So this weekend was a hoot, but I'm paying the price for it all week long.
Tiiiired. Spacey. Listless.
Luckily I've been able to sleep like a rock every night since about a week ago, so that's a bonus.
Friday night dinner party at S&Ms was a good time, although I had been so busy all day I was remiss and did not adequately hydrate as I normally would before a night out on the sauce. AND I stupidly mixed my alcohols (gin, red, white) BUT in a heroic twist of fate, when we got home I was smart enough to slug a Berocca with a pint of water before going to bed, and lo and behold woke up feeling like a million bucks! Good enough, even, to face THE BEAST.... the bane of my existance, the one thing I hate more than anything in the world (well ok, not really, but dude...) driving to the mall and going....
wait for it....
CLOTHES SHOPPING.
Yeah basically after last summer I gave all my old clothes away because I realized something needed to be done to kick my ass into buying a new wardrobe, or at least components thereof. So my strategy was, ditch all my 3,4,5,6 year old hot-weather clothes during the winter, so that when hot weather comes around again, I'll be forced to go do THE DEAL. Which is exactly what happened saturday.
I picked this weekend to get it done because it's during "that time of the month". No, not when I experience "the process", but rather when the local BW inhabitants are totally streched out and broke because month-end/pay day is still another week or 2 away, and they've blown all their wad. So the shops aren't crazy and un-manageable, the shopkeepers are in good moods, cars are off the roads, parked in their driveways with empty fuel tanks, and I don't want to gun down every person I see who CAN'T READ THE SIGNS THAT SAY "only 5 items per fitting room only"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So I went and gave the ol' visa card a workout and in just under 2 hours was able to bring home about 5 shirts, a couple skirts, and 3 items of jewelry. I even bought a strapless blouse, I was feeling that optimistic. Got home just in time to grab a bunch of extra stuff we don't need in the house for Doc & Mrs Doc to borrow as they were moving in over the weekend, too. Into their empty house with their 2 suitcases of NUTTIN! We hung out at their empty palace in the trees for a wee while and pondered all the cool things we'll be able to do together once they're just a few hundred metres away, until they had to rush off and go set out the next day's Hash.
The Mr. and I got all dolled up for the big swedish party, dropped LJJ with the babysitter, and headed off for yet another night of drinking wine and bubbly and not quite enough water. DOH! I'm off my game, dammit! It was a really fun party - they had 2 lambs on a spit braai, gaspacho in styrofoam cups, live music, and probably the coolest dinner party atmosphere I've been to in BW yet..... over 80 people (!) dining at several long tables placed end-to-end on the longest 2nd-floor balcony you've ever seen (at a private residence). It was at Gustav's house and he has this wrap-around balcony that goes for miles and as I said, could sit 80 people! They did the right thing too - lots of people may not know this but DINNER PARTY IMPERATIVE, MANDATORY RULE NO. 1 is that if you have THAT many people at one sitting you HAVE to split up couples and mix up clicques. It is most certainly a deal breaker. You will go down in FLAMES if you don't. The logistics are just too much to handle that many splinter groups and shy lovebirds. So when everyone arrived at the shindig, they were all forced to draw a slip from an envelope. Girls drew African capital city names, and Boys drew African countries.
For the duration of the whore-dervs eating & mingling and bubbly-drinking, you had to seek out your geographical match. This gets the 2-birthday boys' posses to interact, which is important, not to mention brings the noise level up a notch and gets those unsocial types nervous enough that they start drinking a little bit more and losen up a notch. So we all had about an hour of meeting people, talking to people, using the "hey baby what's your country" line a little too much, etc., while all the guests trickled in. The birthday boys grabbed the microphone to tell the odd joke and throw out the odd party instruction ("yes! the soup is supposed to be cold! It's not because we're swedish!") and inform everyone that they wouldn't be allowed to go upstairs for the dinner until everyone had found their dinner companion. You could already start to catch the looks on certain people's faces ("dammit!" or "awesome!") once the pairs really started pairing off. The Mr. got a real dud for a lady - some swedish uptight doctor whose english was really bad (is that even possible??) AND I got Cattleprod, who I'm already really good mates from the Hash, and who is an absolute hoot! But the GOOD part about this whole party shenanigain is that while you may be sitting NEXT to this person, you're still going to have someone else on your other side, as well as a good 4 or 6 people opposite you during dinner, so even if you land a dud, it doesn't matter!!
Finally it was dinner time and all 80 partygoers stampeded upstairs through bedrooms and out onto the balcony where the country/city placecards were arranged so you knew where to sit, so it wasn't just a clusterf*ck WWE exhibition for chairs. My luck got even more awesome when I realized that on my OTHER side, was this funny, cute, flirty 50-year-old (but hot like a silver fox!) swedish nursery owner-guy that I vaguely know occupationally who was getting cuter as he got tipsier (or was that just me!?) and was quite happy to laugh and try to seduce me in a good-natured, non-threatening way. Cattleprod and I also had a good time sitting next to each other but this annoying american girly girl doctor was on his OTHER side, being all doe-eyed and "oooh I haven't watched TV in 14 years..... oooh I only drink top-shelf tequila" which is apparently enough to captivate SOME boys???? so I kinda lost him around the 2nd course. Oh well, we hang out enough every weekend anyway so no loss.
The wine flowed, the songs were sung (that's a real swedish party tradition, I've learned over the last few years of being friends with Sting), and sometime after midnight the dancing started. But downstairs of course (because no one wanted a 2-story balcony to come crashing down and result in the fateful deaths of 80 wine-swilling partiers). The Mr. and I both stayed up at the tables talking to our new friends for awhile but then decided to call it a night, mainly because he was on driving duty so wasn't even drinking anymore and also we had to be up early for the hash the next morning.
The next day was the hash followed by another braai, followed by a few short hours of resting up at home and then sundowners/mini-party on the veranda of Doc & Mrs Doc as kind of a pre-housewarming housewarming. Needless to say I was wrecked by the end of sunday night and monday was not easy to take.
Monday also saw my most recent comments from my thesis advisor awaiting me, first thing in the morning. DOOF! DOOF! that's the sound of the 1-2 punch that he landed in my gut, essentially pointing out a million things that I still have to completely overhaul in the next 4 weeks before D-day. uggghhhh, what a start to a week.
But I"m slugging it out in the trenches and in fairness, his comments are thoroughly helpful and totally constructive, so for that I'm grateful. It's just hard. I find myself refuting claims that I made which are the whole backbone of my research. Niiiiice. But I'm not going to get into that because I have interview candidates waiting here in the office for me. so I'll go take my frustrations out on them and put the fear of God into they little heads. you really wanna work here?
Tiiiired. Spacey. Listless.
Luckily I've been able to sleep like a rock every night since about a week ago, so that's a bonus.
Friday night dinner party at S&Ms was a good time, although I had been so busy all day I was remiss and did not adequately hydrate as I normally would before a night out on the sauce. AND I stupidly mixed my alcohols (gin, red, white) BUT in a heroic twist of fate, when we got home I was smart enough to slug a Berocca with a pint of water before going to bed, and lo and behold woke up feeling like a million bucks! Good enough, even, to face THE BEAST.... the bane of my existance, the one thing I hate more than anything in the world (well ok, not really, but dude...) driving to the mall and going....
wait for it....
CLOTHES SHOPPING.
Yeah basically after last summer I gave all my old clothes away because I realized something needed to be done to kick my ass into buying a new wardrobe, or at least components thereof. So my strategy was, ditch all my 3,4,5,6 year old hot-weather clothes during the winter, so that when hot weather comes around again, I'll be forced to go do THE DEAL. Which is exactly what happened saturday.
I picked this weekend to get it done because it's during "that time of the month". No, not when I experience "the process", but rather when the local BW inhabitants are totally streched out and broke because month-end/pay day is still another week or 2 away, and they've blown all their wad. So the shops aren't crazy and un-manageable, the shopkeepers are in good moods, cars are off the roads, parked in their driveways with empty fuel tanks, and I don't want to gun down every person I see who CAN'T READ THE SIGNS THAT SAY "only 5 items per fitting room only"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So I went and gave the ol' visa card a workout and in just under 2 hours was able to bring home about 5 shirts, a couple skirts, and 3 items of jewelry. I even bought a strapless blouse, I was feeling that optimistic. Got home just in time to grab a bunch of extra stuff we don't need in the house for Doc & Mrs Doc to borrow as they were moving in over the weekend, too. Into their empty house with their 2 suitcases of NUTTIN! We hung out at their empty palace in the trees for a wee while and pondered all the cool things we'll be able to do together once they're just a few hundred metres away, until they had to rush off and go set out the next day's Hash.
The Mr. and I got all dolled up for the big swedish party, dropped LJJ with the babysitter, and headed off for yet another night of drinking wine and bubbly and not quite enough water. DOH! I'm off my game, dammit! It was a really fun party - they had 2 lambs on a spit braai, gaspacho in styrofoam cups, live music, and probably the coolest dinner party atmosphere I've been to in BW yet..... over 80 people (!) dining at several long tables placed end-to-end on the longest 2nd-floor balcony you've ever seen (at a private residence). It was at Gustav's house and he has this wrap-around balcony that goes for miles and as I said, could sit 80 people! They did the right thing too - lots of people may not know this but DINNER PARTY IMPERATIVE, MANDATORY RULE NO. 1 is that if you have THAT many people at one sitting you HAVE to split up couples and mix up clicques. It is most certainly a deal breaker. You will go down in FLAMES if you don't. The logistics are just too much to handle that many splinter groups and shy lovebirds. So when everyone arrived at the shindig, they were all forced to draw a slip from an envelope. Girls drew African capital city names, and Boys drew African countries.
For the duration of the whore-dervs eating & mingling and bubbly-drinking, you had to seek out your geographical match. This gets the 2-birthday boys' posses to interact, which is important, not to mention brings the noise level up a notch and gets those unsocial types nervous enough that they start drinking a little bit more and losen up a notch. So we all had about an hour of meeting people, talking to people, using the "hey baby what's your country" line a little too much, etc., while all the guests trickled in. The birthday boys grabbed the microphone to tell the odd joke and throw out the odd party instruction ("yes! the soup is supposed to be cold! It's not because we're swedish!") and inform everyone that they wouldn't be allowed to go upstairs for the dinner until everyone had found their dinner companion. You could already start to catch the looks on certain people's faces ("dammit!" or "awesome!") once the pairs really started pairing off. The Mr. got a real dud for a lady - some swedish uptight doctor whose english was really bad (is that even possible??) AND I got Cattleprod, who I'm already really good mates from the Hash, and who is an absolute hoot! But the GOOD part about this whole party shenanigain is that while you may be sitting NEXT to this person, you're still going to have someone else on your other side, as well as a good 4 or 6 people opposite you during dinner, so even if you land a dud, it doesn't matter!!
Finally it was dinner time and all 80 partygoers stampeded upstairs through bedrooms and out onto the balcony where the country/city placecards were arranged so you knew where to sit, so it wasn't just a clusterf*ck WWE exhibition for chairs. My luck got even more awesome when I realized that on my OTHER side, was this funny, cute, flirty 50-year-old (but hot like a silver fox!) swedish nursery owner-guy that I vaguely know occupationally who was getting cuter as he got tipsier (or was that just me!?) and was quite happy to laugh and try to seduce me in a good-natured, non-threatening way. Cattleprod and I also had a good time sitting next to each other but this annoying american girly girl doctor was on his OTHER side, being all doe-eyed and "oooh I haven't watched TV in 14 years..... oooh I only drink top-shelf tequila" which is apparently enough to captivate SOME boys???? so I kinda lost him around the 2nd course. Oh well, we hang out enough every weekend anyway so no loss.
The wine flowed, the songs were sung (that's a real swedish party tradition, I've learned over the last few years of being friends with Sting), and sometime after midnight the dancing started. But downstairs of course (because no one wanted a 2-story balcony to come crashing down and result in the fateful deaths of 80 wine-swilling partiers). The Mr. and I both stayed up at the tables talking to our new friends for awhile but then decided to call it a night, mainly because he was on driving duty so wasn't even drinking anymore and also we had to be up early for the hash the next morning.
The next day was the hash followed by another braai, followed by a few short hours of resting up at home and then sundowners/mini-party on the veranda of Doc & Mrs Doc as kind of a pre-housewarming housewarming. Needless to say I was wrecked by the end of sunday night and monday was not easy to take.
Monday also saw my most recent comments from my thesis advisor awaiting me, first thing in the morning. DOOF! DOOF! that's the sound of the 1-2 punch that he landed in my gut, essentially pointing out a million things that I still have to completely overhaul in the next 4 weeks before D-day. uggghhhh, what a start to a week.
But I"m slugging it out in the trenches and in fairness, his comments are thoroughly helpful and totally constructive, so for that I'm grateful. It's just hard. I find myself refuting claims that I made which are the whole backbone of my research. Niiiiice. But I'm not going to get into that because I have interview candidates waiting here in the office for me. so I'll go take my frustrations out on them and put the fear of God into they little heads. you really wanna work here?
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