Iiiiiiit's a small world aaaaafter all.

Oh. My. Word.

Usually, I enjoy living in a place where everyone seems to know everyone else. I have never been, and will never BE a city girl. I love my small-town, quiet existence. And I adore running into people I know all over the place.

Except, sometimes it bites me right in the butt.

Yesterday was so much fun. I spent the day chatting/eating/laughing with Bill and some of his closest friends. They accepted me immediately, and everyone was incredibly nice and cool. Even if I did make a complete fool of myself.

I had known there would be a possibility that a guy I dated briefly (and who I told I wasn't ready for a relationship) would be at Thanksgiving dinner, but I didn't think he would be the first person we saw when we walked in the door. But he was. Suffice it to say he was a bit surprised. And, embarassingly enough, he had to relay the fact that we had been on a couple of dates to his family. Niiiice. Then, talking to my seatmate at dinner, I realized that he had worked with the stupid ex for quite a while. And instead of keeping my big mouth shut, I mentioned that to him. THEN, when I was talking to seatmate's wife, we discovered that she graduated high school with my ex-husband. *Sigh*

If I don't quit this, it's going to start sounding like I've dated every available guy in a 20 mile radius.

Anyway, dinner was great. The people were awesome. And I got home relatively unscathed. Plus, I got to play with a 9 week-old pug. Score!

Today, the fam and I went Christmas shopping, and I'd like to say that I am much closer to being finished with my purchases, but sadly, I'm really not.

But instead of thinking about that, I'm off to Jenni's, to spend some quality time with my sisters. Jenni's going to cook for us, we're going to play Harry Potter "Scene It" (which Jenni will totally kick our butts at), and we're going to laugh our sisterly butts off. Yay!

Shopaholic Takes On Kohl's

Omigosh, I love Kohl's. Late-ish last night, Jenni, Bill and I went shopping. Well, technically Jenni and I went shopping, and Bill watched... being very careful not to say anything negative about the things we were trying on. And I must say, he did an excellent job. With one small exception. I was trying on a belted blouse (Jenni told me not to use that word, but I am anyway. So THERE, Jenni) and Bill commented that he thought the belt was too high. (Bless his heart, the boy lives in Carhart, so I didn't actually take note of his worry about the height of the belt).

As we were checking out, the girl behind the register joked around with us, and gave us more of a discount than she was supposed to because we were basically the only customers in the store, and she was bored. Which means I bought 5 shirts and sweaters and one pair of black dress pants for a grand total of $63.00. Awesome.

And tonight, we're all off to Shea's house, to finish off the sister-boyfriend introductions.

Phew.

Bookie

Wanna hear something weird? My favorite books lately have all featured teenaged male protagonists. What's up with that, huh?

At the moment, I'm reading "Slam" by Nick Hornby, and before that, I read "Spanking Shakespeare" by Jake Wizener. And my favorite book ever? "The Giver," by Lois Lowry.

Aaaaaanyway. Daisy and I just went shopping for Thanksgiving stuff and omigosh, the grocery store was PACKED. I guess everyone else had the same cram-shopping idea that we did. Yay. I think I might need a nap.

Utterly famous

I walked into Shea's office today, to meet her for lunch. Because I haven't been to her workplace since it was renovated, I wasn't sure where her new office space was, and had to go to the receptionist to ask. Upon seeing me, the receptionist immediately pulled out a month-old newspaper that featured my (terrible, unfortunately) picture on the front page, and proceeded to ask me to sign it. Yes, for real.

Now, people, I assure you, I am SO not famous. I am a small (and when I say small, I mean a population of 17,000 or so) city library assistant. I'm not well known for anything, and I only happened to be in the paper because my boss needed someone to pose in the garden behind the library, pretending to be using a laptop. Other than that, you wouldn't know me from Adam.

But whatever. The receptionist said she wouldn't take me to find my sister until I signed, so away I signed. Sweet, but just a tad bit weird.

When she finally DID bring me to my sister, we went on to have a lovely lunch with Jenni at a nearby restaurant.

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Because I work for a city, we have a safety board (comprised of one person from each city department) that meets monthly to discuss accidents that may have occurred during the past month, which required the doling out of workman's comp. Generally, my boss gets to attend the meetings, but since he was away at a conference yesterday, and since he knows how I feel about these meetings, he kindly asked me to take his place.

I don't know what it is about other people's misery, but I love hearing about it. I don't even care about the voting it preventable or non-preventable. I just want to hear who got hurt, how it happened, and just how bad the injury was.

I think there's something wrong with me.

Meeeeemories

Last Friday, while lunching with the sistahs at our favorite cafe in downtown, Sheasy mentions that someone who occasionally works with her looks quite a bit like my first love, Brandon. I look at her with interest.

"What's this guy's name?" I ask.
"Todd."
"And is he married?"
"No, I don't think so."
"How old is he?"
"A couple of years older than me," she answers.
"Reeeeeeally..." I say.

Finally, Jenni interrupts. "Stop answering her questions!"

Ahem. It's not like I wanted to DATE the guy... I just happen to be a curious person, ok? Ok.

Anyway, after a rough start (as in, my car battery was dead when I got out of work on Friday), I made the trip to Rhode Island without any other drama. Well, without MUCH drama, anyway.

*Wink wink*