entelein | Daylight differential

I noticed this morning how nice it was to be in my apartment, awake, at about 8AM on a weekday. The kitchen was filled with sunny yellow light, brimful. It was truly beautiful. The coffee I made was totally delicious, too. I basically just do a 4-cup drip brew with espresso-ground Cafe Bustelo, which I usually buy from the little place down the street. I keep it in a sealed container in the freezer, and this week, I have half and half to dump in it, instead of the usual non-dairy creamer I torture myself with.

As I was looking for a silver peace crane necklace my Mom gave me (I wanted to wear it today at the Thanksgiving meal), I noticed a pair of silver earrings that I hadn't worn in ages, but would look really nice with the slightly-funky layered cut my hair sports now. I quickly realized just how long it had been since I had worn earrings period, as I had to sort of punch the fish hook-style post through a thin membrane of skin that had grown over the back of the piercing. Ay caramba. It didn't really hurt, but it was definitely a little surreal. Most days, nowadays, I don't find much of a reason to wear jewelry. Either I wear a tarot card pendant I got from Tom and Jon, or I wear my latchkey, but that's about it. I never did find the peace crane, so I opted for a silver cartouche of my name that my Mom had given me well over a decade ago when she went to Egypt with Ro.

The CTA granted some good karmic payback today by sending a bus just as I was walking out to the stop, and then having a train arrive about ten seconds after I stepped down to the platform. The car was full of people, chattery and many with luggage. I felt calm and free of any sort of anxiety or angst, which is nice. A majority of my public transit trips are either to or from work, and so it felt nice to relax, put my bag on the seat next to me, and completely zone out.

Dinner was nice - I drank zinfandel and nearly burned my tongue on the carrot souffle that Renee brought, because it was so delicious and was even more so at a piping hot temperature, if that makes any sense at all. Tender turkey, awesome stuffing, potatoes. A sparkler was stuck into a dense, round, chocolate-covered torte, and we sang happy birthday and sto lat to my Mom, who turns 63 on Sunday. So I had a tiny slice of that with coffee, and two little scoops of pumpkin ice cream. Perfect. Kyle and Haley fought over playing with the games on my Treo and my DS lite, which made me smile. Almost lost a stylus for the DS, but Renee found it pretty quickly and all was well. Everyone kept loving my hair, which was sort of hilarious. I need to get a trim, but people were really enamored of how different it looked to them. I think the color threw them a little, too: it's not really auburn at all right now, but it's also not a fake-looking dark brown, either. At any rate, it was nice to get so many compliments on it, when I didn't even really do anything to it. I just dried it, stuck some of that smoothing/de-frizzing stuff on it, and brushed it out. I never like to be fussy about this sort of thing, but now I think I have to request the same stylist the next time I go to the cheap salon.

Mom just dropped me back home, and I foisted some more of the pumpkin soup at her, since I still had a bunch of it. Now I've got enough for one serving, which is just about perfect, as I may get pumpkin'ed out pretty soon here.

It feels so grand, not having to go back into work for another 3 whole days. Hoo boy.