A Little Bit of Everything

Besides the recent visit of my best friend, Lauren, here's what we've been up to lately.

- The night before Lauren came to town, Cambridge experienced a major blackout.  Almost all of Cambridge was completely dark. It happened right at the end of the work day, about 4:30, so everyone left work all at the exact same time and it was chaos. Cars were in gridlock everywhere, people were walking in every direction, the trains were all backed up, stores were closing down... It felt kind of like the end of the world.  Our friends Ana and Jose were planning to have people over that night to pre-party before a Sloan C-Function, and even though the electricity was out, that didn't stop the LGOs from having a good time by candlelight!

 The power all came back on at about 7 pm, so luckily we weren't in the dark for too long.

- Chuckie and I got our first Christmas tree. It's only 2 feet tall but it's the perfect size for our apartment and it came in a tiny box that will fit nicely into a larger box of stuff when we start packing up all of our things to move again.

- One night last week I hosted a Holiday Cookie Swap Party.  I've heard of these before but never hosted or participated in one. It seemed like a really good idea though- invite all of your friends to make cookies and bring them to your house for a party? What's not to like about that!?

 People went all out! A lot of the ladies made more than one kind of cookie, so we had tons of variety. And they were all SO GOOD. Before the party I asked myself, WWMSD (What Would Martha Stewart Do?) so I made little tags for people to label their cookies with and I bought cute Tupperware for everyone to pack their treats in to take home. (I don't have any pictures of the labels up close or the cute Tupperware but I promise they were cute.)

Those are ornaments in the middle, not cookies, just FYI.

 I think I might have to have this party every year.

- And finally: I have found my calling in life. At work we are having a holiday decorating contest and I really wanted our floor to make a million paper snowflakes and hang them from our ceiling. So at work this week I've been making snowflakes, and discovered I'm REALLY good at it. Like, scary good. I don't follow a pattern or anything. I just fold and start cutting and then I open them up and they look like this.

If anyone knows where I can get a job just making paper snowflakes for a living, please let me know.

- Other things going on around here: Christmas shopping, counting down the days until we get to go home for a break, coming up with a plan for our move to Seattle, and most importantly, trying to keep Chuckie from losing his mind as he finishes the fall semester.