Saturday, we got together with Brian Quarfoth (who was dressed like a scary mime...lulz) and played this crazy fun game called Red November. The first time, we all died horribly. The second time, we made it to safety. I'm sad we didn't get to play Betrayal at House on the Hill, but it was still nice to get to know the first game better so that next time we play, it's solid.

After he left, we lounged about the house for a bit. Got ready to go to Amanda's rockin' house party, as well as the famed Mansion Party with the Kennedys. At Amanda's place, my team totally rocked all over everyone's faces, which wasn't surprising--I had Amanda AND Chris on my team! What a draw! We won shot glasses and Halloween pencils. :D Amanda was dressed like Flo and she looked GREAT. Chris was the founder of some religious order, and had a massive sword. He looked pretty cool. Their new place is AWESOME. I love their sun room with two arm chairs in it. They are totally settled in to a life of together, which is great. :) I want a room like that someday!

We headed to the Mansion Party and met Chase and Andrea there. It was an ok party. Most of the people were already suuuuuper wasted by the time we got there, so it wasn't all that much fun to me. Nate stopped in, and I kind of wish I had gone party hopping with him. He kept sending me pictures from all of the parties he was at--totes jealous. Erin was supposed to come out with us, but she wasn't feeling well. :( Later in the evening, around the time of DST, we headed to Hard Times Cafe for late night sustenance. I think it was a good idea all around, as some were drunker than others. The water and food was a winner. :) Nate, Ali, Evan and Evan's sister all joined us there.

Sunday, Tiff was kind enough to let me go in at 11 instead of 10. I needed that extra hour. I woke up feeling GREAT and well rested. Awesome! Jerry dropped me off at Dave's to pick up my Jeep, all put back together and working fine. :)

Tiff had worn this crazy Sheera costume, complete with head dress, uncomfortable necklace, and extensions. Her poor neck was irritated as hell from the necklace, and her head was in pain from the extensions in her hair. We spent about an hour in the shower trying to wash them out of her hair. Wacky! Her friend, Brooke, put them in her hair, using glue AND THEN a hair dryer to pretty much cement them in place. I will never use extensions like that. :(

I had to work at Abilene at 2, which I understood, since there was a Vikings game at 3, but I knew we wouldn't get busy. I had ONE table. Dominic was getting his ass kicked and he made good $$, but not me. I left with $6 at the end of my shift. I could have left with less, but the table was generous. I really appreciated that. What I didn't appreciate, however, was that I didn't even make a shot of Jameson in tips. I *really* wanted one on Sunday. :( I figured I'd save my $6.75+tip and buy a bottle on Thursday. Bah.

I started my NaNoWriMo, and got about 350 words in. I'm sure that pace won't keep up, and I'll be writing frantically at the end. We'll see how that train wreck goes. Called home, talked to Mom and Darin for a while. I met up with Jerry at Thad's for Sunday Night Awesomeness. Carmen made cucumber soup, which was tasty and amazing. She is such a great cook!

Monday, I don't remember if we stayed at my place or his Sunday night. Oh well. I had to work at 4, which was teh lame. I made $25 from four tables. $31 in two days. I can't keep living like this! :( I headed over to Erin's to try on and potentially borrow a suit for my Thursday interview. Her suit was super cute and fit great! We had good chats, until she and Nate had to head out to go see Where the Wild Things Are. I would have gone if I hadn't already seen it.

I called Jerry to see what was shakin' before I left NE. I had originally planned on going to Chicago Lake, buying a bottle of Jameson, and settling in with some Katamari for the evening. He was sick, so I headed to the grocery to pick up some juice and dinner, and went over to take care of his poor, sick face. :P We played video games, watched LOST. Ya know.

Tuesday, he got to work from home. I worked on my stuff, sending out lots and lots of resumes, applying for many things at the U, per Amanda's suggestion. Bah, I hate this waiting game! I headed home in the afternoon. I should have headed out earlier, because as soon as I got home, I took a nap. I was full from lunch and probably coming down with a touch of Jerry's cold. Bummer! I still headed to Suzi's, even though I was contemplating not going. I had a good time, and Erin even came! I went apeshit on her crossword puzzle to the point where she had to take it away. :P

Wednesday, all I had on my plate was SPW. I slept in, lazed about. Made cookies for the group. Turned the heat off early so we didn't die. Shit got a little loose, what with three bottles of Jameson, two bottles of rum, and one bottle of Bailey's in play. Eek! We broke an attendance record, too. I believe we had a total of 19 people there, all in all. I will have to check records, but that sounds about right. Amy and her friend, two of Aaron's friends, Aaron, me, Wifey, Crystal, Bertine, Anne and Doug Miller, Ann, Dave, Laura and Joe, Asian Dan and Pete, Jason D...anyone else? That's only 18! That ties last year's Night Before Thanksgiving count. TELL ME if I forgot anyone. :D

Thursday, I had my interview. The company was really cool, and the staff seemed really nice. He is going to call people for 2nd round interviews sometime next week. I hope I get this job!

Post interview, I met up with Nate to have some lunch. We went to a cute little place in NE called Sen Yai Sen Lek. He bought my lunch, which I thought was sweet. :) He let me hang out in his condo building's office room to print and fax some stuff. Awesome! I even printed out a new social security card application. I have to get in and do that soon. Bah. Paperwork.

Thursday night, I went in to work. I made $55 when the night was over. MAJOR BUMMER. I seriously can't live on $100/week at Abilene. :( I ended up at Jerry's after work, which was nice. We watched more LOST. We are addicts!

Friday, I had grandiose plans of sleeping in. Fortunately, I had set a calendar appointment for myself that Anna and I were going to go hit Uptown, and that I was going to pick her up! I tore through the shower, got dressed, and grabbed her from Thad's. We stopped by my place so I could grab a card to write a thank you for the interview. I only grabbed one, and ended up screwing up what I wanted to say, of course. We ate at the Namaste Cafe, which was surprisingly awesome! Service was slow, but they were busy. Oh well.

We walked to the Spyhouse on Hennepin for a coffee after lunch. I can't wait to hang out with Anna more often! She is so great and so much fun to hang out with. :) We stopped by my place on the way to teh Wedge to grab more cards. This time, I grabbed several, so I could NOT mess it up. :P I didn't get to take Anna to the Wedge, but there is always next time. I got her home just in time to go to the gym with Carmen. She looked a little weird, and I realised it was because she wasn't wearing her glasses! I've never seen her wearing contacts. :P I stayed and wrote the card at their place so I didn't put it off and potentially forget. Thad helped me word it. :) Popped it into the mail and went about my merry way.

I grabbed a bottle of Jameson on the way back to Jerry's. I also stopped at a gas station and checked my oil. I need to get an oil change and check the tire pressure, srsly. Talked with Nate on the phone for a bit, which was nice. We made a quick stop in at Thad's, but I wasn't feeling 100%, so we hung out in, watched a few episodes of LOST, and chilled with some chicken fried rice. The oyster sauce made a world of difference! So super good. :) I feel bad that we didn't make it to Kari's birfday. :(

Saturday, being today, I got up and headed to Tiff's. Just got home a bit ago. Jerry and I are making breakfast, and we are going on a walk after we eat. I'm going to go take care of Jeep stuff, like a fresh oil change, and he's going to work. At some point, we're going to go grocery shopping, and there are a few options for tonight. Ah, to be so busy!

Whatever happened to the Bud Ice Penguin? Seriously, that was genius!

Wednesday, I got up and left the Arden B at a fairly early hour. I had errands to run in Minneapolis proper. I hit up the bank to buy a cashier's check for rent and get it off in the mail. Hit the grocery. Ya know. Stuff closer to home. :)

I had to work at 3, on the cocktail side. I had some fun customers, and was done by 11:30ish. I can't remember if I went to Indy or not. I think not. Stayed up far too late, fell asleep on the couch, as per usual.

Thursday was mostly uneventful. When you stay up too late and start work at 3pm, most of your morning/early afternoon is eaten up quickly. Work was fine but slow. Scott gave me a ride home...I don't remember why I didn't ride on Thursday, but it was what it was. Likely due to rain/cold weather.

Friday was crazy busy. I got up, did stuff around the house. Got to work at 3pm again. I had a couple of tables that stayed FOREVER. They tipped well enough, so I didn't really mind. It just sucked when Erin showed up to get me and I was scrambling to get out the door. I hate making people wait!

We went to Nancy's going away party. We are all so happy for her about her new job, but super sad that she had to relocate. Val, the girl who hosted the party, had such a gorgeous house! Her kitty was super cute, too! His name is The Dude, and he's a big bear of a Mainecoon. What a sweetheart, srsly.

Saturday, I had planned on taking the bus to Tiff's, but got up early in hopes of the weather holding out so I could scoot. The forecast looked promising, so I bundled up and headed outside to start my baby up. It died about a minute into warming it up. I was not pleased as I RAN my foolish ass the four blocks to the bus, all while wearing my boots, jacket and full faced helmet.

The lovely Erin came and got me at Tiff's to go eat some breakfast. We went to Luce downtown. Good food! She had a great coupon for brunch food, so that was the deciding factor. Moose and Suzi's sounded fun, but cheap = winnar. :) Many awesome girl chats were had. She is such an awesome friend!

We got back to Tiff's just in time for Asian Dan's stylish ass to show up with my little brother's cake from the Edelweiss Bakery in Prior Lake. Asian Dan, I owe you a big one! :) I hung out and played DS until my Mom showed up to get the cake. We went to my place to give the key to my scooter to Jonathon from Scooterville so he could tow it away. :( That made me so super sad.

I kept Mom company while she ate flautas at El Paraiso. I drank a beer. :P We ran some errands together--my Saturday afternoon/early evening plans were pretty much shot, due to my lack of scooter. We had registered for a Yelp event at the Soap Factory that ended up panning out nicely. Spike, Erin, Nate, Jerry and I all met up at varying points in our journey. The event was super fun! I was totally bummed to have missed out on my earlier plans, as well as the opening night of Marisol. I really need to get over there and see that show before it closes. I can't wait to see the lovely duchess_of_pie on stage!

Jerry and I went to Thad and Carmen's after the event was done. A great night of chilling with the Dahlberg's was had by all. Erin and Nate kept bugging us to come out, but we weren't feeling like being out and about. I looked super cute--Spike, Nate, Jerry AND Thad all said so. I think Thad's was motivated by the fact that I told him the other three guys all said so. :P WTG, Thad!

Sunday morning came all too quickly. Jerry took pictures of me in my dress before we left. I hope they turned out ok. :) I was super sleepy all day. I was late to Tiff's, I ran my bum off to catch buses and trains to Midtown Global Market. I got there just in time to meet Kelly with all of our booth gear. Nobody at the event knew their heads from holes in the ground, so it was a frustrating hour of setup.

Our booth neighbors, from Barbette, were super awesome. They gave us some crazy meat log things. I ate samples of lots of tasty foods at the event, drank entirely too many little cups of wine and beer, and went home fairly toasted. :P The guys from Barbette gave me a ride home so Kelly didn't have to go all the way back to Uptown. Ali lost his car, so the other guy (Matthew?) and I waited with the stuff until he found it.

After the event, I got home and took a freakin' nap. I was so tired! I met up with Jerry, Melissa, Kelvin and the other guy. They all had pizza. Jerry and Melissa had Bloody Marys, which looked more like a sandwich than a drink. :P The other two guys had beer. I had a very tasty Merlot and a Bavarian pretzel. So great! Jerry and I crashed at my place, which was nice. Jess had the heat on per my request. So toasty and warm! It was adorable to see Jerry crashing after one episode of LOST instead of ME crashing. :P That poor kid handles early mornings worse than I do.

Monday, we got up and messed around on the computers. Jerry watched a live online conference thing. We spent some time distracting each other from the conference, which was nice. ;) I made some eggs for breakfast.

Eventually, we got going. We headed to Diamonds Coffee House in NE. It's a super cute little place! I can wholeheartedly recommend that you go there and eat a veggie sammich on marble rye. Tomatoes, spinach, guacamole, pickles, cucumbers, guac...there was so much awesome stuff on that sammich!

We headed out from the coffee shop in the pouring rain toward Thad and Carmen's place. I had agreed to babysit Maewyn and Flannery so they could all go out for Ave's birthday. Maewyn pitched a bit of a fit when she realised that Mommy really was leaving, and again when she realised that Mommy really was gone. I left her to pitch her fits alone, and they ended rather rapidly.

Carmen bought sushi for dinner, and had macaroni dinners for the girls, too. Jerry and I shared the sushi plates, and the girls even ate some, too! They made cards for Ave, which was super sweet. I have my card from Flannery on my fridge. :)

Everyone came back from dinner, and we had pie. The key lime was supposed to have been kept frozen, we discovered, since it turned to pudding on our plates. :P It was still good, though! We all hung out together after Thad and Ave's parents left. Had a cocktail together, and took awesome pictures of Thad with his shirt tucked down in an awkward place. :P We have far too much fun together, I swear!

I told Carmen to keep her $20 that she wanted to pay me. Dinner and dessert were by FAR enough payment. If she had insisted on paying me, I would have just taken the $$ and bought them another bottle of gin. :P We ended up back at Jerry's place since I didn't have to be anywhere in particular until Wednesday at 4.

Tuesday, we got up at an ok hour. Dragging yourself out of bed when it's cold SUCKS. I know it will only get worse, but that doesn't mean I have to like it right now. I worked on my resume and looked around for jobs. I tried to get further on updating, but as you can plainly see, I'm still a few days behind schedule. Whoops!

We did our regular Tuesday thing. Dinner with his family. Homemade chicken noodle soup, omg! It was so tasty! His Mom even made applesauce and potato bread. I could have died and gone to heaven, I swear. Went to Suzi's for the beers. I felt like I was interrupting boy talk time between Jerry and Thad, mainly because they were talking iPhone and computer stuff that I don't understand.

Nate came to my rescue and we talked about life in general. I'm sad Erin couldn't make it, but I hope she can soon. I think everyone would really like her. :) I hope *I* can keep going over the winter. Blerg, MN winters!

Wednesday, we got up and I made some eggs again. Tasty business! And I'm getting really good at it! Tiff, you are a genius in the kitchen. Jerry loves the basted eggs. :) Jerry remembered that he had allergy shots at 1, so we had to jet. We also went to the Aveda Institute for haircuts! Jerry needed one for his interview, and I needed one because my hair was out of control. :P The girl did a great job on mine, but she was so slow! Mostly, I appreciate how slow she was, because I feel like she did a good job. Plus, it's nice to have someone take extreme care when you are doing a fairly major hair cut. :)

After that, we had to fairly fly over to my place. I grabbed my shirt, apron and shoes and bolted out the door. I met with a friend of Nate's from Keller Williams. They are doing a party this month, and want us to cater. Super! Work was fairly uneventful, and I left with $14 after tip-out. LAME. I stayed for an hour or so to do the schedule. I'll do the next week's schedule soon, I'm sure.

I met Crystal at Independent for a beer. We chatted about this and that. Her hair looks super cute! Still fairly red, but it's a darker red. I like it. :) We went to Rainbow to use the coinstar thing. Next time, I told her I'd do it for her at Wells Fargo for FREE. We parted ways, and I tried to find tasty things in the grocery, to no avail. Jerry walked me home over the phone. I watched a bit of 30 Rock, fell asleep on the couch. Blah.

Thursday, I got up at a decent hour. I met a guy in Uptown to take a test drive of his car. It's a nice enough car, and would likely last through the winter just fine. He wanted $1400 for it...I'd maybe give him a grand based on what needs to be done. The lovely Nate came with me for the test drive. After the ride, I headed to work.

We had a CRAZY dinner rush. I made $82 in tips! So great. We literally had zero customers in the place at 11pm, so we got the OK from John to close. I wish we wouldn't have. As I was leaving, a couple of groups of people tried to go in, but it was closed. They were not pleased, and neither was I. People won't know that we're open if we don't consistently stay open til a set hour.

The loaner died when I tried to leave. I walked most of the way home, and then my co-worker brought me home after buying me a shot. Crazy. I called Bob at Scooteville and left a message, so they knew when and how I got home, and that it was NOT on the loaner they gave me.

Of course, shortly after I got home, my phone wouldn't work. Turns out, Wifey's phone didn't work either, so it was some glitch in the T-Mobile systems at 1am. greh.

Friday, being today, has been pretty calm. I got up around 11. Took a call from Anna saying she was sick and didn't feel up to Uptown. I totally understand, and really wanted her to stay home if she was sick.

I met Bob from Scooterville behind Abilene to do the scooter exchange. I had no idea he was going to bring me a Buddy, but I'm glad he did. It's such a nice ride! I'm sad that we are slated to get snow tonight...I'm going to attempt to sneak my baby into the garage for the imminent doom. Holy crap, I just called it *my* baby. EEEEE!

Right now, I'm struggling to keep my eyes open. I think I'm getting sick. I have to pee every couple of hours and I'm tired as hell. No, I'm NOT pregnant, thankyouverymuch. :P

That leaves us where we are NOW. Caught up on updating eljay. Sleepy as all get out. Not wanting to go to work tonight. Not wanting to go to Tiff's super early tomorrow. Not wanting to go to Tiff's at 8 on Sunday. Not wanting to work Sunday afternoon. Why am I so negative right now? What do I WANT to do, I wonder?

Wednesday night was so super fun! People convened at Jerry's house for a night of game playing and drinks. Off the top of my head, it was Brian, Amanda and Chris, Brandy and JD, Wifey, Crystal, Carmen and Anna, Asian Dan, Erin, Spike, Nate...and that's about all I can come up with this second. I'm sure there were more of you, and I sincerely apologise to anyone I may have forgotten. :( Good times were had by all! The stragglers left around 1 or so. Quite a successful hangout at the Arden B Casa de Jerry. :)

Thursday, we got up and ambled about the house for a bit. Got on the road to Stillwater around 1 and arrived before 2. It's only a 20 mile drive from Arden Hills to StilH20! We walked up and down the main drag in an effort to kill a little time, and to find a suitable place for lunch. We ended up at a cute little restaurant with a retro arcade theme. Jerry played about five free games of pinball. He is (very rightly) convinced that his super power is to get free pinball wherever he goes. As soon as I touched the machine, it stopped giving him free games. He even got a quarter out of the return slot! Wacky. The place had great sandwiches, too. :)

It was finally close enough to 4pm so we could check in to our hotel. Cute little place! Of course, we got in the elevator with an older couple who had just checked in and was staying down the hall from us. Awkward conversation ensued. :P I've never gotten why it's considered weird or impolite to not make pointless conversation in situations like that...

We found our room--it was beautiful! It was really spacious, with super high ceilings. The bed was nice, but Jerry kept hitting himself on it. First, his head on the decorative carved headboard, and then his knee on the bed frame. Poor guy! We hung out in the room for a bit. Got some ice to keep our beer cold, then hit the road to see the sights.

For those of you who have never been to Stillwater, it's a touristy town. Nothing is open on a Thursday after 5pm. Probably rightly so, but it makes for a slow night for anyone who is there on a weeknight. :P We walked down by the river. Got some good shots of the water, birds and spiders. We tried in earnest to work off our late lunch so that we would be hungry for dinner later. The last place we checked out before heading back to the hotel for dinner was kind of on a lark. They advertised buy one get one free t-shirts. As we walked by, a really pretty dress caught my eye, so we stopped in. I ended up buying a couple of Kariza Wraps. They are super pretty and now I have two gorgeous dresses that fit well and I like the style. :D I wore one to dinner. :)

As we got ready for dinner, Jerry popped the cork on the champagne. It shot pretty far and ricocheted several times. I am always too scared to open champagne. :P We ended up taking the rest of the bottle with us to dinner, which was nice. Dinner was so fancy! We had the choice of an appetizer to share, soup or salad each, an entree each and dessert each. WAAAAAY too much food, if you ask me! We shared the artichoke dip and each had chicken noodle soup. He had fancy kebabs with steak, sausage and shrimp. I had a cream sauce pasta with smoked chicken. I could only eat about five bites of my meal by the time I was through with the first two courses. Dessert (Bailey's cheesecake for me, caramel apple pie for him) had to be boxed up. We couldn't eat another bite!

It was really nice to be there on a weekday. There was one other couple in the dining area when we arrived, and they left fairly early on in our meal. There were two dining rooms, as well as a patio outside. It was starting to cool off, so we opted for the inner dining room. It was nice to have a big table with lots of room to spread out. We had some lovely chats over dinner, and then sauntered back up to our room. On the way back up, Jerry wanted to stop by the scotch tasting event that was going on. The guy who was running it had chatted with Jerry earlier about scotches and liquors and whatnot. Jerry was totally right that we would be able to get a taste of a very fine scotch when the event was over. I didn't know thing one about it, other than it tasted better than I anticipated scotch would, and that it cleared my sinuses rather well. :)

We had a great night in Stillwater. We hung out in the room's hot tub for goodness only knows how many hours. I'm really wishing I had a hot tub in my room right about now. I don't think I would ever leave it in this kind of weather! :P Drank some Two Hearted...I spilled some Two Hearted on the bed and on Jerry. Whoops! I fell asleep while Jerry was watching crazy public access TV. All in all, a very successful trip...that was only half over!

Thad and Carmen got their German yesterday! They are hosting a student from Germany for the semester. Her name is Anna (rhymes with banana) and she'll be here until sometime in February. She's super nice, drives a Vespa back at home, and wants to learn some ASL with me. :)

I want to get her a little welcome gift. I'm definitely going to get her some Old Dutch pretzels and some Pearson's candies. I was thinking about a nice map with Minneapolis on one side and MN on the other.

What would you get for someone that is unique to Minnesota or the United States? She's been here before, but she lived in Nebraska before. I think she'll have much more fun here. :)