Office Party

Wow, has a whole week gone by already?

Well, this week I went back to the gym - on Monday - for the first time since, well, the gym's computer tells me since October 15. Which is probably accurate. And a little sad. But, that's life when you're buying a house! I did deliberately switch my exercise for October from the gym to bicycling in the morning, but once it got time to pack and move, I stopped working out altogether. Too little time and not enough energy, you know. So yes, I did have to drop the weights on my exercises down a couple of notches, but I got through the workout and didn't hurt myself. Yay!

Thursday night Subrata and I went to play Ultimate frisbee for the first time in about a month. I'd though I missed some games due to my sister's wedding, but it turns out they were rained out anyway. But it was a fine evening for running around: about 50 degrees, and enough people showed up that I didn't have to play all the time. I mostly avoided making boneheaded errors, and was pleased with the evening overall.

Almost as soon as we stopped playing it started raining, and it was raining quite hard by the time Subrata and I sat down to dinner at one of the rare restaurants around here that's open past 10 pm. I do like rain.

This week I was on call for jury duty with Superior Court of California in Santa Clara County. (The fact that I've moved doesn't really matter since I'm in the same county.) I checked the Web site dutifully each evening, and my number was in the block called for duty Wednesday morning.

Well, I went in to San Jose for duty, and was told that my request for a postponement had gone through! I told the lady at the desk that I'd never been notified of this, and she said that the instructions state that I should assume it's granted unless told otherwise. (Actually, my reading of the instructions was the exact opposite, but oh well.) She said I could either serve then or wait until my postponement date (which is in March). I thought about getting it out of the way, but decided that it was tempting fate to see if I get called for a jury that might last through the holidays.

So the moral of the story is: Always call first.

In and around all of this I've been doing my Christmas shopping. I decided not to push myself to be too inventive in buying gifts this year since I've been so busy. So I've placed some orders with Amazon, and have done some running around shopping. It hasn't been too bad, and this morning I actually dropped the last of the gifts for my family in the mail. Yay!

I suppose in order to keep up appearances as a greedy so-and-so, I should point out that you're always welcome to buy me something from my Amazon wish list. I might even send you an iCard in thanks! (Or you can just peruse my wish list to see what I want to buy lately...)

Lastly, tonight Debbi and I went to her company's holiday party. She did have to twist my arm to go, but then, she was sitting on the fence about going for a while. It wasn't bad, really, as we sat at a table with her sarcastic friends. The food was pretty good, and I scored a yummy slice of cake (more like a torte) for dessert. We also all got a chuckle that there was someone there whose name was (I may spell it wrong, but I kid you not) "Nymphia". Yeah, I guess my mind is just in the gutter a lot.

The other amusing thing was that all of the sales managers that Debbi works with - well, half a dozen of them, anyway - exclaimed upon meeting me, "So you really do exist!" I tell ya, it was work to come up with different smartass retorts for each manager, but I think I managed (har-har) to do it! I was very amused that so many of them made the same joke, though. I think two or three different people, immediately upon meeting me, congratulated me on my new house, too. Apparently Debbi talks about me at work more than she thinks.

Anyway, Debbi seemed very grateful that I came along, but it wasn't really a chore. I didn't even have to wear a suit! (Which is good, since I haven't cleaned it since we got back from Philly.) Plus I had a big slice of chocolate cake. Or torte. So how bad could it have been?