dragonsnow, posts by tag: holidays 2007 - LiveJournal

Christmas in New York City, 2007.

Carlos picked up his grandmother from New Jersey yesterday morning and brought her over. We watched "The Queen" (with Spanish subtitles) while I made the "Make-Ahead Mashed Potatoes" and the frosting for my velvet cake - which is green this year, thanks to Pathmark being out of red food coloring last weekend, thank YOU, Pathmark. Despite putting twice the recommended amount of red food coloring drops into the frosting, it just wasn't getting red and the water-based food color was starting to ruin the integrity of the frosting, so I had to call it quits at a deep hot pink color. Next year I need to use my red gel color.

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Last night Carlos and I had 8:00 dinner reservations at Primitivo, and so went down to the Village early-ish to just walk around in the cold and be out and about. We got to Washington Square Park and saw a huge crowd of people there - turns out we had accidentally stumbled upon an annual performance art piece called Unsilent Night. Hundreds - maybe thousands - of people gathered in the square by the arch, most with boomboxes, and each one had a cassette or cd of music given to them by the artist Phil Kline, then everyone played them at the same time and walked to Tompkins Square Park. We would have followed, but a)we were not dressed for long periods of time outside (we kept ducking into shops before dinner to keep warm), and b)we had reservations.

Still, it was kind of cool to just randomly find something fun like this! Next year we definitely want to participate!

Meanwhile, in book news, I finally finished "The Amber Spyglass," and thus the entire "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Now: what to read next? Marquez? Calvino? Philippa Gregory? Saramago? Cervantes? Decisions, decisions!

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Lovely weekend. Friday night I came home a complete stressball from work and from my new MP3 player acting up and being stupid, so Carlos took me to Tony's for dinner. Yum. I inhaled, like, a ton of spaghetti for comfort. That plus a glass of wine plus "The Golden Compass" made me feel much, much better. LOVE my husband. The next day I woke up and he had added some of my cds to my tempermental MP3 player. LOVE LOVE my husband.

Saturday I spent about 6 1/2 hour baking cookies.

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Even an American Airlines dot com website specialist can't explain to me how the fact that our flight to Miami tonight continuing on to Lima, Peru is affecting my lack of ability to check us all in online and print our boarding passes ahead of time.

He did, though, thank me for thinking ahead and trying to avoid the crowds at the ticket counter.

T-minus 9 hours and 15 minutes until our "scheduled" flight time. Keynahore*.

It's sad that I'm hoping and wishing and praying that our flight is only 30-45 minutes delayed and not longer. I'm not even pretending to be optomistic that we'll actually leave on time tonight.

::Edit, 12:07pm:: I am now amending my hopes, wishes and prayers that if our flight is delayed tonight, it will be while we are still in the airport and not on the plane.

With the Holidays - and all the rich foods and overindulgences they entail - popping up next week, I've been exercising like crazy lately in anticipation. The Mer of just a year ago would have figured, "Screw it, it's the Holidays, I'm allowed to go a little crazy." But the Mer of 2007, who worked so long and hard to lose 20 pounds in the first half of the year, doesn't want all that hard work and deprivation and determination to go to waste (or waist! Ha!) So yeah, I've been pushing myself exercise-wise and will continue to do so until January when it all dies down again. I don't want to go to Eric's pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner tonight and be like, "Oh no thanks, this one tiny slice of white meat turkey is enough for me." I want to be able to eat a little of everything and enjoy it all guilt-free, which is why I did 40 minutes of intense Pilates this morning, followed by 30 minutes of
Yoga to aid digestion, and then rounded it all off with a brisk walk around the Reservoir with Carlos.

And, lame as this sounds, and I've always thought that people who work out on their vacations and Holidays are obsessive idiots, I will probably bring a Pilates video to Miami with me next week. Again, the me of a year ago wouldn't bother, but the me of this year realizes that four days in a row of all those heavy foods and heavy drinking, combined with no exercise, combined with the LoPlittSterns' Holiday party the weekend after we get back, followed my our own cookies-wine-and-cheese party the week after that, with my office Holiday party on the 13th, and then Christmas, well - I just can't let all that food and drink start to pile up without at least trying to undo all the negative effects it all will cause. A few pounds here and there quickly adds up, and before I know it - 20 lbs overweight again.