Had a lurvely time at my last-minute birthday party surprise last night, although it was a bit of a beggar to get to with the snow and all. Seriously, we were let off work early due to inclement weather at 4:15pm, and I was in my car (parked at University/Dundas) by 4:30pm. I arrived at and ‘s place near Spadina/St. Clair at almost 6:30pm!!! It was weird to step out of the car after two hours of driving and not be in Kitchener-Waterloo or something. When I arrived, had already made it down by TTC from Yorkdale, bearing our belated gift for J. of a wireless Xbox360 controller, and a gift for me of Gilmore Girls season five (please heaven, let it be better than season four!) Hurrah!

There were other lovely gifts and tasty smelly things – my kind and lovely co-Sagittarian-birthday-girl (happy birthday tomorrow!!!) brought me her BPAL imps to sniff (tons more on that in my next post), and very generously, let me have a go at her private stash as well. From my hosts, I got treated to tasty tacos, CAKE and marvellous gifties! A beautiful fabric-adorned embroidered card, in a bag full of craft-themed sickonsin.com buttons, a totally wicked quilting book that I’d been eyeing covetously in Indigo, and a really spiffy origami book which I will probably be unable to master, but JVL has promised me he’ll try to make me some pretty things with it over the weekend. We also had good company in the form of starfishdude and , who amused with their self-destructive Halo/Geometry Wars antics. love love love thank you thank you

All of this made up for the horrendously slow drive (although my car gave a brave showing in the deep snow/incline by Casa Loma – yay car!), and the office christmas party, where I dragged in all sorts of decorations for my cubicle, only to have the judging cancelled at last minute(!) Gah. Still cubicle is now festive, and I did come out of the gift swap with some handsome tealight holders.

Happy birthday wishes to , who has a dancin’, drinkin’, dollin’ up party downtown tonight. I have to admit, although last night’s tacos were delicious, I’m feeling kind of nauseous and anxious today, so I’m not sure if my body really wants me to move it around spastically and put alcohol into it tonight. We’ll see, but I may call in for a raincheck. This birthday weekend is all about chillin’.

is coming over tomorrow for an emergency laundry summit, to look at my books, get paint, maybe wrap gifties, etc. Very thankful that she’s coming here, rather than me driving to the Oak. Phew.

I’m kind of getting to that point where I want to buy an in-home exercise machine again. Maybe I could squeeze it into my sewing room? Is there any kind of treadmill or cycling/rowing machine that I could operate while simultaneously using my sewing machine? Because that would rock.