Monday, Dec. 20, 2004
Playing hooky, posted at 1:39 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com I'm taking my first ever personal day in four years from work today. With no days off since Thanksgiving, I've had no chance to do any Christmas shopping, and today was the day. I had expected to be recovering from a hangover after the big restaurant Christmas party, which was a lot of fun last year even though it was surgery-eve for me and I couldn't drink. But the owner unceremoniously cancelled it because of the threat of bad weather (actually, I think they were just using that as an excuse), which was a big bummer. We rallied and had it at a friend's house, but it just wasn't the same. It was really cool at first, and the gift exchange was a lot of fun, but soon the party devolved into the Dancers and the Smokers. The dancers, well, danced in the 5X7 living room to a mixed-CD they intentionally made the gayest mix-CD ever (Cher, "It's Raining Men", etc), while the smokers hung out in the cold foyer, smoking. I wasn't into the dancing and the smoking room was too smoky, and I ended up leaving, against the wishes of a few friends. Still, I stayed until 1:45am, which isn't too bad.I woke up today at around 8, stumbled around very slowly for a bit (had the first underwear encounter with the new roommate, as we surprised each other by my being home on a school day), but had made it out to the White Marsh Mall by 9:30. It wasn't too busy, and I did all my shopping in one fell-swoop at Sears. I only buy for two friends back home, my parents, and my little sister, and my little sister will be getting the most gifts this year from me.
I was wearing shorts because I also planned on heading to the gym. Damn, it was cold. I still made it to the gym just fine, but felt pretty stupid as I was sprinting with my cart full of bags because I went outside from the top level of Sears and parked at the bottom level of Hecht's. I was a sight to see, I'm sure.
The playing hooky ends soon, as of course I couldn't be blessed with a day off at the restaurant tonight. I work at 4pm. So my streak of a month without a day off will not end until Christmas Eve, when I'll be driving the ten hours back to Michigan. Sometime during that time I've got to figure out how to do laundry (working tonight nixed that idea), how to get my car serviced, and how to get Christmas presents off to Grandma and Grandpa even though I have no scotch tape (yesterday I used return address stickers) and damned if I'm heading outside again right now.