My Holiday Post-Mortem

Thursday: Flew to Albuquerque via ORD. No issues, great flight. Met a nice guy who bought me a drink. Chilled with the fam and grandparents talking, then went to bed.

Friday: Woke up fairly early, had crossants for breakfast (Mommom, my grandmother, got them from a local bakery). Went to Old Town for some shopping, lunch at Le Peep, and a few malls. Then went home and chatted with my cousin Amity and her boyfriend Brandon, and then all went out to dinner at Garbanzos, a Mexican place. YUM. Then we went to church at a Presbyterian church for Christmas Eve, then came home and saw my Aunt Rufina, Uncle Rich, and Rufina's niece Cecile who had arrived from Dallas and DC. Went for a Christmas Eve walk to see the luminaria. Albuquerque is known for its luminaria on Christmas Eve and my grandparent's neighborhood is one of the places on the official tour. It's so cool and I love being there for Christmas.

Saturday: Had brunch and opened stockings and presents at 10 AM. Rufina, Rich, and Cecile went to mass at 12:30, the rest of us relaxed. We all went for a walk along the Rio Grande (about 1/2 a mile from my grandparent's house) and it was a lovely day! Then we played an awesome game of dominoes and had a great Christmas dinner with pecan pie for dessert. YAY! Super fun day.

Sunday: Got up really early for a 9:30 family photo. This hysterical Italian photographer named Vinnie (just kidding, his name was Michael) came and took lots of pictures. I will publish if possible. Then we drove to Santa Fe for lunch at Geronimo, a great restaurant. Rich and Rufina have friends from England and this is their favorite restaurant in the states! I had a great salad, the best bread I've ever had, champaign, Elk tenderloin, and toffee cheesecake. And that doesn't even describe how good the meal was. Then we went to a famous chapel and to the town square in Santa Fe. YAY. Then back home and basically chilling and sleeping.

Monday: Oh my gosh, had to get up for breakfast at 7:45 before Amity and Brandon had to work. I was NOT feeling good about all of this getting up early... so hard on my body! So we did that and then went to Old Town one more time and then off to the airport. My flight from ABQ to Denver was fine, and then I volunteered to be bumped for a free ticket off my next flight (sound familiar?). It was a 5:35 flight, I was then confirmed first class on an 11:25 flight the next morning but I waited to see if I could get on a 9:08 PM flight that night. It was 15 people overbooked and I was 1/29 on the standby list. Since they won't take voluntters for a standby passenger to get on, that means 16 people had to not show up at all for me to get on the flight. Yeah right. But being stubborn (and don't forget tired) I waited it out... they asked for volunteers, but then they asked them to go ahead and board which meant they weren't too overbooked. At the end they thought 2 people didn't get on... but they found one ticket and paged the other person and she came running up. I was so tired that I cried when I didn't get on, and the gate agent looked so sad for me because she knew I wanted to get on. The thing that killed me was the 9:08 flight was pushed back to 10:30 because the flight before was late leaving Orange County, and at least 4 people showed up in that 82 minute period. Which means I would have made it if the flight left on time. Poor Vin and Russ and my mother had to endure all of my crabbiness, but I did get to catch up with Adds and Erin on the phone, that was nice. I tried to hide my crabbiness from Adds and Erin and Russ, but Russ TOTALLY picked up on it. Tells you something about how wells he knows it. Vin and my Mom I didn't even play games with. I'm going to stop being emotional around Vin, he HATES it. :-) For serious. But that's another story entirely.

Tuesday: Finally got home... had an AWESOME flight, very relaxing and enjoyable, then saw an engineer I work with in the airport. Then I got on the Max (Portland train) and saw 2 NU IE grads! Super funny. Then Vin picked me up at the airport. He kidnapped me to his house, so I took a nap and a shower there, then we went out to a really nice dinner. I love "Italian nights" because we drink wine and he acts all chivalrous (he was even joking about that). Then we went to Bed Bath and Beyond and chatted it up forever and hysterical stuff. I even did circle circle square square, spiders crawling in your hair, tight squeeze, cool breeze, now you've got the chills. Yeah, he thought I was as crazy as you do.

Wednesday: Got the oil changed in Jake, then went to Target, Michaels, and Office Depot for a shredder and to look at scrapbooking stuff. Then to Chipotle, then home for lunch and to shred stuff and attempt unpacking / cleaning. Then I tried sleeping and then woke up, had a snack, and went to work.

Tomorrow I will try to get up by 4 so that I can spend a few hours with Vin before he leaves until the 10th. Kinda stinks because I get less sleep and my apartment will remain a huge mess. Adds is coming up (I hope) for New Years and I think we're going to go to a party at my co-worker Doug's house. YAY that will be fun. Kristie wants me to do something with her but she was invited to Doug's too so maybe she'll go. Just today I got 3 different New Year's proposals, YAY I feel popular. Which is good because all too often I feel so lonely in Portland. I miss Keithers.

Speaking of lonely, I did a lot of reflection and thinking while gone. I think I'm going to do even more in the next 10 days while Vin is gone. I definitely am planning on a fun weekend with Adds, and then shopping on Monday and hiking on Tuesday or the other way around depending on the weather. I definitely want to get some hiking in because I want to start getting in shape for the spring/summer when I can do some more serious climbs. I'm also going to have to spend time biking (for endurance), doing stairs (for climbing), and running (for general fitness) so that I can become more hardcore. Gee, my favorite things. If only I just wanted to swim. So that's my goal and I'm super excited. But hiking will give me lots of time to think which will be super nice. Then I'll have a 4 day work week, then just a Sunday alone and then Vin comes home. Sounds like a good deal to me!

I haven't been commenting in people's blogs lately -- but I still read them. And I added Julius to the list, so hopefully I'm not one of the people he doesn't want to read it. :-/ But yay for blogs.

I have decided to make what I think will be the first New Year's Resolution of my life: go hiking more. My reasons for this are threefold:
1. See the beautiful Northwest
2. Learn to be a better hiker so that I can climb Rainer
3. Get in shape
YAY for hiking. :-)