea. It seems like a good idea, and it was even on the list of recommended foods, but it is not. The retainer in the roof of my mouth changes size ever-so-slightly with temperature. With warm foods it's fine, it just presses more securely against where the graft came from, but with cold ice cream it got a bit loose and moved around a bit and that was bad.

Aside from needing a nap, I'm doing well though.

Gum Surgery

So I survived my surgery. Boyfriend drove me around afterwards for an hour to get the drugs they'd prescribed and then home. Then I slept til he got home from work. I feel ok now, jaw a little sore and it hurts a bit to talk. I'm gonna try some tomato soup and chill on the couch. Very glad it's over with!

Ren Faire Pics!

Ben is adorable!
I got a spiffy new shirt! And I like to twirl in long skirts.
Us together, very cute:

Chad and Deedee:
Deedee, Chad, me, Ben, Em, and Alex:


It was a beautiful day and we had a really good time. I got a new shirt, which is pretty spiffy, and I'm going to build a druid costume around it I think. Ben got a very nice belt pouch you can see in the first pic of him, and Chad got a new boots and a sword. Deedee couldn't wear her corset this year, so she wrapped a cord around her belly and tied it with a bow, it looks really cute. And Alex and Em got matching bracers and belt pouches, they look very nice.

Ren Faire this weekend!

Tomorrow we are waking up at an ungodly hour and driving 45 min to our friends' house, and then joining up with them to drive 2.5 hours to where the Ren Faire is, to be there at 9 am when it opens. You know I really want to go somewhere if I agree to wake up at 5 am to go.

It should be so much fun!

It was cold last weekend, for Texas, it got below 70! Like to 65! It was so cold I turned the heat on and put the flannel sheets on the bed. Mmm flannel. They do make it much harder to leave the bed in the morning though, and the Kitten agrees.

But of course it didn't last, and it's back up to 70 today. But it's bright and clear and sunny and breezy and not too hot, and hopefully tomorrow will be the same. And I'll actually get to spend more than 5 minutes outside!

I've been working as many hours as I can to save up time for Christmas, so I haven't really gotten to go outside very much.

And today is Halloween! I think we're going to celebrate by going to bed early. We don't get trick-or-treaters at the apartment, unfortunately.

Happy Halloween anyway!

No Ren Faire this weekend either

So I just found out that I won't be going to Ren Faire this weekend either, and possibly not ever. I thought this weekend was Pirate Weekend, and Boyfriend and I really wanted to go. But for some odd reason, the Ren Faire people chose to have Pirate Weekend on Halloween weekend, and Halloween Weekend the week before Halloween. Neither of had a burning desire to go to Halloween Weekend (especially the weekend before Halloween) and our friends can't go this weekend.

They want to go next weekend, but I have to go to the periodontist tomorrow so he can tell me when he do the graft (I started writing out what that actually entailed, but I got nauseous and dizzy and had to sit with my head down for a minute). I want to do it on a Thursday or Friday so I can take the weekend off to recuperate and feel sorry for myself, but I can't push it too far back because I'd like to be able to talk by the time we go up to the wedding in November. So next weekend was pretty high on my list of when to get it done.

Stupid Ren Faire. I also made Boyfriend cancel some other plans because I thought we were going this weekend, and that's at least the second time I've done that, so I don't think he's very happy. Stupid Faire, stupid lack of gum tissue, stupid lack of memory. Stupid lack of sleep and lack of time to go home and nap.

No sleep for me

Last night I mostly just chilled at home, and went to bed with a book around 11:30. I didn't intend to read that long, but the book was really good (Last Argument of Kings) so I didn't end up turning out the light until about 1:30. The Kitten was curled up next to me and we were drifting off when suddenly there was a Noise. It was a scritching sort of noise that sounded like it came from close to my window, and the Kitten meeped and jumped over me to check it out. I didn't hear it again, but it was exactly the sort of noise a giant (shudder) cockroach would make if it was walking across the wall, I thought.

I grabbed my glasses and turned on the light, but I didn't see anything. The Kitten was still staring fixedly at the wall above my bed, however, her pupils dilated. Maybe from the light, maybe from her predatory instinct to hunt and kill whatever hideous monster we'd heard.

I regretted then having so many things hanging from my walls, all providing spaces for things to hide from the light. I looked (very bravely) behind the wall hanging and curtains, shook out the pillows, even moved the blinds.

Nothing.

But the Kitten was still staring at the wall. I tried staring at the wall for a while,
but nothing suddenly leaped into view the way it does after you stare at a 3D hidden picture long enough. Which is good, because no one should ever make a hidden picture of a giant cockroach 2 feet away from where you were trying to sleep 2 minutes ago.

I debated sleeping on the couch, but was determined not to give in. If I gave the cockroach my bed, it would want my bedroom, and then my bathroom, and then my whole apartment, and then maybe my whole life! Hopefully someone would notice if a giant cockroach came into work one day instead of me, and didn't just think I was trapped in Kafka's head.

So I turned out the light and tried to sleep, but the Kitten was still fascinated by the wall. For the next hour. It made sleeping a bit difficult, so I didn't get very much last night.

I've heard cockroaches don't like the smell of bay leaves, and they don't seem to be poisonous to cats, so I may recarpet my apartment in them.

It could be worse, I guess, I could be living in Papua New Guinea. No, on second thought, I would never live there ever ever ever.

House Season 4 and yay Friday!

We finished watching season 4 of House last night, and I think I could have stopped at season 3. It was an odd season, they got rid of half the characters, but not really, and brought in a whole bunch of new ones and slowly whittled them down til they had almost exactly the same distribution as before. House's doctors went from a cute white woman, a black man and an ethnic white man (Australian) to a cute white woman, an Indian man and an ethnic white man (Jewish).

Last night we watched the last two episode, a two-parter which ended extremely, unnecessarily sadly. It seemed like the writers just wanted to make me cry as much as they could. Luckily my boyfriend didn't mind me sobbing all over his chest over a TV show.

I really like the character House, and the show has been really interesting, but I'm definitely not as motivated to go watch the 5th season now. It could be worse, I guess, they could have ended the season after the first half of the two-parter, as Boyfriend pointed out, but the writers may have been afraid for their lives if they did that.

But it's Friday now, which is awesome! Tonight I'm going to make a Joseph's Trifle to bring to a woman I work with's son's first birthday party tomorrow. Tomorrow we have the party and we may go to a soccer game with some of Boyfriend's coworkers afterwards. Sunday I will be back at work (sigh) making up more comp hours for Christmas. Somewhere in there I'll try to find time to sleep and snuggle with the Kitten.

It's finally cooling off here too, it almost feels like fall! Except without the leaves changing colors or the clear October sky or the crisp feeling in the air like you get in a real state. The humidity is still 90%, but the temperature is down to like 70! I take what I can get.

A morning with the dentist

So I went for my semi-annual teeth cleaning this morning, and I have no cavities! Yay! All that brushing and flossing is working! Except as the hygenist was poking around with her little metal pick, she poked a sensitive spot and said that my gum is receding from one of my teeth in one spot. She had the dentist look come and look at it, and as soon as he saw it he told me I need a graft. I asked what caused it, and he said it might be a reaction to the braces I had taken off a year ago.

So, ick ick ick! I can't even think about what a graft entails. I'm just going to demand to be unconscious for as much of it as I can, including the entire healing process. Just wake me up next spring, really, I'll be fine.

I mean, it's not like I have a lot of extra gum tissue just lying around, where is it going to come from I don't even want to know don't tell me la la la .

And it's not like I can even ask for that much sympathy, my poor mother has had a root canal, a tooth break off at the gum line and two crowns put on this year.

I hate dental work. Although I like having teeth.