at the awwwwwwwwww - fisssssssss.

I decided to dress for warmth today, and am thus wearing sweater that I may have bought as a freshman in high school. It has various shades of red and pink in stripes. "Striped sweaters" would be a good way to describe most of my winter fashion choices during high school. But it is very warm, which is an advantageous thing.

I'm looking forward to tonight, which boasts an excellent Thai Garden dinner with J-Frey, and then later some racquetball at the Valley with Batman. I've been feeling the need to exercise lately, especially after coming home last night to more cookies and candies offered by the neighbors. The holidays are going to make me diabetic. There was this excellent candied apple that had caramel, chocolate, cashews, walnuts, and a drizzle of white chocolate coating it. Way too much...

Last night I went shopping with the Hallster, for lack of better things to do. (Well, we could have watched Eddie Izzard, but I really needed to do my Christmas shopping.) I bought Christmas presents for the brothers. Still need to find stuff for the father and lil sis.

Thought briefly about using punctuation for "lil sis". Decided against it.

Yay for no work on FRIDAY! I mean, no working at the office. Working in Seattle. Outside. Selling parking passes. But not for very long. And then it's time for CHRISTMAS!!!

sooooo many cookies that patients bring in. Guys, this clinic promotes HEALTH. Not obesity, which is currently being promoted in me.... bleh.

had fun last night at Jihad's house, where we watched about 5 episodes of Alias, which I don't really understand but I was catching on. Jennifer Garner has a man-jaw, but jeez, is she thin. The show's pretty good, with a lot of cat-fights and other fun plot twists. Persistent comments on the part of Ella and I prompted Patrick to flip on the subtitles. He was quite into it. We also watched Family Guy, which is an overdone thing, but still funny. It was good comfortable fun, normal for the Sheik house, with college kids practically piled on top of each other on the couches and the parents bringing snacks of popcorn and peeled apples for us to enjoy. Current relationship status of Ella and Jihad caused an understandable tension, but it was slight and not too annoying, and certainly didn't ruin the evening like it has done sometimes in the past. It was also good to see people I hadn't seen in years, like Tesla and Patrick and Sema, even though they're not especially close to me.

In other news, Jeff tore a ligament in his foot last night playing basketball in L.A. I don't know why I'm writing this here, because Jeff's pretty much the only readership I have left, and he probably has already heard the news. :\ So Jeff, keep icing and elevating, and get better. And get an MRI.

So much shopping left to do. So little time...

lack of correspondence from my German exchange family makes Kyla a sad panda. perhaps I should send a Christmas card. Won't make it in time, though.

working again at Dad's office for some much-appreciated cash. I'm pretty sure he's not paying me to blog... at the moment, though, there's not a whole lot else to do. Even though it's only quarter after 3, we've seen all of today's patients and the mail still hasn't come. I seriously am out of work. Maybe I'll take off early and get a workout in before I go about my evening activities. (laundry, but maybe also a movie at a friend's house.)

then it's back again to the office for the rest of the week until Friday, when on Christmas Eve I get to spend three hours selling parking passes in Seattle. I don't really care about that, either... I'll just go to Redmond afterwards for a wonderful Christmas Eve with my dad's family.

Warm 106.9 has been playing Christmas favorites all day here in the office. Right now they're playing a version of "Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland" titled "Sippin' in Seattle's Latte Land". Barf. What junk. If you're going to make a parody, don't make it sound like a MIDI file with bad lyrics. It reminds me of the song Kip sings to Lafawnduh at their wedding.

Here's a better set of lyrics from a parody we sang in Unleashed last year:

"Oh we're going to Seattle for Christmas,
And the freeway is one long isthmus,
But we can swim down the carpool lane,
Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain."

That's more like it.