December 12, 2000

One year ago: I drop out of a project for school (which, in retrospect, was a fantastic idea), bring up eyebrow waxing, and talk about my new credit card. And Sheena Easton.

Jim and I made gingerbread cookies this weekend! My family always used to make sugar cookies every Christmas, but for some reason I wanted to make little gingerbread men this year. And so we did. We were a bit concerned about the consistency of the dough, so I called my mom while Jim mixed it by hand. It was too thick for my poor little hand mixer. While I was on the phone with my mom, Jim yelled out, "This looks like a big ball of poo!" And I took this picture to show that he was right. Everything worked out okay, though. Jim did all the rolling and cutting. I made the icing. It was too sticky -- I couldn't get it to stick to the cookies. So I added some water, but then it was too thin. So Jim came up with the brilliant "drizzle" concept, and it worked out great. He is a cookie genius. They ended up tasting great! I'm glad our first attempt at gingerbread cookies was such a success. I hope to make it an annual tradition. We just played Christmas music and baked up a storm.

Saturday, I went out with Molly and Mary. We decided instead of buying each other gifts this year, we would just spend a day together. We went to a Tree Festival at the local museum. Various businesses decorate trees (or wreaths) for display, and then they are sold or auctioned off to benefit the museum. Some of them were okay, but some were pretty lame. Then, we went to a different museum (the Erie Canal Museum) where they had a big gingerbread house display. It's amazing what some people can do with the gingerbread. Mary tried on a bonnet so that she could live out her fantasy of being on Little House, and I took a picture. She told us that when she was younger, she thought "Half-Pint" was "Apple Pie", until her brother set her straight. Then, we went out to dinner at The Mission (a Mexican restaurant). We got there at about ten to five, and they don't open until five, and the doors were locked. It was cold out! After we got in, the waitress told us that they all thought the doors were open and couldn't figure out why people were waiting outside. There was a whole family, kids included, waiting with us. They tried to seat us right next to the kids' table, but we asked for different placement. Nothing against kids, but we wanted to have a nice meal and conversation. After that, we went to a local coffeehouse for dessert and drinks. We sat there for hours, and it was a great time.

Friday night was Jim's office Christmas party. They did a murder mystery thing. I was a bit apprehensive, because I thought we would all have to act it out, and I'm just not big on that sort of thing. But it turns out that they hired a company to act the whole thing out. It was interactive, in that they gave random people lines to shout out, but it wasn't like we carried the brunt of the performance. It was funny. Jim got a line, and he managed to incorporate the phrase, "Sweet sassy molassey!" which made everyone laugh. At the end of the dinner, we had to guess who the murderer was, and Jim got it right! He got a big certificate. I hope they give him a raise at work for that one. Okay, so it has nothing to do with his job, but come on! The organizers had bought a bunch of board games, and they raffled them off at the end of the night. Jim and I won Yahtzee! That was also pretty exciting. The food was good, and no one embarrassed him or herself. I guess that's all you can ask of a holiday party. When I worked at Borders, our holiday parties were always geared towards families, so they would like rent out a theater and show A Muppet Christmas Carol and have Clifford, the Big Red Dog there. Nothing against those movies, but for those of us without kids, it wasn't too enticing. I would have rather had a bonus of some sort. Now that I'm self-employed, I don't really have an office Christmas party, I guess. I'm glad. Too much pressure to wear the right thing and schmooze the right people. Jim's was pretty low-key, but I've heard tell of others that were a lot worse. Molly's husband works for one of the Big Six accounting firms, and his holiday party is like a formal gala. No, thank you!