What a Saturday

You know it's been a busy day when you can hardly remember the morning by the time you get to the evening. So ... I plumb the depths of my memory and find this:

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
That's the alarm clock, waking me up at 7:55. I press snooze, but I end up getting up before the alarm goes off again. Fortunately for Dan, I remembered to turn the alarm off. Shower, very careful tooth-brushing, check the status of the gum graft using a flashlight, quickly get dressed, drop Dan off at the church to be part of the member cleaning crew, and drive an hour to work.

Yay. Work. Fortunately there were a few other people there on a Saturday with me. Even my boss was at work. So he called me in to his office for my performance review (it's fine). Fortunately I figured out my shirt was inside-out before I went in to for the review. Afterwards, I spent some time wondering what's wrong with just wanting to be really good at what I do without wanting to get to boss other people around at what they do. In other words, I was asked to work on wanting to be a leader. And to make things better, I was also asked to think of what role I want to work towards - being a manger or being a technical lead. Um. Can't I just do a good job at my job? Because I currently have no desire for leadership. And thinking that far forward about my "life goals" also is a reminder of my real life goal and how things didn't turn out there the way I thought they would. But there were some nice compliments about other things I was doing well, including my boss being pleased that I'm fitting in okay with an all-male group, getting along with my lead, and doing a good job.

Then I went back to work, got through over half of what I meant to do today, and headed home. With a stop at the library to drop off books and pick up some things to read over the holidays, and a stop to gas up the car, I got home just in time to primp, grab Dan, and get back in the car. Next stop Seattle Sheraton, holiday party time!

We found a perfect parking spot within 20 yards of the parking garage entrance/exit and walked a few blocks to the hotel entrance. We went into the hotel and followed the directions of the hotel staff to a line with a 30-minute wait. And lots of kids. Hmmmm. So we waited. I played a game on Dan's phone for a while, and then we saw that the line led past some gingerbread houses. Actually, they were some pretty awesome gingerbread houses.

Then we headed to the correct line, checked in, and went to the party. The I-don't-know-how-to-describe-it-themed party. Masks, costumes, all sorts of cool stuff.

We started in the room with a flamenco dancer. The food was a slice of bread topped with a thin cucumber slice and some stuff for flavor (spices and possibly other veggies). The dancer was amazing - her feet stomped and flew, and her face was so intense that we watched for a good 10 minutes. The room was set up with tables and with private-ish curtained seating areas along the back wall. Very fancy.

The next room was a large room with several parts. The first thing I noticed was the girl sitting in a hoop hanging from the center of the ceiling. The smooth jazz tones went well with her acrobatic dance. And there were a couple strong man in an area by the door doing balancing tricks. There were standing tables and sitting tables, and several food stations. We started with the garbanzo beans, rice, and pita bread. Then the oversized spaghetti and meatballs. Then the chicken sandwich and french onion soup. And we hung out and watched the acrobatics for a while. The girls traded off every 5-10 minutes - that looked like quite a workout, and they made it look so easy!

I grabbed a grapefruit juice with sprite as we headed upstairs to the cirrus room on the 35th floor, where we tried the crackers and cheese, and the crackers with something that tasted like apple pie filling, and the crackers with spiced cherry filling. And we looked out all the windows to see out over the city. Cool. This may have been my favorite room.

Are you sensing a theme? Because I was full by this point and we weren't nearly done finding all the food. There was still the whole third floor. On the third floor, they had decorated in a "through the rabbit hole" theme. There were spotted mushrooms, giant flowers, and mysterious paw-prints glowing on the floor. The main room on this level had a live band, but they were on a break. I watched the man on a platform carving a cheshire cat out of chocolate while Dan tried the open-face sandwich. We also saw some folks playing croquet. There were folks dressed up as playing cards, people wandering all over with half-masks, and mostly just lots and lots of people. (Side note - if your shoes are that painful to walk in, they are not good shoes. That poor girl.)

Further along this floor we found the dessert rooms. There were more desserts than we had room to try, but we found space for brownies, mini-cupcakes with coconut frosting, flan baked right into a tiny cup, crumb-topped apple tart, and my favorite. Who needs cake pops when you can have cheesecake pops?!? I passed on the second type of mini-cupcake and the blueberry tart. But when I went to have another cheesecake pop, they had run out. So we went on and found the mad hatter tea party room - it looked kind of dull, so we turned around and headed back along our path.

After I picked up a little baggie of chocolate shavings from the Cheshire Cat chocolate statue carver, and Dan had seconds on his favorite sandwich, Dan kindly stopped and waited with me in line for us to get our pictures at the Mad Hatter display. He even put on a cape, sat on a throne, and held a scepter. I hope we figure out how they are getting us the pictures afterwards.

We headed back to the one room we'd missed - the Ice Bar. Which was more of a dance club with a griffin ice sculpture in the back. Loud music, girls dancing up on high platforms, you get the picture. Then we found our way back out (past the violinist and the cellist who entertained those going up and down the escalators with live music), picked up our car, and made it home in one piece.

And now I get to go pack up what I need for my last Sunbeams lesson of the year and go to bed!