The Thanksgiving break started off ominously when I got to the airport only to have the check-in kiosk tell me my flight had already taken off. Turns out the very nice lady I talked to at Northwest a few months ago had not quite understood me when I asked for her to book me on a flight that left late Wednesday night (but actually Thursday at 12:30am) and got in on Thursday, and had booked me on the flight that left on 12:30am Wednesday instead. After a couple moments of freaking out, I was told that for a not so slight change fee, I could get on the flight I thought I was booked on since it wasn't full. Sure, I should have double checked the reservation when I got the email confirmation, but what this really says to me is always book tickets online myself. Over the phone sucks.
The flight was fine from there on out. I wasted most of my layover time in MN trecking across the terminal and stumbling across this Hobie Cat display. I don't know about you but Minneapolis in November when its 19 degrees out doesn't exactly bring catamarans to mind, and I looked around on their website and it doesn't seem like there is any particular significance, but maybe I'm wrong.
Sadly, it wasn't much warmer in Pittsburgh when I arrived. Good thing my parents brought along some warm winter clothes for me.
Thanksgiving was great, spending time with my cute new cousin and the rest of my family. We ate lots of turkey, spent some time with my great aunt who couldn't make it to the wedding, rested up, walked around The Strip, saw Harry Potter (mine and my brother's Thanksgiving tradition), and enjoying a lovely 6 1/2 hour car ride back late Saturday night (though I shouldn't really complain because I rode shotgun the whole time - its my parents and Sam who were squished in the back, hence the decision that next year the best investment would be renting a minivan).
Then it was back to NY. Sunday was spent retriving some things from my parents place - clothes that never made it to Stanford, clothes that made it back from Stanford but couldn't fit in our old apartment - and then finding a place for them in our apartment. Its sad but there are still more things at their house that someday I'll take back - my stereo which would be perfect for our bedroom, and a lot of my fiction books still sitting in my old room, waiting for us to purchase a new bookshelf for our bedroom. And then there was the going through the study, sorting through my mail and financial documents. It was the first day I've been home for more than a couple hours on a non-workday since September. I made homemade pizza to commemorate the event. It was yummy.
I worked from the NY office for two days, but before I knew it I was back on a plane again, back to SF. Unfortunately, this flight left over an hour late and was bumpy the whole time. Yuck. At least I only have a few more of these flights to look forward too.
This year, I'm thankful for having Friday off. Paid. Its very exciting. Maybe having a long weekend will mean I'll be able to catch up on some sleep. I think its quite necessary since I've been falling asleep during movies even more than usual. Then again, that may be related to the fact that I have to watch movies on my laptop and the only place to sit and watch them is on my bed....
And I'm also thankful for my boss deciding it would make sense for me to work from the NY office for a few days after Thanksgiving and paid for me to change my plane ticket. Yay, four more days with my family and husband!
Now the only obstacle holding me back from a wonderful Thanksgiving break is a red eye to Pittsburgh via Minnesota - do they not realize that Minnesota is not far enough away from California for a red eye????
Wednesday was Sam and my's two year anniversary. Of our first date. As a couple. Sure we'd been dating as friends for a few months already, but November 16th, 2003 was our first real date. And I used to send Sam a song once a month, during that first year, and on our anniversary I made a CD of all those songs.
After we got engaged, I stopped doing that, but on the night of the 15th, when it hit me that the next day was the 16th, I couldn't fall asleep because I was thinking of all the songs I would put on the mix. I was too busy with work this week to make it (and the internet was down at home so I wouldn't be able to send them to him anyway), but today I finally got around to it.
Dahlia and Sam's 2005 Anniversary Mix
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Me and Mia
Death Cab for Cutie - Title and Registration
Rilo Kiley - Portions of Foxes
Tegan and Sara - Where Does the Good Go
Iron and Wine - Naked As We Came
The Concretes - Say Something New
Green Day - American Idiot
Brendan Bensen - Metarie
Kanye West - Goldigger
Ayub Ogada - Kothbiro
Silversun Pickups - Kissing Families
The Faders - No Sleep Tonight
The Coral Sea - Look at Her Face
Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek
Rogue Wave - 10:1
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Pangea
The Arrogants - Wishing Well
Cold War Kids - The Soloist in the Living Room
Pet Politics - The Ghost Mary and Her Friends
Etta James - At Last
Sure the last song doesn't quite fit, but it was our wedding song after all - need to throw a bit of sap in there.
P.S. Thanks to 3hive, Catbirdseat and All Songs Considered for exposing me to some great music over the last few months, where the majority of this stuff comes from. Podcasts rock.
My feet hurt. I walked all over the city today with a couple of my coworkers who are also new to the city. We a few of the usual suspects: Chinatown (though really just for the library), the farmer's market at The Ferry Building (my Aidell's sausage for lunch was quite tasty), shopping on Market St. We stopped in at the San Francisco Museum of Crafts and Design and saw a neat little exhibit on the design of wine labels. Personally, my favorite wine label was for Dahlia Chardonay, though Pazzo was a close second.
Best of all, the scanned proofs from our wedding photos are up! Go check them out.
As of January 9th, barring any major catastrophes with the office space under renovation, I'll be an employee of the New York office!
And let me use this opportunity to vent for a second. Monday night on Sex in the City, they showed the last episode of Season 5, and so I got all excited for Season 6 since I'd only seen most of those once. However, the next episode was the first one. And Tuesday and tonight have been the same - episodes from the Season 1. How could they do that? Just leave out a whole season? Its not fair!
The hair show was this morning, and was put on by a large distributor to showcase products for salons in the Bay Area. There was a big floor show where a bunch of different presentations were going on, along with wholesale product sales, as well as "classrooms" where hair stylists attending the show could watch demos and ask questions. I was in one of the classrooms, where the stylist with Farouk cut my hair in front of everyone. Rather than wetting the hair, she flat ironed it before the show so that it was easy to see where the lines were, which makes sense for hair as curly as mine. It looks so good now that I am tempted to start flat ironing my hair again.
Last night my nose started dripping and seemed to stop only during the time I was on stage this morning, so I'm skipping frisbee. There was a sore thoat last week and the nose now - hopefully it won't escalate.
+More hair pics on Flickr
I started the day on a lazy note, hanging out watching cooking shows and doing my laundry, and then since it was nice out, I motivated myself to go to the library. Rather than go to the Chinatown branch, I decided to check out the one near Union Street, with the goal to find a salon to get my hair cut afterwards. I confirmed that the Chinatown branch does have the best DVD collection of any branch within walking distance, but I still found a few movies that peaked my interest. Then, on Union St I found a place to get a much needed pedicure, and a cute salon. Sadly, the salon had no openings today, so I walked on reminding myself that I must remember to call later for an appointment next weekend, when what do I hear but the magic words of "Would you be interested in being a hair model."
Would I! A trendy cut and color for free? Too good to be true you tell me, but here I am, now a cute redhead with blond highlights, reliving my college days (for those who have only known me the past couple of years, my hair was dyed various shades of red almost continuously from the age of 15 to 23). And the price is going downtown at 9am tomorrow to get made up and get a cute haircut and a free gift for modeling. Its all put on by Farouk to show off their goods to the local hair salons. I can't wait to get the card of my stylist so that I can find out when they do shows in NY since they always need models.
Tomorrow I'll post some pics after I pick up a USB photo cable from Staples.
And speaking of photos, Sam went to the Kodak One Gallery in Soho today to scan in our wedding proofs, since we don't have digital copies of our pics, found he was the first one to take advantage of their scanning offer. Unfortunately, that meant they hadn't perfected their technique of making a DVD or uploading them online, but maybe someday soon we'll have those to show. We did get a copy of pics that Sam's mom's boyfriend took from the before the wedding, so check those out here.
Totally unrelated: on my way home today, I saw a guy walking to kittens. It looked so sad yet funny at the same time. Especially since one of the kittens couldn't seem to keep up and was sliding across the street on its hind feet.
Yesterday, I sat down with my boss, my project manager and the other future NY coworker and we tried to figure out our travel schedules for the next two weeks. And it looks like the trip to NY next week or the week after that I'd been hoping for is not going to happen. Because it's not efficient for me to be there without my boss or PM there as well. And my PM will be there the week after Thanksgiving, so I will probably be in NY for part of that week instead. Which is great, except for two things. One is that its a whole 3 weeks before I see my husband again, and the other is that last month I stressed about finding a reasonably priced ROUND TRIP ticket to Pittsburgh from San Francisco and I probably won't be using the return flight. Sure they'll cover the cost to change my travel arrangements, but still...
And tomorrow, I'll be having a talk about when I'll be coming back to NY for good. It seems like it will have to wait for the construction on our new office to finish, and last I heard the schedule is running late, but I'm still hoping for the best. At least I'll know whether I should push for the week in NY between Christmas and New Year's.
On an unrelated note, one of the local TV stations has been showing Sex and the City two episodes a night every weeknight, so I've been watching a lot of it lately. What's sad is that I know the show so well that in most of the shows, I can tell exactly where they cut scenes (or parts of scenes) to make room for the commercials. They've just reached the middle of the fifth season, the big question is in a couple weeks, will I start watching from season one all over again.