Beginning a New Year

[autographedcat]

kitanzi and I spent a quiet New Years Day just enjoying each other's company while our house guests spent the day with Bill and ladyat at Bedlam House. telynor brought them over about 5pm, and we made plans to go out to eat.



We decided on the Roadhouse Grill, to continue rounding out our UK friends American Experiences&trademark; It took a while to convince filceolaire that, really, they expect you to toss the peanut shells on the floor, it's ok. Everyone had giant steaks and a good time was had by all.

Overstuffed, we waddled back home, and sat down to watch the recent remake of Ocean's Eleven, which Kit and I had seen but no one else had. It was as much fun as the first three times we saw it, and the others seemed to enjoy it.

Friday, January 2, 2004

Kit and I both had to work, but telynor offered to pick up Joe, Anna, and Emily and take them into Decatur for the day.

My day was longish and moderately stressful, including dealing with a number of mail problems that left me with a headache. I got home before anyone else did, around 5:30pm, and tried to take a nap, but failed to manage. Kit's day was even more stressful, what with everyone trying to get their end-of-the-year payroll done on time, so we were only too happy to let Harper make dinner while we unwound. One superb chicken frittata later, we settled down to watch the last of the Firefly episodes, ("Objects in Space"), rounding out our weeklong marathon. Haper, Joe, and the girls then settled down to watch the charming film "Kate and Leopold", while Kit and I contemplated an early bed. It was very late by the time the movie ended, so Harper ended up crashing at our place, rather than going home.

Saturday, January 3, 2004

This would be our last morning with filceolaire, pola_bear, and mokatiki, so we decided to make a morning of it. First up was the monthly Alpharetta Library Book Sale. I found a bunch of nice stuff, including a trio of Clifford Simak novels, Issac Asimov's Robot City vols 1 and 2 (in which he charged four authors each with a plot dilemma, which they went off to write), a collection of all the Sayers Peter Wimsey short stories, a 20 year old book with four walking tours of London, a couple of Fleming Bond novels, and a collection of poetry by Sappho. By far, the biggest "catch" of the day, though, was a perfect condition copy of Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War", a leatherbound edition from Easton Press, which sells online anywhere from $40-$250. I paid $3. Shiny!

After bookbuying, we headed north on Hwy 9 to The Midway Mealhouse, a good old-fashioned "meat and two" restaurant so the visitors could get some good old fashioned Southern cooking. Everyone had something different and there was a lot of sharing around the table.

We went back by the house so the Rafterys could get their stuff together, and telynor started to teach the girls how to knit. I then went down to the airport to pick up plaid_dragon.

The airport was it's usual zoo, and I had managed to arrive a bit early, so i bought a paper and a soft drink and settled in to wait. Apparently, the Army was doing a fair bit of troop movement through the airport today. A sergeant in camos was standing near the arrivals area, and directing young privates in their dress greens to stand off to the side. Every so often, after collecting 10 or 15 of them, he'd take them off somewhere, and then repeat the process.

Jess and I nearly missed each other. She had her hair back, and I've shaved off a good bit of my beard since last time we saw each other. Luckily, she passed right in front of me and I recognized her before she got by. (It wasn't all that hard, as I told her. I simply kept an eye out for the prettiest girl in the airport, and it was bound to be her. Seems to have worked.)

We fetched her baggage without delay, and drove on home. kitanzi made a wonderful cilantro & lime chicken dish for dinner, and we chatted and caught up and generally had a good time before going to bed.

Sunday, January 4, 2004

We slept in a bit this morning. I woke up in a bit of agony, from apparently having gotten into an incredibly uncomfortable sleeping position that left me feeling as though someone had taken a folding steel chair and banged it across my kidneys a few dozen times. Ow. A backrub from kitanzi helped, and a hot shower on top of that helped even more.

Around noon, we set out for Bedlam House to assemble songbooks for Gafilk. quadrivium edited the songbook this year, and boy did she do a great job. I'm always proud of Gafilk's songbooks, and this year will be no exception. This took about two-and-a-half hours. While ML, hilfy, ladyat and kitanzi assembled the books, Bill and I did some auditing on accounts to make sure all the numbers were good (they were), and the rest of the crowd watched Sharpe's Rifles in the living room, courtesy of khaosworks.

Once that was all done, we went off for lunch and shopping. I had originally thought it was just going to be me, kitanzi, plaid_dragon, and khaosworks, but in true fannish Dinner Party fashion, by the time we actually got ready to head out there were over 10 of us. We descended on Famous Dave's BBQ, recommended by telynor, and it did not disappoint. Lots of ribs and sausage and chopped pork, followed up by one of the best bread puddings I've had in a long time. Yum.

We then relocated across the street to CompUSA, where plaid_dragon was pricing PalmPilots and I was pricing printers and everyone else was having a good time wandering around looking for goodies. khaosworks ended up with a world building game, and Jess got the Palm she wanted, so everyone was ultimately happy.

Everyone wanted to go see a movie, so we placed Jess in the care of telynor, and they went off to see Cold Mountain, which I'm told was quite good. Kit and I swung by Best Buy, ended up buying the printer I wanted, and then went home for a quiet evening of relaxing.

What a fun weekend!

Coming up this week: a short week for me, and then time off to prepare for Gafilk, as well as play tour guide for Jess. Yay, vacation, I can use one!