Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

Tonight I was lucky enough to have joined in on the Blogger Bash at Cafe Francisco. Lots of local Memphis bloggers in attendance. Aaron joined me and was ridiculed enough by the other guests to actually post on his nearly dead blog!

Above are Mark and Brock

Me with my BLT (oddly, the price of tomatoes is so high that the T on my BLT cost an extra 75 cents!)

Here we have Peggy and Mick, who brought all of us party favors! I got a yo-yo!

Brock ‘n’ Mike (who is actually on a blogging hiatus at present)

Here’s the host of this thing, Eric, who wore a Blogger sweatshirt so we could identify the group!

And here’s me, plugging Tribe.net like it’s Amway, or at least Quixtar!

I apologize for not sharing pictures of everyone. The one I have of Len looks kind of like the pictures of people in The Ring after they watch that video and hear the phone ring. Sadly, Rachel was a no-show. Maybe next time. Aaron was there, but he was holding the camera, and the only picture of him was in that same one with the Ring Len one! Phil was there, too, but the pictures of him turned out really blurry. Maybe I need to get over my fear of flash photography.

Folks, I’d say more, but it’s been a helluva day of scoring assessments, dissertating, updating my CV, writing cover letters, and hanging out IRL with the blogfolk. It’s midnight, and the alarm’s going off at 6:30am… well, maybe 7am. I’ve gotta amscray to edbay. Witticisms will have to wait until tomorrow.

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Well, it was an exhausting week. I was exhausted when it started, but it was a different kind of overworked exhaustion. As silly as it sounds, I was really happy to tire myself in a different way. At least I saw people I love. At least I had some really great meals. Maybe there was a lot of socializing and not much down time, but lately, there’s been too much work and not much down time. I am sitting here realizing that I have to do all of my shopping and a LOT of job search work in the next few weeks. Lots to do and not nearly enough time to do it, but I guess that’s kind of par for the course.

Regarding the details of Thanksgiving, many of us spent the morning at Elfo’s chopping and prepping for the meal. David is my parents’ friend Mary Ann’s son, and the head chef. He is also mellow as can be… not at all like the chefs they show on TV who bark orders at all of their underlings.

The chopping scene on Thanksgiving morning.

The Thanksgiving group watches The 2004 Kennel Club of Philadelphia Dog Show with great interest!

David and company quietly made a large tasty meal for about 30 people. We ate it in Elfo’s, which was closed for the day. It was tasty stuff.

Mom models the new backpack and dumps the old fanny pack. Yay!

Look! Actual people in my apartment!

The rest of the week involved lots of restaurants, a nice walk on the Mississippi, a trip to the National Ornamental Metal Museum, and general hanging out with the family. My plans to make little snowmen out of mints never quite materialized, but I think I’ve recovered!

Aaron gains wisdom from Dad outside the bookstore.

At least Aaron and I got a little decorating done around here:

Purty!

Miss Maggie just loves lying under the Christmas tree, real or fake! (Sadly, it’s a fake this year. I’m going to be gone for 10 days, so it’s not really worth the expense and effort to get a real one.) 🙁

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Thanksgiving morning walk along the Mighty Mississip!

It was a lovely day with great food and great people. No family strife, and I got a particularly nice gift in that mom loved the new purse Aaron and I picked out for her and ditched the old fanny pack "purse" she’d had just a little too long. Stylin’ pictures soon to follow! 😀

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If you haven’t seen me in a month or two or three, I’m still here. I realized today, while making plans to have dinner with a friend in my program and his wife this weekend, that the last time I did anything social in Memphis (except for hanging out with Aaron) was Cooper-Young festival weekend. No wait… that’s wrong. I had lunch with my friend Leslie a few weeks after that. And there was the Saturday I crashed MiniDriver’s dinner with her friend down the block to escape the unbearable noise from downstairs. I haven’t seen my aunt and uncle who live about a mile away except when my mom was in town. I haven’t gone out with anyone in my program. Hell, I haven’t even been to yoga in a week and a half, and today, I’ve been working basically straight through since about 8am.

I need a damn break!

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I’m going to be 35 on Monday!!! THIRTY-FIVE! That’s just insane. Even though 35 is that point on the graph where fertility steeply declines, I’m still excited about this birthday, as I am about all birthdays. Maybe it’s because I’m an only child.

Unfortunately, what I’d want most for my birthday is the ability to move out of this apartment, but sadly, that can not be. I have signed a one-year lease, so I owe money through the end of August whether I live here or not. This apartment is gorgeous, but here are the problems:

• A very rude downstairs neighbor who plays loud music 90% of the time he is at home (and sadly, his schedule is about the same as mine) and is hostile when I’ve asked him to turn it down.
• A next door neighbor who plays loud music in the mornings (so I can hear it in the bathroom) and gets inappropriately hostile with her young daughter such that I can hear MUCH more than I ever wanted to hear.
• A location next to a dumpster, which is visited in the middle of the night by a HUGE dump truck that makes LOTS of noise. There’s the turning VROOM, VROOM, then the BEEP BEEP BEEP backing up noise, then the picking up the first dumpster noise (BANG, CRASH, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP), then the whole thing again with the second dumpster. This occurs between 1am and 4am 2-3 nights a week.
• The sometimes early morning rantings of the mentally ill and homeless people who are dumpster diving.
• A fine location right under a major flight pattern.
• A VERY close train that HONKS really often at all times of the day and night.
• Just behind the dumpster are two German shepherds who bark at all things that move. They get all the dogs in the neighborhood barking. Last night it went on for two hours before I called the cops.
• Rave Boy and a few other residents smoke on the steps in the courtyard. The noise and smoke come into my sunroom, where I have my computer.
• The radiators are not under my control, and they’ve not been coming on. WHY?

Other than that, it’s about the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived. What do I want for my birthday? I want quiet. Just quiet.

I’m so glad Aaron is coming to visit this weekend. I need some fun and some company.

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