I'll Be Home For Christmas

It's almost Christmas and for the first time in years I am actually working LESS over the next few weeks. When you work in the restaurant or retail industry, Christmas season is bittersweet in a lot of ways. On one hand, it's busier and there are more shifts available to work. On the other hand, it's busier and there are more shifts available to work. I see my old co-workers addressing this paradox on Facebook and I can say that while I do miss the hustle of the holiday crowd, I don't miss missing out on the seasonal festivities.

Like getting to take our nieces and nephew to
the Macy's light show in Philly

Weekends are non-existent when you work in a restaurant, ESPECIALLY around the holidays. You need to really pick and choose which Christmas party (parties, if you're lucky) you want to attend because you aren't likely to get all the weekends off you want. In fact, in only just struck me that I've been to three Christmas parties this year alone and I can't remember ANY in the last few years. Granted, we threw one of the parties, but still.

Christmas parties everywhere! 

Photo booth fun from Tom's office Christmas party

This is our first Christmas in our new house AND my first Christmas working in an office. It's kind of like being back in school. I'm sitting at a desk all day, counting down until work lets out tomorrow evening and I don't have to go back for five days. There is both less and more work to do at the same time, but everyone is a little happier, a little chattier and there are snacks everywhere you look.

There are Calvin and Hobbes snow themed comics all around
my office.

I get to pass these on my way to the restroom!

Really puts you in the holiday spirit

Almost as much as getting a "Gingerdead man"
from Scott at the office





















Last week the office even invited Santa to come in! He was there on Saturday so I didn't get a chance to see what my odds were of coming in on the Nice list this year. I actually wanted to ask him about that. Do Tom and I file together this year? Since we're married, does our Naughty and Nice get combined? Maybe we are in a different gift bracket? Oh well, I will have to ask next year. I did get a chance to chill in his sleigh, though.




Santa's office

My cheerful lunch break

At our house we busied ourselves over the last few weeks getting ready for Christmas and our first party at our house. We finally got to get a real tree! We were so excited to get our tree, in fact, that we braved the elements and bought our tree during a literal down pour. It was freezing and wet but we got a tree! The perfect one, too; short and fat and fits perfectly in our small living room.



The helpful Home Depot dude spent ten minutes
getting soaked trying to help us secure our
tree to our little car

But we made it home with the tree intact!





And now it looks like it always belonged there

                               





















I even got Tom to set up my Dicken's Village collection. I've been collecting these things for years and never took them out of the box before. Some of the boxes had several centimeters of dust on them. Centimeters doesn't sound like much, but when you're sneezing over a bunch of old boxes, every centimeter counts.

They look pretty nice

Good job, Tom!

 Adding to the fun of getting ready for Christmas was the stress of getting ready to host our housewarming / Christmas party. As former service staff and enthusiastic party hosters, we naturally bought way too much food, tried far too many new recipes and started doing everything (cleaning included) far too late. I think I slept less than ten hours that weekend, from Friday to Monday morning. On the plus side, I think we had a pretty good party all in all.

Snacks beneath my requisite Advent calendar
Supplied every year by my godmother

Only the very beginning of our ambitious party menu

 In an effort to keep everyone entertained, we set up a few things to do in each room. In our guest room, we set up a video camera for people to leave us messages. My friend Dana's daughter, Kylie, turned it into her interview station. She was quite the pro at working the camcorder as well as working the crowd. On my to-do list is definitely to get that video edited down so I can share it with you. Actually, I'm excited to see it myself!

Another station was our Christmas card station. Just in case anyone wanted to send a well wish or a Merry Christmas to someone. A few people had fun with it, but of course, how many people's addresses do you know off the top of your head?

I thought it was a cute idea



Like any good holiday party we had wayyyyy too much food. Including an abundance of cheese. One of our friends saw our morning to-do list (with all the last minute cooking we should have done the night before) and exclaimed how great it was that we had not one, but two different "cheese breads" on there. Both cheese breads came out pretty awesome, but how could they not? What is better than cheese and bread?



This was cheese bread #1. Also, I would call it
a Pinterest win!

The rainbow cheese at Wegman's looked too
pretty to resist



Our signature cocktail: Christmas Mojitos



The best champagne mustard dip you've ever tasted
Recipe courtesy of Mama Riz



And I did consult Pinterest quite a lot on this holiday venture. You can find my board here: http://www.pinterest.com/sherideez/christmas-party/ I didn't get to do all the recipes, but all the ones I did were pretty good.



Gingerbread cheesecake dip was super easy and really delicious.
It's pretty rich, so your probably don't need to double the
recipe like we thought we did. My office was happy to have the
leftovers, though.

Oreo popcorn bark was a huge hit! I'm making gift bags
of this stuff to give out next year.



 There were a few Pinterest fails along the way...



I wanted the chocolate fountain to work so badly.
It did not.
It did make for an interesting conversation piece.

These also looked quite different on Pinterest.

But no matter. The food was delicious if not beautiful, the friends were plentiful if not... haha, just kidding! Good times were had by all that came and we were so happy to get to see so many of our friends and family in one day. In fact, we had an extra visitor we weren't expecting...

Blurry Santa on a fire truck!

It was a great party and I have to thank my friends that came early to help us set up. There is literally no way we would have gotten my optimistic menu all put together so nicely if not for you guys. I might have been curled up on the kitchen floor, covered in gingerbread cheesecake dip and sprinkles, crying that we couldn't possibly have enough cheese. Instead, the party went off without a hitch. It was busy, but fun to host and we got to chill out with Tom's kindergarten crew, who are amazingly just as good of friends today as they were back in the sandbox. Wait, did we have sandboxes in kindergarten?

You can't take Dev anywhere

Say kimchi! 

 That party was over a week ago now and we are STILL cleaning up from it. Between work and going to other Christmas fun things, cleaning and organizing just doesn't compete on the to-do list. Tonight we finally got the kitchen more or less put back together, although we still have extra bags of chips and pretzels and candy that I don't even know where to put. If you are having a party and need some supplies, check with us! We might be able to donate a few things in exchange for an invitation.

Tonight at 6:30, I get to leave work and not return for five whole days. It's crazy! I won't even know what to do with myself. Well, maybe I do. Tomorrow night, Tom and I will go to Tran Siberian Orchestra, a show we walked out on two years ago when we were overly excited from getting engaged an hour before and just had to go shout it from the rooftops. We got free tickets and that makes me so happy about walking out on the show (and the money we dropped on the not-so-cheap tickets) before.

Finally get to see this dude go crazy on the violin

The reason we didn't see him before

Christmas Eve will be spent doing my last minute Christmas shopping. No, seriously, MOST of my Christmas shopping. Kinda dropped the ball on that one this year. But by the grace of old St. Nick, it will be done. Then I will help cook and clean at one more holiday party, my mom's annual Christmas Eve party. Christmas day will be spent bouncing back and forth between our parents' houses, our own house for Christmas movies and Lai Lai Garden for a Chinese Christmas duck. After that, I will be asleep for the rest of the weekend thankyouverymuch.

My to-do list consists mainly of shopping and wrapping these last minute gifts that really shouldn't have been last minute. What do you usually do the few days leading up to Christmas? Are you as unorganized as I am? Or are you all shopped and wrapped by mid-October and now you can relax and actually chill during the holiday frenzy?

Whatever you do these next few days, I hope you get to spend at least a little time with some friends or family. And if you don't, at least know they are thinking about you. And, hey, if you have nothing better to do, my mom's house is always open Christmas Eve!

And now I leave you with the gift left to us by Tom's friends after our party. Merry Christmas everyone!

Poor guy didn't stand a chance

Annnnnnd we're back! With exciting news...

Hello! How is everyone doing? I do apologize for the long hiatus. I swear, I was so busy getting stuff done and making excuses for the stuff I wasn't getting done that I just couldn't find the time!

I am happy to report, though, that I have a functioning laptop again! On my long list of things-to-get-done-that-I-really-don't-want-to-do was to re-load Windows onto my computer and make sure that (expletive) virus was totally gone. Instead of ever getting around to it, Tom did! As a West Chester student he has access to their ResNet services, which include doing such tasks. And I made it a point that the first thing I would do on my newly working laptop is to write a long overdue blog post. Well, right after I changed that blinding blue background to a cooler space-themed wallpaper.

Probably chose this in conjunction with seeing Interstellar last week

Among other things I have been doing has been lots of painting around the house. I had almost a week and a half off work, so I managed to paint almost half of the house. It was back breaking and exhausting and irksome, BUT the house is looking so much better and I am so much happier for it. I still have a number of rooms to tackle, but the bedroom and living room are done. And they look pretty good! 






Half a house worth of painting supplies

The living room mid-paint project



Temporary storage room






















I want to take some better "after" pictures with my real camera so you can really enjoy the fruits of my labor, but for now I will just leave you guessing. I'm no professional painter, so the edges are choppy and one of the walls could have used an extra coat, but hey, it works and I think it looks good so far. I thought with a week off work I would get a lot more accomplished than I did, but I am remembering to breathe and not get overwhelmed. We've actually only been in our house for about two months now and considering how much we've accomplished amid all the chaos of our lives, I think we are doing pretty decent.

Ok, you can see ONE finished wall. Just one.

But, wait, Sheridan, you said you had a week off work? How can that be? A week off of the restaurant during the (supposedly) busiest time of the year? I know, it sounds crazy, because it is. I actually no longer work for Legal Seafoods Restaurant.

Cue the parade music!

Did I ever mention the name of the restaurant I worked at? Probably not, just in case I wanted to gripe about it without feeling guilty. That is no longer an issue. However, my gripes there were petty and inconsequential in the big picture of life, so I will keep them to myself. For the most part I enjoyed my job there. I like waitressing. I like the busy-ness and getting to talk to different people every day and the thrill of a good tip. I liked my co-workers and my managers (most of the time) and I got to eat free salmon every day.

And yet, it wasn't meant to be a career. Not for me anyway, but it certainly makes a fine living for those who want to stay in the "industry". I was itching for some regular hours and predictable money and holidays and weekends off. Also, it would be nice to put some of that expensive paper (otherwise known as my Master's degree) to work.

I had been looking for work all summer. I was getting frustrated, lowering my standards on what would be acceptable. The money I made at Legal was pretty decent, higher than most entry-level jobs. Sure, my Master's could hypothetically put me a bit above entry-level work, but we are still feeling that recession and I was the first to accept that I might have to trade some money for experience. Even so, I was getting little to no response on the job front.

Do you know how soul-sucking it is searching for a job? Checking Indeed and Craigslist and every company or school or industry website you can think of for new, possibly suitable jobs? Writing cover letter after cover letter, tweaking your resume, filling out endless online applications that are asking for the SAME information on said resume? Spending 30-60 minutes per job application, all the while knowing that you'll be lucky if you get a response telling you they are interested, but really you probably won't get any word at all?

Yeah, it sucks. So I stopped. Christmas season was coming up and I knew I'd get some decent hours and money at the restaurant. I had the house to work on and school (some education classes) and I thought I'd pick up the job search in January. Or I'd go back to school full time to get my secondary education certification and work towards a teaching job.

But then my friend, Scott, a former co-worker from Yellow Pages Group, informed me of a department hiring. The job was for website copy writing (paid writing? my ears perked up) and they were doing interviews soon. They called me in, I took some tests, schmoozed some managers and now I am in my first week of training!

My new badge

Am I excited? Mostly yes. It's a cubicle farm, which is not my idea of glamorous. I have issues with sitting all day (do you know how bad that is for you?) and staring at a computer all day is not what I want to do with my life. But, I am getting paid writing experience, which is exciting, the benefits and paid time off are decent (paid time off? not something you hear often in the restaurant industry) and it's time to get more career focused. Plus, I have a few friends that work in the office already! Scott, as I mentioned, and a few other co-workers from YPG. Jen, a gifted writer I had the pleasure of doing workshops with in grad school and Nick, a good friend of mine from college. Knowing the two of us in college and seeing us now must be a bit of a trip, but I suppose that is how the hippie crumbles? Just kidding, the hippie at heart lives on!

Scott works on the cool side of the office.
I'm probably not going to be on that side.



Nick and his daughter's artwork carrying on the
tye-dye tradition

I'm going to have to wrap this up now, because I am quite tired from sitting all day. Rest assured, though, on my to-do list is to find and charge my FitBit, so I can start tracking my steps. On every break I walk some laps and do some yoga and run up and down the stairs a few times. There is a gym in the office, which is a great perk, so after I get my orientation done I will be able to utilize that. I plan on doing everything I can to not let the office life bring down my good health and happiness. I will most definitely keep you up to date with that project.

So, I will try to write again before, but if I don't, have a Happy Thanksgiving! I will be spending it with my family, the first time in a few years, and I can't wait.

To-do List:

- find my FitBit and keep my steps up
- research healthy office habits
- finish up my end of semester work BEFORE the last minute (for once in my life)
- yoga tomorrow!
- get to bed at a reasonable time so I am bright and chipper for training
- start thinking of Christmas gifts for people (since as of now I have no idea)
- paint the hallway that has been taped up for several days waiting for me
- for the rest of tonight, relax and watch 22 Jump Street

Your to-do list:

Got any good office advice? Healthy habits, or things you do to stay sane sitting all day? Give me your thoughts on working for a corporate infrastructure! I've only done this once before, for a very brief time. I'm trying to settle in for a bit longer this go round, so help me out!



Homeowner-ing and Other Reasons I Haven't Posted Enough Lately

Actually, the homeowner-ing is the reason I haven't posted enough lately. Owning a home is a lot of work. And really expensive. But that's not anything new or surprising. 

What was surprising was how sad Tom and I were to say goodbye to our apartment. Yesterday, he finished grabbing the last little odds and ends out of there. Today I turned in the keys. But not before one last look at the place. 

Good ol' J-305

Looks just like the day we moved in

We had a lot of good memories there. It was a nice apartment, with granite counter tops and a balcony and all brand new appliances. It felt like the first ADULT apartment we had. 

I will share just one memory with you, so bear with me while I get nostalgic to the long ago past (or, not quite two years ago)...

Fun fact: we moved into our apartment the day after we got engaged! Well, we got the keys, anyway, and moved in that weekend. Perhaps that is the reason we were feeling so attached to the place. It was the home where we were officially becoming a family. 

So, we got engaged on December 14, 2012. Our lease started December 15, 2012. It was an exciting and busy time to say the least. We had an appointment to pick up our keys at 10:30 that morning. Because we made an unexpected detour to share the good news with our parents, we were running a little late. At about 11am we arrived at the leasing office and sat down with Mecca, one of the ladies in the office. 

Me: I'm so sorry we're late! We actually just got engaged last night *giggle* and we had to stop by our family's houses on our way here. *flash her the ring*

Tom: *grins*

Mecca: (in a totally monotone voice) Well, that is just so cute I could punch you guys in the face. 

Us: Uhh...

Mecca: (same monotone voice) Please do not be confused by the sound of my voice. I am actually very excited for y'all. 

Us: (looks of utter confusion) Thanks?


And that was our introduction to the beautiful and welcoming 450 Green Apartments. It felt like home. In a weird, abusive kind of way. 

We never did get punched in the face, so I guess we didn't go too far over the cute threshold. 

Our balcony with the coveted "parking lot" view

The gazebo and pool that we never used once.

Today, four months after we were married, we close turn the page to a new chapter, one that actually started two weeks ago. We are now no longer apartment dwellers, but real live homeowners. With all the benefits and pitfalls that come with it. 

I couldn't even begin to start my to-do list here for what the house needs. So much. I have been trying to come to terms with the fact that my idea of how the house would look and how it actually looks may not align for quite some time. And I'm trying to be ok with that, I really am. 

One of the first things to go: ugly cabinet handles

Before

After. It's more dramatic if you see the whole kitchen.

I guess that happens to most first time homeowners. Burnout. My body, mind and wallet are getting a bit weary of all the activity. Even though Sunday is one of the best days I have to get stuff done since Tom and I are home together, I may just have to deem this a No-House-Project-Sunday. I think we need a full day together to just enjoy the house, without the house getting in the way.

And we ARE enjoying it. Don't get me wrong. Leaving J-305 and all our wonderful memories there is sad, but we love our new house. It is small and messy and not organized and the walls are white and the carpet is cheap and the rooms are half-empty (or half-full of displaced knick knacks and serving utensils) and it still needs lots of love and care, but it's ours. And that is pretty cool. 

I unwittingly set up our living room almost exactly as it was in our apartment

My to-do list for the rest of the week is to do a LITTLE tidying and unpacking around the house, but try to get caught up on the rest of my life that I've been neglecting. I ran four miles today, remembering just how soon the half-marathon we are signed up for is. Don't remind me. 

I'm also going to enjoy the house this weekend. I'm going to relax in it BEFORE it gets dark out. Not worry about the medicines that I have no place for or the curtains that our neighbors probably wish we had by now. That will all be there Monday and I'll be back at it. 

The first dinner we cooked in our house!

I will now leave you with a bit of fortune cookie wisdom I received last Tuesday. After trying and failing to hang curtains, after putting a few holes in the wall and a few tear drops on the carpet, Tom suggested we go to our favorite Thai place. It was just what I needed and perhaps this fortune is what we both needed to see:

Interesting insight AFTER a large meal

I guess we all need to remember to just let go sometimes.