All in One Weekend

(From which, as you can tell from the light posting, I'm still recovering.)

• Got a lovely prize, handmade in Ashley's Little Apartment (check out her Etsy store for other neat things)
  
• Took the regional train, for the first time from that particular station (and helped a deaf fellow open the hard-to-open door. . . although I didn't realize he was deaf until after he'd thanked me, and I felt dumb for trying to shout instructions through the window), down to 30th St.
  
• Tolerated the train ride fairly well, even when a toddler a few seats away started freaking out (I think because he interpreted his mom's putting on her coat to get ready for their stop as her leaving him)
  
• Bonded with Little Sister the minute she picked me up at Union Station, because she launched into a rant about Older Brother's latest shenanigans--nice to know I'm not imagining things
• Met the newest housemate, baked brownies, and helped with other party prep (and all the housemates were so sweet with their "You don't have to do that!" exclamations)
  
• Reconnected with a few people I knew from college, met a few new people who work with Little Sister, all done while shouting over music and party noise, and drinking what I irreverently termed "Cranberry Baby Jesus," as a Christmas version of "Purple Jesus" (Ken can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I learned about that drink from the now-defunct It Comes in Pints?)
  
• Pretty much lost my voice again
  
• Remembered why I hated going to off-campus parties in college where people drank way too much (often the first people in the Confession line the next morning, idiots), especially when some rude people showed up after midnight (party started at 8) and would not leave
  
• Went to an eons-long Mass because unfortunately some church administrators do not understand how to raise funds and well-intentionedly but annoyingly thought they should take advantage of Mass-attending parishioners (read: captive audience) and walk them through filling out pledge cards
  
• Ate brunch in a teeny diner that had no orange juice (what's up with that? Gotta have that to cancel out the eggs!) but otherwise served good food
  
• Raced to the train station and made the train with minutes to spare (and got the whole time alone because the guy who initially had sat down next to me realized "This isn't the quiet car!" and got up)
  
• Miraculously was picked up on time by my dad, although he did force a side trip to ShopWrong on me
  
• Won the (former) office football pool on the only weekend I hadn't been paying attention (my winning once a season streak continues! I'm getting my hair and nails done after I buy doughnuts for the office!)
  
• Celebrated my very first "blogiversary."

I'll spare you the blog highlights and instead say thanks to all the blogreaders for being, well, blogreaders. Very good ones at that. I hope to keep you all interested and generating those good comments, whatever direction this blog takes as a new year starts.