tryptophan and thankfulness

i am exhausted. last night was my first full night of sleep in almost a week, but it was a truly wonderful thanksgiving.

starting last Tuesday night, i got the new drive for my laptop; a huge thank you to my JS benefactor; spent a great deal of time installing a new beta OS, realising it wasn`t working, scrubbing the drive again and cloning everything off my functioning system, managed to stay up until 1am working on that.

Wednesday was even more entertaining, had to get to work early to drop off a print job for a client, then left for what i thought was an hour to drop vic to work and pick up a friend from the airport, managed to be out of the office for three hours, not bad generally, but considering my original plan to leave after lunch, it didn`t look good. i managed to finagle my early departure by pointing out that i had been at the printer after work hours on Tuesday and at the client early on Wednesday. i left the office, picked up the boychick, son of a good friend and my favourite librarian and began the trek to Kingston, TN. Obeying all speed laws made reasonable time, then proceeded to leave the gas sipping Neon there and return to Nashville in my mother in law`s Grand Caravan with a hutch, coffee table and television stand. I was making fairly good time back, traffic and all when the rain came down and i realised how badly the wipers need to be changed. Made a slight detour to Walhell; mea culpa, mea culpa; changed wipers in the rain and got back on the road and home a little before 9pm. not content with how well the new drive was functioning i decided to make a second stab at installing the beta os while i was waiting for SOS who was overnighting to arrive. i managed to completely screw up the installed os, requiring another scrub and attempt and a clean os install. SOS arrived close to midnight and we stayed up until 3am catching up.

Thursday was a little less hectic but just barely. after the two late nights, we didn`t managed to get up until late, well i was up earlier than everyone else, but was trying to get my machine to work the way i wanted it to while everyone else was asleep. i managed to get the beta os up and running but i wasn`t getting my mail and resorted to dumping the mail folder and trying to import my old mail, not fun, since i also lost all my signatures and all my rules, since i`ve been accumulating them since 2000, i wasn`t looking forward to redoing all of that manually. i abandoned the computer to accompany vic to CSG`s first annual non-traditional thanksgiving feast which was spectacular fun. it was vic, CSG, Ms Te and us, the significant otters, dining on home made fajitas, playing trivial pursuit; girls against boys, we won and then monopoly; i won. we returned home for pie making and savouring the fact that we had the house to ourselves. there was no hope for a full night`s sleep on Thursday because i had to pick up two Trini friends from the bus station at 2:45am, being awake enough to drive to pick them up, threw off my sleep cycle and i had to get up early to take vic to work anyway.

Friday was the first encounter with a real bird. i picked vic up from work and along with my two trini friends went to CSG`s parent place on the outskirts of Nashville. there were two birds to chose from; a deep fried cajun turkey and a traditional bird, both of them were lovely and i ate to much, laughed loudly and had and eventually reposed to the couch for a nap.

Saturday was another early morning, with a drive back to Kingston in the picture. note to self, playing freeze tag with the nieces and nephews in the cold wind blowing off the lake, not a good idea on the part of a 33 year old, but it was fun. more consumption of good food, more great conversation, then we took a trip to Knoxville to see another one of vic`s friends and her wonderful house. cue massive amounts of house envy. then back to Kingston too late.

Sunday; waffles, waffles, waffles and an early departure back to Nashville to beat the traffic, a pit stop at the Eddie Bauer outlet to look for a leather jacket, nice jackets, but nothing i could afford.

I am driven out, but i wouldn`t have changed anything about this weekend. good friends, good food, good company. i am truly thankful for my life.