Janice Williams Loves Austin

February 8, 2010

Superbowl XCIV

Filed under: At home — Janice @ 1:23 am

I made up that number for the Superbowl. For some reason I think it is 44, but that can’t be right because I’m sure there were already Superbowls in the early 1960s. Doesn’t matter.

What matters is the Saints won! That is exciting stuff. I was quite please for them. I was pleased, first, to watch a Superbowl with two teams that I really do like and care about. I don’t get to see too many Indianapolis Colts games here and don’t pay too much attention since they are AFC, but I love Peyton Manning and think he is a great actor/comedian/spokesperson/individual/and, oh yes, quarterback. And I love the Saints for many things, but just their underdog status is enough to make me root for them.

But I was also excited to see a whole Superbowl game that was close until the very end, both teams were truly GOOD and made almost no mistakes, and there were no bad calls (well, except the one that got reviewed and changed) and there were no mean plays or things that cast a bad light on the game. It was just really really good football. Mark was exclaiming about Manning’s speed and accuracy. He was raving over a drive the Saints made that pushed them down the field to a touchdown. I told him the only reason he was raving so is that he has gotten too used to watching the Cowboys over these past few years when they don’t play like pros. These guys today were professionals.

My favorite moment was after the game when Drew Brees had his little baby boy in his arms. I was thrilled they had hearing protection on that kids ears, first. So many parents drag their children along to much-too-loud events and don’t realize the damage they can do. But it was Drew wiping tears and just talking to his baby and telling him what was happening that was so sweet and touching.

Commercials didn’t seem to be so great this year. We rewound a couple of them that really made us laugh. Betty White playing football was really funny. Many just had us saying, “Really?”

January 26, 2010

Free Time

Filed under: At home — Janice @ 2:15 am

I sure would like to know what free time is like. I know I fritter away tons of time, but I hate when an evening that looks “wide open” is over before I get to really do the things I want to do. Yes, I know I need priorities.

Tonight I had one report to type. I sent Mark off to TC’s. My allergies are keeping me home. I ate some dinner after he left and watched the evening news. I started typing the LONG report. I took a break and answered emails. I created a group on Facebook that I had promised I would create (a support group for spasmodic dysphonia). I kept thinking, when I’m done with this report I’m going to just turn on whatever late night show is on and pick up all the things in this office that the kitten has pushed to the floor. I go back to the report and type some more. I take another break because this report is truly long and boring. Another email another search on the internet for some non-word my doctor has used. Back to the report. Finally, I am through. The report is done, saved, filed, emailed. And it is after 1 a.m. I truly thought I would get the office clean(er) and go put the kitchen to rights and still be able to go to bed early.

Obviously, I am delusional.

But I am going to go to bed before Mark gets home or I’ll be up until 4 a.m. and I know that would just about do me in with the way I’m feeling. So Nyquil, here I come.

January 25, 2010

Super Bowl Thoughts

Filed under: At home — Janice @ 1:22 am

The season is almost over. But this afternoon of football seemed so extraordinarily LONG that I almost had a wistful desire that football WOULD be over. I know! Heresy! Right?

[I'm going to write a whole blog post one day about how I hate this new trend of "I know! Right?" that seems to be the current response to any statement one agrees with]

But I am incredibly happy that the New Orleans Saints are in the Superbowl for the first time. I have been a Saints fan for many years. I enjoyed the Saints fans that were around me one time when I got to see them play against the Cowboys. I enjoyed seeing them walking around the city and toward the SuperDome when we were in New Orleans leaving for our cruise a few years ago. And I have lots and lots of friends that either live in the south Louisiana area or that is their home. My friend Denise if from Vinton, Louisiana, and she bleeds black and gold, if that is an expression they use for their team.

I am also a fan of the Saints because of Drew Brees. Being an Austin star football player, I am excited to see him doing well in his career and leading his team through this almost undefeated season and to the Superbowl.

And, of course, after Katrina, what American didn’t have a deep respect for the support the people of New Orleans gave their team, even when their team didn’t have a place to play. I realized these players have loads of money and they weren’t devastated by Katrina, but I still admire their support for their city and the hope they inspired.

I have had an allergy attack today so even watching football was not a particularly fun thing to do. At one point I almost paused the game and took a nap, but I persevered. I do a lot of time-shifting with football… pausing the game or recording it and then I’m able to fast forward through all the commercials and nonsense and really get right to the game. I did that for the Colts and Jets today, pausing the game while I completed work and started catching up to it when they were fully 45 minutes into the game. That worked okay for a game that I was not so fully invested in. Though I stopped the Saints game at points to go move laundry or check the food on the stove, I mostly stayed in real time and felt the excitement of not knowing what was coming next and also knowing that no one else IN THE WORLD knew what was coming next. That is the fun thing about football.

Mark made it home from work during the fourth quarter, too, which makes it more fun to share a game. Mark even grudgingly admitted he likes ol’ Brett Favre even if he hates the way he pronounces his name. I like ol’ Brett Favre, too, and I admire the fact that he kept on playing even though he is an old man and was hurt. I hope he does truly retire now and enjoy his “senior” years. He will be a great commentator and I’m looking forward to that.

I am pleased the Colts are in the SuperBowl, too. Is there anyone that doesn’t like Payton Manning? I can see that you might want their team to lose (like I will in two weeks) but is there anyone that doesn’t like the guy? I even quit fast forwarding when I see his commercials on TV and, boy, weren’t there plenty today? I’m interested to see if there will be new ones during the SuperBowl.

I think my favorite thing today, besides the victories, was Jordin Sparks singing the National Anthem and that beautiful eagle flying around the stadium in Indianapolis! Did you see that? I have never seen that done before and it was awe-inspiring. I get sappy with the Anthem and the huge flag out on the field and the military and the game, but then the eagle sent me over the edge. She did a great job on the Anthem, too. No flourishes, no changing the tune, no drawing attention to herself. She gets an A+ for her singing and decorum. I’ll give Kris Allen, the current American Idol, an A for his performance. He changed the tune a little and he isn’t nearly as dynamic as she is, but he could hit the notes and that was pretty amazing as well. But no eagle. BUT— don’t you love it when they show Sean Payton and Drew Brees and other Saints players and they were singing along? Not just standing respectfully, not just holding their hand over their hearts, but singing along. I think the Vikings coach might have been singing along, but barely. I’ll still give him a check mark for it.

The weekend has gone all too fast, but a great finale for it, that’s for sure.

January 21, 2010

A Minor Mishap

Filed under: Austin — Janice @ 2:15 pm

Fred Eaglesmith has a song about “it’s days like this I miss my Dad.” That’s how I felt yesterday when I had a little minor fender bender on MoPac. Not that I needed Daddy in that instance, but cars were one thing we had to talk about. It would have given me a good reason to call and talk to him a bit. He would have been concerned, but laughed it off and teased me about stopping too short and creating the wreck myself and I would have said, no no, that’s not what happened. He would have said, “Alright, you need to go to a bodyshop and get an estimate…” or some other sage advice from a man that loved to get to go to body shops or car dealerships or gas stations any time he could.

The wreck really was minor. A couple of weeks ago I had another little tiny bump where I rolled up onto a car (not on MoPac, but on a yield/turn entering the service road). No damage there and I was quite grateful. This time, MoPac was totally packed going southbound and I passed several fender benders and I was being super cautious. But traffic got very tight just before downtown and I had to stop short. It really wasn’t those stops where you think, “OH NO—- WHEW.” I stopped without worry, but had the worry for the guy behind me. Sure enough, he bumped into me, going very slowly. We moved our way across 2 or 3 lanes to get to the side and it was a good place to pull off, not just shoulder, but up on the grass away from the traffic. He was a nice young man, super apologetic, felt awful. I felt awful for him, too. It is so lousy to have a wreck like that, and who hasn’t had one? Fortunately, I haven’t had a wreck like that since 1992 and that was a rain slicked street in Dallas. (KNOCK ON WOOD) His car took the worst of it. I think my only damage is that my tire cover on the spare is torn. We’ll see about getting that replaced, but, thank God, the car body is fine and I’m fine.

January 13, 2010

A New Cousin

Filed under: Family — Janice @ 11:43 pm

I just had a great dinner with a “new” cousin. Tim M. found me a month or two ago through the “family project” page of my website (which has been woefully untouched since summer). He and I share the same great-great-grandfather Hood, who was a Williamson County, Texas, pioneer. Finally, with the holidays and obligations over, we met up in Georgetown tonight for a great dinner at the Monument Cafe and two hours of scintillating conversation.

I am not going to put Tim’s full name here. He apparently has stalkers and I’d hate for them to Google him. He’s famous in his industry and has been on TV promoting his business and doing some very interesting things and has found out that “friends” come out of the woodwork.

His mother and my grandmother were first cousins. I wish Mamma were alive today so I could tell her all about Tim and ask her about his family. It was fun to get together with him personally. Email is great, but you sometimes can’t tell people’s tone or opinions. In person we were both fully able to confess to the fact that we think our family reunion is boring and maybe there are one or two people that we both know within the family that are pompous.

Tim has met many famous people and had some wild stories about so many of them. Imagine David Allan Coe standing in his boxer shorts at the hotel door that joins your suite to his, asking if you want to come party with him and his “ol’ lady.”

He also had great stories related to the radio personalities that I’ve worked with for years that he has known through his business. We tended to agree on our opinions of most of them, as well.

Tim loves classic country music and you know how I feel about it so we talked music through all of this, too.

One interesting theme of the night seemed to be how things happen for a reason. How events occur that turn our lives in completely different directions. Tim’s ancestors from the other side of his family came to this part of Texas and got off the train in Granger. Their ultimate destination was San Angelo where other members of the family had already settled. But there was a saloon in Granger and one thing led to another and now the family remains near Granger almost 100 years later.

Or the story about Tim being a pilot. To be a pilot, there are required physical check-ups on an every-six-month basis. Tim, hale and hearty, went for his semi-yearly physical. The doctor poked and prodded and asked if he was in pain. No, no pain, he was fine. The doctor sent him for a CT scan. The radiologist asked how long Tim had been sick. Sick? He’s not sick, he told them. The radiologist wouldn’t let him leave the clinic and then the doctor called, informing Tim he had a very large tumor on his kidney. Tim had to drive straight to Seton Hospital to have it removed the next day. If he had not had that physical and that diagnosis, he would have probably died in six months. Wow. Makes you not want to put off that annual exam, right? He said his mother was always worried that flying would get him killed, yet flying saved his life.

Since he was a pilot, I got to tell about my brush with death while flying as a traffic reporter in Dallas. He had all the appropriate reactions and understood how close and how serious that near hit was.

Tonight was pure delight and I had expected it to be, based on the liveliness of his emails. I had a flash of concern this afternoon, though, when I thought back to another cousin I met and spent an afternoon with back in the 1990s. I don’t remember how much communication we had had prior to his visit, but he was odd and deadly dull. I guess he was too distantly related to be fun-loving like everyone within most of my family tree is. He must have had some dull blood mix in somewhere along the way.

Tim also brought me a chart he made outlining how he and I are cousins with Elvis. He and Elvis are sixth cousins twice removed, I think, so I am three times removed. Elvis made the movie “Kissin’ Cousins.” I believe sixth cousins three times removed counts, right?

A Christmas Card from 1925

Filed under: Music — Janice @ 10:59 am

I know we are in the New Year and Christmas is past (oh, except for the cards I haven’t sent yet), but this is a neat story, I think. My grandfather was a schoolteacher. In 1925 he was teaching in Newburg, Texas, just south of Comanche. If you don’t know where Comanche is, it is halfway between Brownwood and Stephenville. Halfway between Fort Worth and Abilene and south a good ways.

Papa Hallford was born in Newburg and so was his mother and so was his daughter, my mother. That is where my big family reunion is in the summer. There is a school building and a church there by the cemetery.

In the Christmas Eve edition of the Comanche Chief, they had a neat story in their Museum Musings column. I haven’t asked for permission to reprint this article as I firmly believe it is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

MUSEUM MUSINGS

By Missy Jones

With the time getting so close to Christmas, it is impossible not to let my mind go back to some of my childhood memories, and the best of them all was for Christmas.

Having been a volunteer at the museum since probably 1995, I noticed for the first time recently a framed picture hanging on the south wall in the Newburg room.

This is a framed Christmas card “Presented by teacher Arla Hallford to pupils at Newburg School on December 25, 1925.” Donated by Oliver (Ollie) Gandy to Comanche Co. Museum 8-18-1992.

This is a colored Christmas card, about 3 x 5 inches. It is colored in the earlier style, showing people bringing home a Christmas tree through the snow. Below the tree scene is this Christmas message: “With your teacher’s best wishes for the most joyous Christmas and the happiest New Year you have ever had.”

On the right of this colored picture is the writing on the card:  Presented to Oliver Gandy, Grade 6, School: NewBurg, by: Arla Hallford, teacher, date: 12/24/1925. There is an oval picture of Ollie Gandy, from a later time. To the right is a poem entitled:

“A CHRISTMAS GREETING”

To all my children dear, each one

What shall I give at Christmas time of

Gold and Silver have I none

But I can give a simple rhyme

That tells of hope and faith and love.

(Four verses)

1. My hope – what is my hope for you as swiftly pass the year of life …

2. My faith – that each will act the part that best befits a man or maid …

3. My love – how can I tell my love

Dear foster-children of my own?

Fannie Morton Bowden  Copyright 1921

On the center right of the picture is a list entitled: “My Schoolmates”

Chester Brown, Otha Gober, Bevlie VanCleave, Bob Burton, Arlis McCurdy, Aubie Love, Iris Johnson, Naomi Johnson, Ruby Shaver, Myrtle Moore, Mable Cunningham, Sidney Burton, Burton Hicks, Jim Lake, Vernon Love, Gerald Davis, Sarah E. Burton, Aubrey Shaver, Oliver Robertson, Lucille Cunningham, DeAlva Harris and Jay Kirkham.

These signatures are all written with a fountain pen, black ink, and not the same pen. You can tell from the size of the nibs that each person was using their own pen.

I knew Ollie Gandy well. I remember him as a very good roper, a ranch man and interested in history. He brought this to the museum, framed, 67 years after he had received it, and I am writing this 84 years after he received.

Merry Christmas to everyone. Please, put on your memory cap and let your thought go back to your childhood and Christmas. Enjoy!

——

I like thinking of my grandfather as a 26-year-old schoolteacher in charge of all these kids. He had a toddler and baby at home himself. He went on to be a teacher and the superintendent at the Grosvenor schools (north of Brownwood) for about 10 years and then on to Jermyn and Jacksboro. He left teaching to work for the State Welfare Agency in the 1940s in Quanah and Amarillo.

I did a little bit of genealogy tonight and found that Ollie died in 1993 in Comanche. His teacher outlived him. My grandfather died in 2000, having lived in 3 different centuries.

What makes the card extra interesting to me is the list of all the students in the Newburg School at the time. I will have to research them further because I know many are relatives. I personally knew Lucille and Mable Cunningham. They each just died in the last few years and were my grandfather’s first cousins. They were wonderful women. Ruby Shaver was a great-aunt of mine, too, but I didn’t know her.

Reading this article makes me ready to jump into the car and make the short trip to Comanche to go see this in the Newburg room.

January 11, 2010

Happy New Year?

Filed under: At home, Family, Writing — Janice @ 11:58 am

Good honk, it’s the 11th of January and I haven’t even put in a new entry to say Happy New Year? Where have I been? What have I been doing? Did I even think about making a resolution about updating this blog?

Eager readers want to know.

I have been in a blur of football for the past two weeks, that is all that is for sure.

So sad to watch Colt McCoy get hurt and for the University of Texas to not win the BCS National Championship game. But I think we all went away with the feeling that at least they didn’t suck. They didn’t screw up. They weren’t lousy. Their defense was incredible and the offense was only shaky because of the sudden change in quarterback. Some glitches, a few lost balls, and, voila, we lose a game. But now we have high hopes for September and Garrett Gilbert.

My mom has been in town for a week and that has been great fun. I drove up and got her in Waco on Monday, meeting up with her, my sister, my nephews, and one nephew’s sweet girlfriend. We had a great chicken fried steak lunch at George’s and then Mom and I came home. We watched most of the bowl games and four pro games, too. We went out to see Mark’s band (Little Elmore Reed) at Central Market. Mom is easy company. We work and do our thing and are in and out and she takes care of the cats, monitors the weather, puts dishes and clothes away after they are cleaned, and just makes our life easier.

My sister drove down from Dallas yesterday and spent the night with us and we had fun eating dinner at the County Line. I got to show off one of my workplaces to them, too. Today, they left for Dallas.

Mom has gone home. Mark is leaving town on Wednesday. I don’t know why I feel like, in my mind, that things might slow down because I’m home alone most of the week. Nothing of the sort is going to happen. I’m already starting the week off with lots of transcription for the doctors. It was a wild and wooly weekend typing constantly–or at least it felt like that. Lots of reports really needed to go out ASAP so the doctor was dictating at his house and I was typing at my house. I expect more of the same this week.

My duties at all of my jobs also seem to be increasing. That is great news on many fronts. Financially, I expect an increase in 2010 even if I don’t get a better or different job. The downside is that there are just so many hours in a day. I did this in 2002 when I was unemployed, too. You can’t turn down another part-time job when you aren’t making a real living, but then you end up with several part-time jobs that you really like and it becomes a little bit unmanageable. Right now, it is still under control, I would say. We’ll see what I say tomorrow (or in February when I get around to updating this blog).

Thanks for checking back to see if I am writing and for the notes urging me to write something. I love doing it and I write many more in my head than ever see the light of day. I spend hours at a keyboard at the office each day, hours more typing at home each night. Yes, I email and Facebook to a degree, and then I find myself shutting it down and back in another room in the house before I remember I meant to blog. The netbook really was supposed to help solve that dilemma. So instead of making a resolution about blogging regularly or even more often, I will resolve to SOMETIMES blog from the netbook and get more comfortable finding this darn update screen to blog on from it, and maybe that will encourage me to blog from the patio (when it is above 50 again) and from quaint coffeeshops and beer joints that we all know I frequent regularly.

December 30, 2009

Bookstores

Filed under: Austin, Reading, Writing — Janice @ 1:02 pm

I just finished my last interview of 2009. Sigh of relief. I miss radio interviews. Radio interviews were done and over quickly. At the end I might say, “Shoot, I meant to ask you about _____.” But they were done. And over. Interviewing for an article means taking good notes (trying) and thinking about the next question and trying to get enough wordage out of the interviewee to put something together on paper. I’m not a fan.

And if interviewing is hard, the writing is harder. I’m not saying I don’t like it, it is just hard. So I’ll be wrasslin’ with this one for a few weeks. I haven’t been told a deadline or a wordcount on this one. Usually I know those things in advance. Ideally, I’ll write this TONIGHT and edit it tomorrow and I won’t have to think about it again until it shows up in the issue. Ha. I haven’t written before the deadline is looming ever. And since I don’t even had a deadline, this may be on my mind for a while.

I read today that the last B. Dalton bookstores are closing. They, according to what I read, were the first chain bookstores and were bought by Barnes & Noble and are now being shut down. I think I used to buy a lot of Christmas gifts in B.Dalton’s. Calendars come to mind. But it has been a long time since I’ve been in one.

My first bookstore memory was Brown’s Books in Amarillo, right by the Amarillo College campus. It was there for years. I’m sure they probably specialized in textbooks, but I remember going in there with Mom one time when there was some book that she had had them order for her. It was a neat, small store and was very intriguing. By the time I grew up and lived in Amarillo it was either closed up or I didn’t even think about going to a real bookstore.

I probably bought most of books in those days at Hastings Books and Records. They still exist today, but they are just Hastings. They were really the cool hip place in Amarillo with a location by the theater in the mall, which was handy to browse while you waited for the movie, and a bigger store down on 45th. I bought lots of books at those two stores and bought even more records and 8-tracks.

Bookstores are dangerous for me now because I will find too many things that I would really like to have. I went to Border’s before Christmas and got a few “small gifts” that added up quickly (especially since they were gifts for ME!). BookPeople in downtown Austin is a favorite and I try to buy books there if there is something specific I want. I went there to buy the romance novel a high school classmate wrote a few months back. I loved BookWoman and started going there before we even moved to Austin, but haven’t been there since they moved locations. I’m glad they are still in business. I like all their books about female empowerment.  Bookstore-wise, I probably go to Half Price Books more than any other bookstore now. Great prices, lots of surprises, and usually a used, cheaper copy of something I want if I know what I’m going in for. They have a great section of Texas authors and Texas subjects there.

The bookstore that brings back the best memories was a fabulous place in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I was on business and found it in their old downtown area (I think). Maybe it was near the college. It was long and dark and had the wooden ladders on rollers that seem to only exist in movies now. I was just having a great time looking around and I found a paperback copy of Alamo House by Sarah Bird. I hadn’t read any of her books at the time, but my friend Beth had recommended The Boyfriend School. Alamo House was her first novel and they had it so I snapped it up and finished it before I was back in Dallas, I expect, and it is still one of my all-time favorite books and it opened to the door to every book Sarah Bird has written since then.

I don’t mind living out here in the suburbs with the only businesses within walking distance being an auto repair shop and a gas station and a Carl’s Jr. But, if I could make a wish for a new retailer near me, I would be very happy with a combo coffee shop/Mexican cafe/bookstore. Sigh. Bookstores don’t have the same sense of wonder as they once did. And I hesitate to rush out and just spontaneously buy a book anymore unless I’ve checked to see how much it costs used online.

I would make a New Year’s Resolution to visit bookstores more often, but that won’t fit well with my fiscally responsible New Year’s Resolutions. Yes, I know I don’t have to buy anything, but I would. I know I would.

December 28, 2009

Christmas Parties

Filed under: Uncategorized — Janice @ 12:53 pm

One of my New Year’s Resolutions, I just decided, is to get my website and blog off of this server and on to another one. I do not like the whole interface that Yahoo provides and it is ALWAYS hard to get to the page to write this blog on. I feel like Maxwell Smart going through all the doors with codes and keys and passwords to get here. I don’t have a lot of worry about anyone breaching my security and hacking my blog and writing terrible things. I think the two or three people that read this blog would understand.

I have been waiting for the past half hour for a Texas country artist to call me for an interview. I had forgotten the interview and scheduled a lunch and then remembered and cancelled the lunch and here I sit and no call. I wish I were at lunch instead.

But that’s not what I came to write about…

—– *** —–

I went to some lovely Christmas parties this year and I think three of them are worth reporting on.

The first was a Christmas party I did NOT go to.

My biggest job, the one I spend up to 30 hours a week doing, is for a pretty big corporation here in town. They do things in a corporate way. I am not an employee, I am a contractor, a consultant for them. I set my own hours and they pay me for my musical knowledge. It is a pretty good deal.

In late November, an email went out to everyone in the Austin office saying, “Save the date, December 9, for a company party!” I work among several employees that are full-time employees and a few that are like me. We all share a workspace. I heard the full-time employees discussing their party plans in early December and they were saying, “We have to RSVP by today, are you going?” I had not had an invitation to the party, only the Save the Date notice. Knowing how corporations are, I realized then and there that part-time employees or consultants were not invited to the party.

I truly was okay with that. If I were invited, I would feel an obligation to go and might need to buy something to wear. I’d have to try to get around to the decision-makers of the company so that they would know who I was and see that I was a team player and would love to have a full-time job with them. I would have to be memorable. And, geez, I don’t have time for that nonsense. Hire me or not, but don’t make me play games, has become my motto.

The next day I got an email from my immediate boss. She is very cool and easy to work with. I’ve known her 10 years now and she used to be Mark’s boss at one time. We both like/liked working for her. She was forwarding along her eVite to me and the other part-time contract consultants and also to the interns that now work for us. She passed it along with the note, “You’re welcome to come to this party.” By this time I figured it was a corporate policy to not invite the part-timers, so I declined.

Then the next day my poor boss had to send a “dis-invitation” to us and tell us that we were NOT invited to the company party. Full-time employees only, no part-timers, no contractors, no clients, no interns, no spouses even. By this time, even the full-timers were pretty much saying, “Why would I want to go stand around at a Christmas party with people I see five days a week?” I don’t know if the party was a success or not or if anyone went to it. In these days of belt-tightening, I think the employees would have been just as happy if the company had foregone the party this year.

So I was NOT invited to the party where I work. Funny, then, that I WAS invited to a party where I don’t work and really never have.

In 2008, I was working for Marsha Milam Music, booking bands and setting up shows. We decided to rent some space with a law firm downtown where a dear friend of ours worked. We moved in and I quickly became friends with the others that worked there. They were always completely inclusive and invited us to their office Happy Hours (where the company even paid!) and had a birthday cake and celebration for me, just like they did for all of their own employees. Last year, while I was still officing there, I was included in their office Christmas party and we had a lovely time eating and then going to see Raul Malo together. These are fun people.

We moved out of that office in April and I stopped working for Marsha soon after that. Of course I am still friends with the people there, but didn’t expect to get invited to their Christmas party. So when I was, I declined. I said, “I don’t work there, you shouldn’t include me.” But they were insistent. They were sweet, so I went to that party.

Now that was a nice Christmas party. We ate a fabulous sit-down meal at the Belmont downtown and there were door prizes and great conversation. Some of the people brought their kids with them. Everyone was convivial and welcoming. We had a gift exchange and there were lots of laughs as everyone tried to “steal” gifts and get the best thing. I stole a great big travel mug that can plug into the car power or even into a computer USB port to keep the coffee warm. I scored. Lovely people and a great party.

Between the two extremes, I had another lovely party. The good doctor that I work for had a Christmas party. In year’s past, we have mingled our Christmas party with a larger pain management clinic. We used to share offices with them and we work closely with them on some things. But the parties have been a bust because they have about 100 people there and we have about 10. We don’t know any of them and they don’t want to know us, so we hang out in our little corner.

This year, we told Dr. Stern that we didn’t want to join up with the pain management clinic. We don’t share offices anymore so it didn’t seem like we needed to. We told him just a get-together at his house would be enough, or we could just go out after work together and that would be fun.

But he and his wife planned a lovely night for us. On a Friday two weeks before Christmas, they had us all come to their country club for dinner. Everyone was there and all brought their spouses except for me (Mark was out of town working) and a doctor who isn’t married. So there were 10 of us and we had a great dinner with appetizers and desserts and drinks and lots of good conversation. The setting was lovely, right by the fireplace in a beautifully decorated room, and it was a very nice sharing of a Christmas experience.

These parties reminded me of the horrible Christmas parties Mark and I endured at ABC Radio Networks in Dallas. I think I’ve written about them before. The worst experience was when we milled and visited and suggested to a couple that we sit down at the big 10-top tables that were set up. No, they said, they already had a seat over here with their department. We mill and visit some more and suggest it to another co-worker. No, he was going over here with these guys. After more rejection, I said to Mark, let’s just go sit at a big table by ourselves and let others come to us. “The tables will fill up and someone will sit with us,” I said. We sat, alone, waiting. The raucous table next to us was filled with people from the accounting department and they had all 10 seats filled. A couple walked toward us. We got our hopes up. Without a word, they pulled 2 chairs from our table and squeezed into the packed table with the accountants. We finished our meal, ate our dessert and split. Miserable.

December 26, 2009

Our Christmas Day

Filed under: At home, Family, Food — Janice @ 1:08 am

I have had all sorts of good intentions, but it certainly has been a crazy busy month! I honestly don’t know how people with full time jobs, full time families, full time church and school and club commitments, even manage to survive through Christmas, much less decorate and send cards and buy gifts! I haven’t got any of those full time commitments and I still didn’t decorate, send cards, or buy gifts! I do play to put a few more cards in the box Monday. I thought I might get them written today, but that didn’t happen.

We had just a lovely quiet, restful Christmas Day. I often yearn for a weekend day where you don’t do anything, you have an excuse to be lazy. Watch a movie, watch a football game, snack, and nap in the afternoon. Sadly, those days just don’t ever happen! Too many things that must get done on the weekend. Thankfully, Christmas can be that day if you don’t make travel plans or commitments to others. We did not and we just enjoyed our day.

I slept incredibly late, drank a lot of coffee and ate mincemeat cookies. Eventually I got around to cooking the HEB turkey meal I ordered and it was delicious. Turkey, green bean casserole, dressing (ok, not as good as mine, but good), gravy, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce. I made some rolls, but they weren’t ready until dinner so that was our dinner.

A good nap in the afternoon, some Christmas TV tonight with the movie “Elf,” and phone calls back and forth to my sister, Mark’s brother, Mark’s dad and mom and my mom.

It doesn’t sound like much, but it was a very nice day. And now, when we’ve got lots to do this weekend, which we do, it will be a little easier to do it, having had this great Christmas Day.

We’ll get a little more Christmas celebration in when we, hopefully, get to have some Mexican food with our friend Rachelle this weekend, and my best friend Beth is supposed to be in town for a few days from Canton, Ohio, so I’m looking forward to spending some time with her and her boyfriend and her Austin family.

I hope yours was good and you didn’t get caught in horrible weather like so many I’ve talked to. Merry Christmas.

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