I actually feel pretty recharged at the end of this weekend, which is nice, even though a lot has been going on. I’ve had some good sleep and good relaxation spells as well.
Anders came home with flowers for me (pale pale pink roses), a Pandora bead for my bracelet and chocolates. Made me feel kind of bad about the little box of candy he and the kids got 🙂
We were supposed to go to Debbie’s home for Valentine’s Dinner on Friday but late in the day her husband, who’d been feeling worse all day, decided he couldn’t manage. She almost canceled but one of my other Wonders friends offered to host it at her house and we ended up moving there instead and Debbie just brought all the preparations with her. There were some things going on behind the scenes that caused some tension and one other couple didn’t show up but we ended up having a nice evening anyway and the food was great: raclette Swiss-style (we’ve only ever had Bavarian-style, so it was new to us). We stayed longer than I would normally have liked but it was a lot of fun.
I suspect that our Wonders group is starting to fall slowly apart. Most of us never see each other outside of the scheduled dinners which have been getting further and further apart, or for Thanksgiving at my house. I only ever see Debbie outside the group regularly, and I know the others only see maybe one of the others as well. We’ll see what happens. We’ve been meeting for a long time and friends for longer, but maybe some things aren’t meant to last forever.
Karin had 4 girlfriends over for the night and when we came home at 1 a.m. they were playing cards in the kitchen. Buncha zombies the next day, I can tell you 🙂
I wasn’t able to sleep in much because of the girls all being there, so I didn’t do much in the morning and then watched the US-Russian hockey game. Or rather, I puttered around the house for a couple of hours but was so tired by the time the game started that I laid on the couch to watch it and slept through the first 2 periods. I woke up a bit when Russia scored and then watched until the US scored and then went outside and told Anders that they had tied. And had NO IDEA that there was going to be a shoot-out. We both thought they would keep the tie because it was still round-robin games and so I missed the apparently nail-biting sudden death ending with the US winning. Drrr.
Then I talked to my friend Russell on Skype for 2 hours because we are STILL trying to plan the big birthday trip and getting nowhere. We went back and forth about where to go for ages, and finally decided on San Diego, and then that got changed and we went back and forth some more and finally decided on Ireland, and then went back and forth some more about how to do it, because everything we want to see in Ireland is all around the edges of the country which would require moving around a lot and renting a van or several cars for the week and then when we started really looking into prices and accommodations, we discovered that the costs of hotels, even cheap ones, were SKY-HIGH. The prices in Dublin were outrageous and Russell found out today it’s because Garth Brooks is playing 5 of the days we’ll be there, in concert, in Dublin, and all the hotel rooms are astronomically expensive for those days and plus, already booked up. AAGH. Garth Brooks! OF ALL PEOPLE.
So after going back and forth some MORE, we started exploring our options again. We can’t change the dates and I don’t want to go anywhere too hot that time of year (which rules out a LOT of options) and we can’t AFFORD Ireland. We checked out several other places and they are all also super-expensive. Now we are considering Berlin, Vienna, Prague and Toronto.
Going to Toronto would be more expensive for us (4 people to fly over), but it’s close to my mom’s and we could extend our vacation to be in Michigan beforehand. I suspect any of those places means my brother won’t come (especially Toronto) but he’s already set on Ireland at this point, with other plans that what we had in mind anyway. Russell and I spent another 2 hours on Skype today without reaching a decision. I don’t know what to do!!! GAH.
Other events of the weekend: watching part 3 of Melodifestivalen…what a trainwreck this year’s contest is. And the third and final episode of Sherlock, Season 3 (!) and the last couple of episodes of Mad Men, Season 6 (also trainwreck, but in a good way). I actually have nothing planned for this week and I hope it’s calm-ish at work, which it will hopefully be since it’s a school-holiday week here and Monday is a holiday in the States…maybe we can actually get a little caught up. HAHAHAHA.