At work we’ve been collecting food for the Heart of Carolina Food Drive for the holidays. People have been taking home the brown bags provided in the lobby, filling them up, and returning them back to work in the morning. I brought mine in on Tuesday. This is what the lobby looked like this morning:
I like this shot—sort of into the bags:
A shout out to my friend, and fellow blogger, cpeel for his The Importance of Punctuation posting. Casey is one of the most technically gifted people I know, and he’s someone who appreciates the value of good writing, too. A rare, but beautiful combination.
Good thing I was off work today, because I had a lot of running around to do.
I started off at Target, where I purchased something I didn’t even know existed on the planet a few days ago:
Since I waited to make this purchase 30 minutes before the shower I was taking it to, I didn’t allow time for it to be wrapped, so on the way out of my house, I grabbed a “Happy Birthday” gift bag that I’d saved in my closet, and stuck it in that.
That actually ended up working out rather nicely, as when I handed it to Tanya, I said, “Happy Birthday. Not yours, the baby’s.” Several people thought it was a good idea, and I’ll probably do that from now on instead of getting “shower paper.” (Actually, I can’t remember the last time I’ve bought a baby shower gift, and I hope it’s a long time before I buy another one.)
Since it was in the same shopping area, and even though I was really tight on time, I ran over to Kohl’s, where I purchased a $100 gift card to send to my friend Dave, who has adopted a family for Christmas—a 33-year old mom with two teenage boys and one teenage girl. He said he was getting their clothes sizes this week, but I thought, “Get the family a gift card, and let them buy stuff they like, and where they’ll be able to try stuff on.”
I rushed over to Johnny Carinos in Brier Creek, as the shower invitation said 11:00–1:00, only to find no one there. I asked the hostess about the party, and she said, “The reservation is for 11:45.”
Since I had a little time, I signed the Kohl’s gift card “From Santa!” and put it in the envelope I’d taken with me to send to Dave in the mail by 5:00 today.
I went back into the restaurant, where someone else who had understood that the reservation was for 11:00 was coming out, so she and I chatted, and ended up—when it was all said and done—really hitting it off. Nacia, a new friend. Yay!
I stopped by IBM for a little while, since I was close (that’s when I took those two pictures above), and then headed out of the Park before rush hour started.
I was at home for just a short bit before heading over to the Village Draft House for our End of Semester STC Happy Hour. A good time was had by all. Several of the alumni of the program showed up, and it was great to see them again. Soon I will be one of them.
Kim brought her Phi Kappa Phi honor cord for me to use at graduation. Yay!
I met Joe out at Flex a little after ten o’clock. We played several games of pool, and by a little after midnight the 120 Minutes music was turned up so loud that I literally had my fingers in my ears when it was not my turn to shoot pool. Just incredibly, incredibly loud.
And believe me, that is not music worth losing any hearing capability over. We hightailed it out of there shortly after that.
At home, I had a quick late e-mail exchange with Jason regarding our submission for a paper to present at the IEEE Professional Communication Conference (IPCC) in Montreal in July of 2008.