The rush continues

It was one of those days at work today. Since I had planned what I was going to do, naturally a thousand other little niggly things had to be taken care of.

The food spread. Justin's pound cake is under the Tupperware dome immediately to the left of the red cups in the foreground.

It was food day at work today. Justin's pound cake was served to rave reviews. But the spread just wasn't up to the usual standard this year. So many people don't cook. It amazes me. But Lillian brought a lovely homemade cheese ball with sun-dried tomatoes. I love sun-dried tomatoes. They taste like bits of summer that have been pressed in a book. There were lots of cookies, and someone brought a shrimp tray, but overall the pickings were a bit slim. Probably just as well. I don't really need to be eating all that junk. I ate enough as it was. I gave some of the pound cake to Anna to take home to her family with my holiday wishes, and Christie took home the rest. That girl just loves pound cake.

She told me she could still taste the love in it, and that she liked the new recipe. Justin said he spent most of the time making it thinking about Heath, and I teased him about that. I really shouldn't, but it's so easy to get a rise out of him it's just irresistible. He has no sense of humor about that situation at all. So I was naughty today. I'm sure Santa was too busy to be watching little ole me though. I hope so anyway.

When I got off work, I ran by Ross's Dress For Less to pick up a picture frame for the picture I'm going to give my dad for his birthday tomorrow. They have tons of frames, but most of them have been picked through and mangled at this point. I called Eve and asked her what I should look for, at which point she told me they had plans for dinner tomorrow night. Of course. So much for my just coming by with the picture. She invited me for tonight, but I had dinner with H. She also invited me for tomorrow, but I am just so tired. Plus, I didn't feel comfortable horning in on a nice dinner they had planned with their friends. I guess I'll just see him Sunday or something.

Meanwhile, I had to get out of Ross's. That is the big problem with shopping there. Of course the woman in front of me had a cart mounded full of stuff, all of which had security tags that had to be removed. And of course the checker in that lane was moving with the speed of a thousand slugs. I waited in line with my one picture frame for as long as I had been in the store shopping.

I called D'relda, and asked him to please take my regrets to Amy tomorrow night. I'm just not up for her party. I also called Brad since I hadn't talked to him in a while, and left a message. He texted me back to tell me he's home sick as well, and apparently sounds like Brenda Vaccaro after throat surgery. I'd kind of like to hear that.

When I finally got home, it was about 6:45. H was going to be at the house at 7 for us to go to dinner. We had talked about getting takeout, which would have been heaven, but he took a wrong turn and the whole thing just was getting very complicated. I just told him to come on to the house, and resignedly dressed to go back out. Incredibly, I have eaten so much Indian food and sushi recently that I have had my fill of both.

We ended up going to Olive Garden, just because of a sheer dearth of inspiration. The last time I was there, they had this really great stuff on the menu, but it was one of their seasonal specials or something, so they didn't have it any more. I always feel kind of like I'm going to spontaneously immolate when I walk into Olive Garden. It makes me feel vaguely obscene to be around so many heterosexual vanilla people with mini-vans all at once. Oddly enough, I don't feel that way at the cafeteria among the old people. It's just in places like the Olive Garden where they manufacture and aggressively advertise a Wholesome Family Atmosphere that I feel kind of like a whore in church. Anyway, the food was fine.

We talked about the holidays, and I caught him up on my family drama and the parties I had been to. He's getting his daughter for Christmas, which is nice.

When he got to the house, he brought in tea for me. Now he had told me he bought too much tea, and asked if I would like some. I told him to bring me a little bit, so I could taste it. A little bit turned out to be two full canisters of Sri Lankan tea. So I figured he got me there. I had kind of agreed to that. When we got back from dinner, he got out a friendship tree and gave it to me. He told me he takes them to his parishioners in the nursing home, and had an extra one. I was pretty much OK with that. Then he goes back to the boot, and pulls out a huge Christmas present on top of everything else. At that point, I was pretty embarrassed. He is a sweet and generous guy, but I have asked him to stop buying me things. It makes me very uncomfortable. If I take it I feel like a goober (of course I didn't have a gift for him - I just met him a little over a month ago, and we have had the "stop buying stuff" talk before) and if I refuse I feel like an ungrateful jerk. Sigh. Apparently we are going to have to address this again.

He came in for a bit, and we talked before he left. He has stuff on his mind, and I want to be a good friend. But I was soooooo drug out. Nursing this cold is killing me. Eventually I just had to throw him out and go to bed.