Minor thoughts I'm bored enough to share....

#1 - The R.C. introduced me to a new restaurant last week. Andre's is, from what I'm told, one of those long-time institutions, and one of the R.C.'s favorite-ever dining places. (Her excuse for not having introduced me to in any time in the last twenty years or so was that she thought it had closed.) (Right.) It's a fabulous little prix fixe patisserie tucked away just off of a major thoroughfare. It has atmosphere. I love a non-chain restaurant, don't you?

#2 - Those of us toiling away at the Argonut Café are getting a four-day weekend at New Year's as well. While I love the idea of having such lovely, long weekends, the (teeny-tiny) mature part of me knows that the remaining winter months, with no holidays at all, are going to be long and gray.

#3 - The first season of Glee is due to be released on DVD at the end of this month. The R.C. has it on pre-order, so I'll be able to get caught up before the new season starts (in April, I think). In the meantime, the network is showing two episodes this Wednesday evening and two next Wednesday, so I can get started watching ever before I get started getting caught up.

#4 - I did not practice Frugality around Christmas this year. Considering that I only really exchange gifts with the R.C. (and send small gifts to the L-i-K-S, Rapunzel, and Pippi), there are an astonishing number of packages under our little Christmas tree. While many of them are of the very small "stocking stuffer" variety, another heaping helping are not. So far I have refrained from poking, prodding, or shaking any of the interestingly shaped boxes. I'm very trustworthy that way.

#5- One of the aforementioned parcels, embarrassingly enough, is from NewBoss Anais, someone for whom I not only didn't buy a gift, but didn't send a card.

#6 - Another friend surprised me with a bag of very good coffee. I like knowing someone thought of me and do try to accept gifts in that spirit, but I'm always flustered when gifted from someone with whom I have not previously made gift exchange plans and, yes, I'm aware that this sentence could have been more graceful but I don't care that much.

#7 - The R.C. was insufficiently inventive when it came to providing a wish list for gifts this year. I had to take some chances and I'm a bit concerned about one or two of them.

#8 - Gidget and I don't gift, but I did manage to convince her not to pay me for The Gidget Co work this month. She's short of money at the moment, so that amount really will be useful to her. Anyhow, I finally remembered to bill Bernie for the work I did this fall so I'm flush, and as I told her repeatedly, I haven't had that much time to spend on her accounts the last three weeks and I'd be ashamed to take money at this point.

#9 - When I lunched with Gidget and Vela last week, one of them mentioned the rumor that CEOJason had gotten canned. I can vouch for the fact that he's still showing up here every day, but the rumor (they have a pipeline into the Shadow Board that rules us all) does have me wondering....

#10 - I don't think I mentioned the Argonut Café Holiday get-together, did I? It was the evening of the 11th, at ChaosManager Daenna's home. Each member of the 10-person staff here at the Café was warned that there would be two dozen attendees and asked to bring enough of their dish (it was a pot-luck) to feed twenty. I suspect I'm the only person who thought about it and realized that if ten people each bring food for twenty, you have enough food to feed two hundred people--especially taking into account the American hostess's ever-present fear that there Won't Be Enough* which she inevitably insures against by providing a ham, two pies, home-made cookies, and six kinds of dinner rolls. We ate, they played pool or foosball or air hockey and then, endless hours later, we played a gift game--a variation of the dreidel game--and I wound up with two free movie tickets, big thrill, then everyone was getting tipsy and it was 11:00 p.m., so I went home. The end.

#11 - The last week or so, work has been a peculiar mixture of urgent tasks and "nothing to do." Because of the holidays, people who might ordinarily be searching for our services are now searching for things almost but not quite what we do. It would be a mistake, as I keep telling myself, to interpret any of the stats for the latter half of December as representative. So, basically I'm either doing four things at once, or sneaking over to read H. Rider Haggard novels online. I don't normally (aside from the occasional blog entry) goof off on company time. I'm not sure I really enjoy it, either. I think the days pass much more quickly when I'm working.

#12 - Am I lame if my favorite-ever Christmas movie is A Muppet Christmas Carol?

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* Culturally, Americans seem to have some kind of weird issue around enoughness. Our entire society sometimes seems fixated on getting what's there to be gotten before there's not enough left to go around.

Without getting excessively political, I still want to say that I'm amused that the major oil contracts in Iraq are not being awarded to Chump & Cheney's Corporate Cohorts or, indeed, any US-based oil companies.

Right now, Dick and George are probably sitting there, stewing--thinking that killing a hundred thousand or so Iraqis should have done the trick and wondering what a guy's gotta do these days to get a guaranteed payoff.