November 30, 2007
What the Wishmaster has been up to
I'm attempting to catch up with blogging in between laundry and general house cleaning. So while allowing the clothes to pile up, ready to be folded later, here's a quick summary of what I've been up to the past few days:
- I mustered the courage to prepare a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for the family after days of scouring the web for easy to handle recipes and after incessant badgering from the husband to submit an ingredients list. The menu included mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, bread stuffing, buttered peas and sweet potato pie. The husband insisted on his mom's recipe for the pie. Except for a "minor" hitch that was eventually fixed, things turned out quite well. No one choked on his food, the kitchen was not engulfed in smoke and I did not burn myself. The husband gave me the green light on pretty much everything, except for the turkey. He said I wasn't ready yet to battle with an 11-pound bird and I have absolutely no reason to question that. Popeyes saved that part of Thanskgiving!
I invited my friend Rose and her husband to come over for dessert and, a few hours later, dessert turned into a semi Filipino potluck. Two more couples showed up in the apartment and before we knew it, there was maja blanca, fruit salad (Filipino-style), pumpkin pie, noodles, rice and chop suey on the table. The men retreated to one side of the living room and talked about sports, politics and immigration woes, while us women chatted in our dialect and pigged out.
- In the US, the day after Thanksgiving is THE shopping day no one should missed out on. Stores open at 4 a.m., can you believe that!? Rose and I being well into our, ahem, "adult" years, decided to wait for the mob to clear out and went to the mall around 1 p.m. Unfortunately, all the small sizes were cleared out too. At Macy's, dress pants left hanging on the clothes rack started with size 2. Apparently all the 1's, 0's and double 0's (as in my case) shopped in the wee hours of the morning. We managed to grab a few stuff from another store and by that time we were were ready to call it a day, aching feet and all.
- A former colleague from Cebu visited DC over Thanksgiving weekend and we had a fabulous time, along with a Filipina immigration lawyer-friend she introduced me to. We dined on Afghan food, talked religion, went to a bar for a nightcap and left after one drink, concluding that since our eardrums could no longer tolerate loud music, we are definitely getting old-er. The mudslide was real good though!
- I have rejoined the formal workforce. Pretty soon my eyes will be bleeding with legalese, but the job offers new challenges. I definitely need reading glasses. It's not a very far cry from the newsroom environment and I'm hoping I'll be able to quickly adapt to it. I have to hit the books again and study a new style. I have reunited with an old friend called deadline.