you care! you really care! (sniff)

Blogging from the berry to say that yes, I am still alive and am touched that you care! (well, all three of you that noticed my absence, that is). I got back from my fantastic trip to DC and walked straight into two days of non-stop client meetings and after-work schmooze fests. It's all rather draining, especially after a four-day mini-vacation where the most difficult decisions I faced were whether to eat mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes for breakfast. It doesn't help that time seems to move extra-fast once you get past Halloween... One minute you're dressed like a fool and eating too much candy, next thing it's time for turkey, the rampant consumerism that is the holidays, office holiday parties, and the navel-gazing that accompanies the end of yet another year of this crazy life.

Thanksgiving was excellent this year, lots of time spent at home with the fam, tons of leftovers and lunch/dinner/drinks with all my favorite people. It felt refreshing to be back in DC again... To surreptitiously people-watch on the metro while pretending to read the paper, then emerging out of the bowels to be greeted by the cleansingly cold winter air as you knot your scarf a bit tighter and square your shoulders against the wind as you head toward the tea shop to meet your buddy. To go out in DC bars and be reminded of the unusual brand of international snobbery that is completely unique to DC... Of course there are globe-trotting brats in every major city but DC has its own strange breed of diplomats that makes it completely annoying but fascinating at the same time.

I'm back in Austin now, on one hand relishing the fact that I can leave my apartment with just a puffy vest or pashmina instead of a winter coat and that it still hits mid-60s and sometimes even breaks 70 when i'm walking to whole foods to grab a salad for lunch, yet on the other hand missing the familiar faces, foods, smells and sights that represent home.

(completely unrelated tangent- apparently I have completely lost my ability to hold my liquor, a fact that troubles me deeply. Perhaps it will be a new year's resolution to reverse this worrisome trend?)

*EDITED TO ADD* I don't think I should blog from the 'berry anymore. whenever I read my berry-posts I find that the grammar is generally crappier and the sentences don't really flow that well (not that the grammar usually rules and the sentences flow like butta but you know what I mean). maybe it's the lack of the QWERTY keyboard? the fact that everything is all properly capitalized and shit? I don't know. but methinks it's time to stop the berry posts.