But no, it lasts through March (and occasionally into April). So, five more months of this? No thank you.

That’s why I loved waking up to pouring rain this morning that disappeared by the time I’d finished my oatmeal and turned into sunny skies and, by 9AM, 65 degrees! Aer you paying attention, Mother Nature? this is how winter ought to be.

Now if only my office would cool down (I’ve not turned on the heat yet…in fact, I’ve kept my windows open since the building turned off the AC).

Last night I also decorated our Christmas tree. Normally I do this the weekend after Thanksgiving and invite a few people over for a tree-decorating party. But with our housewarming party coming up, I decided one party was enough and did it myself. It actually looks pretty darn good (I forgot to take a picture…will try tonight). And Randy unknowingly helped me with a tradition – despite not helping in decorating the tree.

You see, ever since I moved away from my childhood home I’ve baked chocolate chip cookies to eat while decorating. Randy and I had no cookies (or mix, or ingredients to bake cookies) in the house yesterday. But before getting home he picked up a few groceries, including a package of Chips Ahoy.

I’m not sure if he’s aware yet, but those cookies served their purpose and helped continue a tradition of eating chocolate chip cookies while decorating the tree. Now I just hope he doesn’t notice that half the bag is gone.

Yes, it’s terribly exciting, I know. But it keeps me content. But once in a while it makes sense to spark things up a bit. As I was scootering home last night (the stage between work and death) I noticed that the town of Arlington had put up all of its Christmas lights.  And that made me start thinking how nice it would be if Randy and I had a nice romantic dinner in our neighborhood.

But then I got home and remember our friend, Paul, was in town for the night and we were supposed to get together w ith him. So, instead, when Randy got home from work we met up with Paul in Davis Square for dinner/drinks and then came back to our place to show him the new pad.

All in all, it was a great night. And a welcome distraction from the same old-same old.

On Thursday morning, I drove to the cape (no traffic…L-O-V-E it!) and spend the next to days in a haze of card playing chocolate eating, and drape hanging. Yes, I was domestic and hung drapes for my parents. Between the drapes, the all new stainless steal appliances in the kitchen, the new blinds, all new living room furniture, and the all new paint (colors!) thoughout, the place looks amazing compared to it’s previous incarnation.

On Black Friday I had planned a restful day with my parents. Instead, Randy sent my Dad an email before 6am telling him that Norton Antivirus is on sale at Staples as a door-buster special. You had to get there by 10AM to get.

Now, he really should know better than to put any ideas into my Dad’s head because my Dad ran into my bedroom at 6:50AM freaking out about how we have to go. Go NOW!

Ugh – so much for a resftul Friday. It didn’t help matters that it was pouring rain. I’m talking torrential. Not only did Randy tell me to go to Staples, I had to go to Macy’s to buy a door-buster Christmas tree that he said to get.

All said and done, we made it back home by 9:30AM, which kills me since when I worked at the Cape Cod Mall in my youth, the mall didn’t even open until 9:30AM.

I returned to Boston (I mean, Arlington) on Saturday afternoon and opened the box of the new tree (yeah, it’s fake, don’t judge me).  I noticed the branches weren’t the style Randy wanted (he wants the plastic tipped ones, where as these are the old school fake branches). I called him and he said not to bother putting it up.

So, I put up the old tree instead. The trusty old tree I’ve used for more than half a decade. And despite being pre-lit, certain sections of the tree remained pre-lit even after I plugged it all in. Yep, somehwere in that mess of plastic and metal is a rambling strand of lazy-ass bulbs that won’t light up.

Randy won’t let me put up the new tree. We can’t use the old tree. So I just gave up and did Wii Fit instead.

On Sunday, to round out my festive and frustrating weekend, I decided to see the movie, Precious. I invited Chris along to keep me company…which was a good thing because, damn, that movie is hard to watch.

I loved it. I really, really thought the performances were amazing (Mariah Carey and M’Onique…who knew?). And the cinematography was disturbingly stunning. Seriously…even now, a day after seeing the movie, when I close my eyes I’m still envisioning that horrible apartment of theirs and the abuses that were taking place inside.

If this movie doesn’t win awards, the system is royally screwed up (the system previously proved to be joke when Crash won so many awards a few years ago and I hated that manipulative drivel). With stellar performances by everybody in the film….let’s see if the system can redeem itself this time around!

So, here goes…random experiences and thoughts in my head since the last I posted.

1 – I used the Wii Fit for the first time in, gasp, 217 days. I hate that the damn thing reminds you of how lazy you’ve been. I’ve also managed to take a negative and turn it into a positive: it said I’d gained 3 pounds….but I was relieved that it was only 3 pounds since I was expecting more! Even bad news can brighten my day!

2 – I’ve enver seen this before but there’s this bizarre moth thing going on right now. Our front door is covered with them and I couldn’t figure it out. But then I saw a report on the news the other night that certain towns north of Boston (including Arlington) are having a problem with moths that came out as it started getting colder and who won’t disappear until the first substantial snow fall. Super. Our white front door looks so ghetto.

3 – I had a dream about Bowzer (from Sha Na Na) the other night. But it wasn’t the Bowzer from his skinny 1970’s hey-day, it was the current slightly overweight version I saw on an informercial the other day. It wasn’t an erotic dream, but he did kiss me.

4 – I’m still scootering to work these past few weeks despite the rain and cooler temperatures. I started getting the T-pass for next month so let’s see how long this lasts. I’m not really minding the temperatures (in a way, it’s refreshing), but I have noticed on my new commuter that despite their being clearly marked bike lanes up and down Mass Ave, certain drivers seem to pretend they don’t exist. There are the double parkers, the truck-unloaders, the cars that swerve into them while chatting on the phone or drinking coffee. But then, scariest of all, are the MBTA bus drivers who in the past week alone have nearly killed me twice as I’m beside them (practically to the front door) when they start merging into the bike lane for a bus stop that’s ahead. They don’t even look sometimes!  When I’ve been a passenger on the bus I’ve seen this happen to cyclists… a lot.

5 – Christmas music is offically acceptable now. Though, truth be told, I began playing it on my iTunes around November 1.

6 – What’s all this hoopla about Adam Lambert? His singing was mediocre at best, but the theatrics were the most interesting part of the show. More erotic things have happened in the past that haven’t ended up with a performer being dis-invited to another show (GMA). Remember Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” performance at the MTC Video Awards when she rolled around in a see-thru wedding dress simulating an orgasm? Or how about Michael Jackson in everything since 1983 where he constantly thrusts grabs his crotch? Or Madonna, Britney, and Christina making out at another awards show? And some of these were 25 years ago. Adam Lambert did nothing different – it’s good old-fashioned rock-n-roll shock (or shlock). Besides, this aired at nearly 11PM on a school night. It’s not like it was a commercial break on PBS during Sesame Street.

7 – Harvard gave us pies to say thank you for our service over the past year. I’m trying to figure out how  to get it home with my scooter. I’m thinking I’ll putit on the place where my feet go and dangle my feet on the side. Classy…and safe!

8 – I finally booked us a room near Death Valley this week. I’d been putting it off because everything I’ve found online looks like a trailer park. Seriously, numerous properties put you up in trailers or “cabins” which look like shanty town rejects of corrugated metal.

8 – And now we’re trying to plan our next trip. 2010 is going to be an interesting year for us travel- wise. Randy will achieve Platinum status for life (since he’ll have flown 2,000,000 miles on American over his lifetime). So now he wants to use that perk to build a profile on United (apparently you can ask United to match the benefit so that you’ll use them from now on). On top of that, we’ve got $300 worth of vouchers (each) on Air France/KLM that we have to use by the end of spring. And I’ve got United miles expiring by March.  Randy wants to go to Chile, but United and Air France won’t get us there. He’s also likely to go to Asia on business a few times (and I plan on tagging along this time). So, I guess we need to prioritize so that we an use the expiring miles for one trip, the expiring $300 for another trip, and at the same time boost his profile on United.

9 – The toenail from hell is still black. It first became bruised in April when Randy’s Diet Coke fell on my flip-flopped toe. That ugly bruise lasted under my toenail for 7  months. Just as it was about to fall off, I dropped a shudder on the same toe while doing home improvements. That nasty looking bruise appears now about 1/4 the way up my nail. It’s got a long way to go…hopefully it’ll be gone by summer.

10 – Who in their right mind would install off-white carpets?  The previous owners did just that on the stairs and at the bedrooms and office. It shows everything. Even if they’re not stains, it just shows every piece of black sock lint, every crumb, every smudge of dirt. Everything. I feel like I have to vacuum (or walk around pick sock lint up) daily to make it look presentable.

11 - Randy is gone again. I drove him to the airport this morning so he could spend Thanksgiving with his family. Sigh. I was kinda’ getting used to him around the house.

12 – I went shopping last weekend. It’s so rare for me, but I had a coupon at Macy’s so after purging my older clothes to move into the new place. I ended up coming home with 9 shirts for about $160. Randy bought 2.

13 – I love Glee. Puck is dreamy.

14 – Oh, you know how I mentioned that I used Wii Fit for the first time in 217 days? Well, I feel it today. I did the step aerobics for 45 minutes, but finished off the hour doing the most painful of Wii exercises: the hulu hoop. Regrets? I have a few.

And there you…random musings. So comment, dammit. Give me a reason to blog more frequently.

But in less than 12 hours I will be bright and shiny and excited to pick him up at the airport. He, on the other hand, will probably be completely jetlagged, exhausted, and dehydrated. I feel like a puppy. It’s like my parent’ dog, Dusty, who piddles in glee every time she sees me (I call my parents 5 minutes before I get there so they can take her out first). Don’t worry, I’ll go to the bathroom before heading to the airport.

Anyway, the last two nights were the nights I slept best during his absence. I’m guessing it’s partially because I was getting used to having the place to myself, but also because I knew that the nights I was sleeping alone would be ending soon.

I’m such a sap. One thing this absence does make me realize is that if he ever does do that temporary assignment in Asia for 3-6 months, I’ll have to go along. Initially, I was thinking that if he went for 6 months, I’d go for three months in the middle and be in Arlington by myself for the first month and a half and the last month and a half.

I don’t think so.

What does this mean? The optimist in me says it’s love. The pessimist in me says it’s codependency. The realist in me says its a combination of the two.

I can accept that.

Until last night.

Sometime after 9PM or so all of the fire alarms started going off. Now, our house is 4 floors. It’s also modern construction so the alarms are all hard-wired together. If one goes off, they all go off. So, my first instinct was to put on some pants and run through the house to see if there was smoke or fire (since I couldn’t tell where the source was because all alarms were going off).

By the time I’d finished scouring the house (we must have at least 8 or 9 fire alarms) the ringing had stopped.

Hmm…curious. I figured maybe all 5 townhouses  in our row were hardwired and perhaps somebody screwed up dinner or something.

I returned to the comfort of my sofa and the DVR to continue wasting my brain. But nearly two hours later they all started going off again. I followed the same routine of running up and down the stairs only to find no signs of smoke or fire.  UGH.

Knowing that even hard-wired alarm systems use battery back-up, I thought that maybe all of this commotion was caused because a battery in one unit was dying (though, shouldn’t simple technology exist that would limit the alarm sound to just the one alarm that’s defective, instead of sounding all of them, thus making it damn near impossible to find the source?)

Anyway, starting on the second floor I began to pull fire alarms down. Nothing. The alarms all continued sounding. At this point, it had been 10 minutes and it was after 11PM. I feared it was going to start pissing off our neighbors so I decided to take advantage of the reason I pay such high property taxes: I dialed 9-1-1. They said they’d be right over. To escape the noise I went outside and waited by the gazebo in the courtyard.

Alas, 5 minutes later a fire truck arrived (ugh…embarrassing). I explained to the fireman that all of the alarms were going off but there was no fire and no smoke. I said I’d begun pulling alarms down but that wasn’t solving it either. He said it could be defective alarms or dust, then asked if we’d recently done work.

Well, as a matter of fact, yes. We recently moved in, so we’ve painted, we’ve sawed shelves, swept up spackle dust, etc… swept out the garage. The said that some of the alarms could possibly have dust. But then he decided to check out the fire alarm in the first floor foyer.

And the ringing stopped.

I was moritfied. Doesn’t it figure that the one defective alarm was the first one he touched? Couldn’t it have been the fourth floor office alarm so he could have at least made it worth his while?

Anyway, that was my Monday night.  I do feel like an idiot, I must admit. But after pulling some batteries out, it still wasn’t stopping. And then I started fearing that if the system senses that alarms aren’t engaged, it might just keep going off until they are engaged properly (kind of like the way some car seatbelt warnings go off until you put it on). After 10 minutes of that obnoxious noise I feared I was just making matters worse. Despite knowing that there was no fire, that irritating and piercing noise creates just a sense of fear and anxiety that leaves you uncomfortable. I suppose that’s their whole purpose.

Note to self: follow the fire department’s advice and replace fire alarm batteries every year at daylight savings time.

On Saturday morning I was flipping channels over my oatmeal and decided I’d check out Logo (the gay cable network). I look up from my bowl to see my friend, Pete, standing on a boat with his hand over his eyes (presumably to block sun and view into the distance).

WTF?

It lasted only second before the host of the show appeared and Pete was long gone. I watched the show a bit further to realize that it was BUMP!, a gay travel show that aired on Canadian TV, but is now appearing on U.S based Logo. Wanting to see the rest, I immediately typed my way to the logoonline.com website and started searching.

And I was able to find the full episode about Boston. A little over half way through the episode the host began discussing Boston’s gay yachting club…and showed Pete was captain (though, whether captain of the club or of his own boat, I wasn’t sure). Anyway, he was even interviewed! Then the host roams arounds the boat and chats up a nice lesbian couple.  In the background, I then noticed our friend Chris. WTF?

Within seconds, the host sits down with Chris  and refers to him as  the boats eye candy before asking him a few questions.

EYE CANDY!

Anyway, I was rather excited later in the day since Chris and I had previously planned to go out shopping. I didn’t know what to expect, what with him being eye candy and a televsion celebrity and all. But we managed to get our shopping done and returned to the car with minimal interference from paparrazi. Phew!

It’s tough hanging with celebrities.

The “one more thing” last weekend was painting the top floor of our townhouse. After we moved in we painted the entire place but left the top floor as it was because a) it is the least used/least visible space, and b) it already had an accent wall in red that people seemed to like (in photos, at least).

But when the movers brought up the sleeper sofa, pinball machine, book cabinets and patio furniture (a dining table, 6 chairs, and a loveseat that we’ve placed on our roofdeck) they managed to make quite a few scuff marks on the stairwell walls.

Since Randy uses the office up there at least two days per week, he noticed the scuff marks more than I did and decided it should get painted. So, Saturday morning we looked at paint samples and originally thought we’d paint the bulk of it the same color as the rest of the place (crepe). But we wanted an accent wall, of course. In the end, we selected “divine wine.”

As you can imagine, it’s a bit bold.

VERY bold.

In fact, I suspect a lot of people are going to hate it. But we love it. I’ve always been fond of dark wall colors. And with this floor getting so much bright light from big windows and a sliding glass door, it works well. And it makes it feel nice and intimate at night. Perhaps it’ll make us use the space more now?

Though, we didn’t use it at all on Sunday, but that was mostly because we were so achy from painting and installing a new dining room light fixture on Saturday.

And now Randy is in Asia for the next week and a half and won’t even be able to enjoy it. So, I’ll post a pic here so he can be reminded while he’s away.

But Sunday evening Randy began to notice that he wasn’t feeling well. I’d noticed a few sneezed and sniffles since he returned from his business trip on Friday, but it really hit him Sunday night. And for the first time since I’ve known him (3+ years) he called in sick to work…two days in a row.

Granted, he’s actually working from home and not calling in sick, but he does feel like crap. Knowing him, he’d have gone into work if it wasn’t for the swine flu scare that’s blanketing the world. His office has signs up all over the place warning people to stay home if they don’t feel good. They’ve also got hand sanitizer all over the place.

Now, I’ve always advocated for using sick time to stay home. For me, it’s mostly because I feel horrible and don’t want to have to deal with the going out and working. I also think it’s important to rest when you’re not well. But a huge factor for me is that I don’t want to get what you have. If more people actually stayed home, the more the bacteria (or virus) stays in the home and not in your office, in the public bathroom, on public transit.

I’ve worked in places that provided sick days, but made you feel guilty for using them. I didn’t last long at those places. If an employer has no consideration for an employee’s well being, the they can go to hell.

So, poor Randy, I hope he starts to feel better very soon (especially since he’s heading to Asia in six days.

Oh, damn, I just sneezed as I was finishing this post. Ugh. On second though, maybe I do like the idea of people going into work when they’re sick…cuz then the bacteria doesn’t fester around my house as much.

And speaking of my house, Randy took some photos yesterday of the 98% complete project. I’ve posted them all (with before and after comparisons) on Facebook. For those non-users, I’ll try to post a few here each day.

So Randy left yesterday for his business trip to Portland. As always happens when he travels, the first night is the easiest for not missing him. It’s kinda’ nice having the place to myself, watching what I want on TV, etc… And I notice that I can wake up in the morning with the sheets still tucked in around me and barely have to do anything to make the bed (when Randy’s there the sheets get pulled up and wrapped around all over the place). But I also find that the first night is usually the one where I have trouble at least initially falling asleep (the creepiness of being alone, etc..).

By the second night, I realize that I’m starting to miss him. Conversely, I tend to start sleeping better the longer and longer he’s away (the creepiness gradually disappears and I get used to being alone at night). It was like that when I moved into an apartment alone for the first time…the first few nights I had trouble, but in time I got used to it.

Still, I’d rather him be around. He’s still gone tonight, but returns tomorrow afternoon. I suppose I should get used to this because he’s doing quite a bit of travel over the next month (13 days in Asia, then 5 days in Virginia…all within the month of November).

At least making the bed will be easier.