Monday, December 11, 2006

weekend: busy, but good

I'm still trying to recover from a busy weekend. In fact, it's been awhile since I've done so much in one weekend! It felt good to be so active, though. Throughout November I found myself withdrawing from any kind of social interaction because of the writing. I have to be very careful when I get that involved with a project. I can turn off everything and just focus on the project, and that's good because it lets me get it done, but it's also bad because I tend to ignore what I need. I need to find a balance between being so intensely focused on one thing that I forget about everything else and dealing with everything else to the point that I forget about the writing. I'm sure this is going to be a struggle until I figure out exactly how to handle it. The funny thing is, I'm a great multi-tasker at work, I just can't manage to do it in my personal life. I read somewhere that you should approach your personal life just like you approach your work life, and that's kind of what I envisioned when I made my 101 in 1001 list. I'm hoping it will help.

Speaking of that list, I've done 3 out of the 101 things on the list, and have started some of the others. For more details on the progress of the list or the list itself, go to the blog I created just for the project.

But back to the weekend. As I said, it was a lot of fun. I really needed some fun after the horrible week I had at work. I swear, if I had known it was going to be so awful coming back from being off for a week I wouldn't have gone on vacation at all! Of course, when I offered to cancel my week off and come to work to finish the big project we were working on I was told no, so it wasn't my decision at that point, lol.

Anyway, Friday was very relaxing and enjoyable, even at work. We had a Christmas party, and that's always nice. We had awesome food for lunch, met some of our board members, and all sat around talking and laughing for awhile. It was good. I think every company should do that every now and then. It's important to let off steam with coworkers, to just sit down to a good meal and enjoy each other's company. After the party, some of us went out for drinks. That was fun too. You really see a different side of someone when you spend time with them outside of the office.

Saturday started out kind of dull but ended up very interesting indeed. I spent the morning cleaning up and doing some laundry (really needed to do more of this!) and then went to lunch at my aunt's house. My mother's side of the family does Christmas early so that everyone can spend Christmas with their immediate families. We had a great lunch and spent several hours just sitting around talking. On our way back home, we went by Wal-Mart so that I could pick up the pictures we had made of the kids. They are absolutely adorable! While we were there, Rhea called and wanted to hang out that evening, so I asked her if she wanted to go to the party I was planning to attend. The JV girls were having a Christmas party that sounded great, so we both ended up going and hanging out there for quite a long time. It was a blast! After that, we went to Rhea's house and watched a movie, then we went to bed. I had to be up fairly early the next day, but we still managed to stay up until about 3:30. (I might be too old to do that anymore, lol)

Sunday I went to a coworker's church and sang two solos in his Christmas program. He had asked me to do it some time ago and I was happy to do it. It was fun, actually. I know this is going to sound awful, but I love singing in front of people I don't really know, because it means after it's over I get to hear good things about the performance. (see, I told you it sounded awful!) But my voice has always been one of the things I could be proud of, and it's nice to hear good things about something that you're proud of, right?

After the program I went shopping for Christmas gifts, but didn't really find anything I wanted to buy. I'm having trouble with a few people on my list this year. I'm also having a lot of trouble holding back on gifts for the kids. I always go overboard and I promised myself (and my sister) that I wouldn't go crazy this year. So I got each of them a big gift and a few small ones. Now I just have to get a few things for their stockings (the ones at my house) and I'll be finished with them. The people giving me trouble: mom, sister, brother in law, and a couple of friends. Not really sure what I'm going to do for all of those. My dad is taken care of, though, so that's a good thing. He's usually the most difficult, but he was very clear this year about what he wanted and it was easy to find and not outrageously expensive (like the things he usually wants.)

So I'll be doing some Christmas shopping this week. We're having Christmas with the kids next Saturday since they will be out of town for the actual holiday. I have to put a few more CDs on Noah's mp3 player before I wrap it. I really hope he's not disappointed that it's not an iPod. I thought this one would be better, though, because it has a radio too. Of course, it's his first mp3 player, so I think it's a good idea to start out with something smaller (and less expensive) and then work up to something bigger and more expensive like an iPod. But it's interesting how many of my CDs the kid likes. I gained some "cool points" by playing Green Day and Panic at the Disco in my car the other day. And now he likes Fall Out Boy and Jack's Mannequin because I played them for him. I'm constantly amazed at how mature he is for his age. He's only 10 but he seems like a teenager.

Okay, this is getting long so I'm going to stop here. Maybe I'll write more later. I'm going to do some research on writer's Web sites and maybe do some new things with mine. I finally figured out how to point the domain name to the actual site, so now www.anitahavel.com actually takes you to the new site rather than a "we've moved" page. That makes me happy!

In other news, I'm going to be making an extremely important decision about my future in the next few weeks. Wish me luck!

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