Weekend Update

Friday
In the evening, I went to Whittier College's holiday party at the college president's house. The college owns a house up in the hills from the historic district and is specifically for the current college president to reside there with his/her family. It's a beautiful split-level, spanish-style home with an amazing panoramic view of L.A. County. The invitation was for staff and faculty, and it was nice to be able to meet people I hadn't had the chance to meet yet at the college. There was wine, tasty hors d'oeuvres and the prettiest dessert spread. I had a lot of fun spending time with my colleagues there.

Saturday
Geoff and I had one goal this day: to get Christmas shopping done and over with. Unfortunately, everyone else had the same goal.

We got a late start in the morning, mostly because we were tired and feeling lazy. When we finally got our butts out the door, we headed to "The District" in Irvine, a fairly new shopping area. We first hit up the Verizon store so that Geoff could get a new phone. His current phone is a piece of crap. After that, we were starving and had lunch at The Winery across the way.

After lunch, we stopped at Michaels (my new 2nd home) so that I could buy more beads for the wine charms I'm making. Normally, Geoff rushes me in this type of store, but he was very sweet that day, helping me pick out different colored beads and charm designs. He really likes my idea of making wine charms for gifts. I ended up selecting silver and aqua-colored beads with silver star charms and more red-colored beads with gold key charms.

After Michaels, we headed to South Coast Plaza. Now, if you've ever gone to South Coast during the holidays, you know that they barricade certain parts of the parking lots and parking structures for crowd-control purposes. This makes for one hellish shopping experience. I've shopped at South Coast many times during the holidays and, apparently, I've never learned my lesson. It took us 20 minutes to even get into a parking lot area, it was so crowded! Geoff and I started to get agitated, so we agreed to go across the street to Crystal Court (an extension of South Coast) to try shopping there. I went a back way and parked in a secret place near Macy's Home Store that hardly anyone knows about, that was perfectly clear (I was only the third car parked there).

After shopping, we went home. I was feeling domestic that night, so I made mac n' cheese with grilled chicken and roasted veggies for dinner, one of Geoff's favorites, and baked chocolate chip cookies.

Sunday
We slept in late! When I opened my eyes, the clock said 11:30 am. I hate sleeping in on Sundays. I feel like I wasted some of my last weekend day before heading into another long work week. I got up, made cinnamon rolls for Geoff and helped him decorate his Christmas tree. Shortly after, I left to go Christmas shopping and buy my Christmas tree and ornaments. I went to Target and the tree farm at the Long Beach/Seal Beach border. I went home and decorated it right away with the ornaments I bought.

After I was done decorating, I went to the movies with my friend, Melissa, to see "Four Christmases" with Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon. It wasn't that good. Wait for DVD. On the way home, it started to rain, much to my happiness. Once home, I took Gidget for a brisk walk and then went straight to bed, heading into another work week. Blah.