Thursday morning I was rudely awakened at 7:30, by someone at the door who turned out to be our taxi driver who’d taken us home from the airport the night before. He had Jill’s wallet, which she’d somehow left in the cab. He didn’t seem happy by my behavior, but since he charged me $16 for the trrip to return the wallet, I wasn’t giving him a tip on top of that. I called work to see if they needed me – they didn’t, so I went back to bed. Couldn’t get back to sleep, but it was nice to try. I got up and got ready, Jill not too far behind me. We went by Club Pet to pick up Illa at 10, but they thought we’d said 1 and he was soaking wet from his bath. So we went over to the Costco on 50 to kill time, picked up some blank CDs and random food (including some very tasty lobster bisque). We went back at 11 and got ourselves one damp, happy dog. We brought him home, I took him out, then he explored around the house. Jill ran errands, I read newspapers and watched TV. Jill made ham and cheese sandwiches to go with some french onion soup we picked up at Costco, as we were both in the mood for soup. I tried to start a fire later, but the downdraft was just too strong. We read, then went to bed.
Friday Jill took me in to work, I had the airplane food I wasn’t feeling well enough to eat on the plane (sandwich and snack bar) for lunch. She picked me up later and we went over to my mom’s house. My sister and Forest and Dad were already there, ready to celebrate our family Christmas, something we couldn’t do before we left as Sharon was just getting back from South Africa. Mom made appetizers for dinner, including a very odd treatment of asparagus, green bean casserole, very good dim sum (also from Costco) and a tasty frozen fruit salad. We also had problems with a downdraft with a fire there, had to open the windows for a while. The gift exchange was odd – Mom wanted to play Santa, and made sure only one gift was handed out at a time. That took a while, as you can imagine – an hour and a half just to go through gifts for six people. We had a good time, though – lotsa Christmas cookies. I scored the Absolute Dark Knight and some nice DVDs, including The Second Coming – Russell T. Davies, first series with Christopher Eccleston. We got home around 11, went to bed after playing with Illa.
I was feeling better during Friday, but Saturday morning had me falling out of bed like I’d been smacked by a sledgehammer. As near as I can tell, we both got the flu, and I got the worst of it. I didn’t feel like doing much of anything, just reading (paper), TV (Dr. Who), and web surfing. It was the surfing which proved to be frustrating, as my site was down. It was the last straw, as email had been sporadic for the past month, and I was done. Chris recommended Dreamhost, and though I was sorry to see the $3/month plan go, $8/month is a great deal these days (I explained to Jill my theory that my old host was trying to drive away customers grandfathered in at the old rate because you can’t sign up for it anymore). Jill made marinara sauce to go with some whole wheat ravioli (that again we picked up at Costco), then I watched the Redskins lose their last game.
Sunday we had planned to go to a New Year’s party down in Richmond, but I still felt like crap (and she asked the logical question – would I go to work like this?). So we cancelled, and I sat and watched TV (Lost Room) and read (papers and comics). Jill went out, brought back spring rolls from Wegmans and pho from Pho 2000 in Worldgate. Both were very tasty. I successfully started a fire, and we watched “Clear And Present Danger” (we started working through the Clancy films a while back and had stopped here), pausing to watch the ball drop.
Today I’m feeling better, hope to go to work tomorrow. I’ve spent most of my time on my website. Most important was moving my blog over – and I saved it as SQL, not what Movable Type or WordPress use to import, so I had to install Movable Type just to be able to export the data (since WordPress installs automatically with Dreamhost – did I mention this place is pretty good?), then mess around to get everything imported again, then add email and all my other files. Jill made pasta for dinner, then I watched “The Virgin Suicides” before heading to bed.