scheduling

i woke up late this morning, took my sweet time, and slipped outside to pick up the package from pg. after all that worrying over snowboarding gloves, my israeli ones arrived first :P

the slipping was pretty literal - a passer-by gave me a friendly warning when he saw me almost see my own ass. the thing about snow and ice and bad boot grips is that you have to keep your centre of balance just a *teensy* bit more forward than is comfortable.

anyway, none of that was important. what was important is that it was the craziest snow i've ever seen - even if that's not saying much - and when it wasn't flying into my face it was absolutely beautiful. if it had been rain i would have said it poured, and i couldn't stop thinking about what a pleasure it was that if too much collected on a glove or the inside of my not-quite-closed jacket i could tap it off or blow it off.

i gotta say, though, it was pretty cold. and a traffic light that takes more than two or three minutes to let pedestrians cross the road is insane!

good news: my two pairs of gloves work well as a single inner / outer. awesome ^_^

the most awkward part of the walk in both directions was carrying the rental agreement, which i was doing because the post office tab explicitly stated that i would need to prove that i live at the written address. for next time, my passport was enough :P

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it's difficult to express just how heart-warming a walk through the snow with uplifting house can be.

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the day was long but calm. it's nice to be appreciated. and it's nice to have one's suggestions taken seriously and implemented and feedbacked into good policy. shit, even the kid with zero experience is behaving like a professional. it's like i fell out of the frying pan and landed in a pile of snow.

i came home, disappointed myself by putting both lupini beans and non-mediterranean olives in the salad (both are boring), and have decided that i'm going to welcome in my birthday by opening pg's package and getting to bed early. my gift to myself will be me being here, now, happy. this last year was tough, exhausting, and deeply satisfying on several levels and i can only hope that the next year will be one of consolidation.