I'm like Chocolate Chaos. I'll do whatever there is in my power to get warm, aside from turning on the heat. Turning up the temperature is my very last resort. I have electric heat, and it ain't cheap.
By the way, send healing vibes towards Wisconsin so that Chaos's broken ankle heals as quickly as possible!!
Anyhoo.
The night before last, the UPS man brought me my birthday present from Kurt. No, it's not my birthday yet; it's on Tuesday. I had full plans of saving my birthday present until the actual day so I would have something to open. But when I opened the shipping box to get my wrapped gift out, the packing slip from the company fell out. Before I knew it, I had read it and found out what my gift is.
I hate that.
Email was still up at this point, so I told Kurt what had happened and he said I could go ahead and open my gift.
This is what he bought me:
(Don't mind my outfit. I was lounging around the house that day, so I was makeup-less and decent-clothes-less. Notice my short arms. I think I have the shortest arms in the history of humankind.)
Is that cool or what??? It is so very me!! I love it! It's a washable "suede" jacket (definitely not real leather or else it wouldn't be washable), and as you can see, it looks faboo on me. It's warm as heck too, even though it's really light.
I wore it all day yesterday to Cabin Fever and then out to lunch with my good buddy AS and her little girl. We went to this local Italian restaurant in town. The folks who own this restaurant also own a whole chain of Italian cafes in the area, little mom-&-pop pizza and pasta joints. This one closest to my house is more of a real restaurant feel, but they serve a lot of what's on the menu at the cafes, especially at lunch. The bonus part is kids under 6 eat free. No kidding. They have something called a "kids' plate," which includes olives, pineapple, shredded mozzarella, and saltines all mounded on a plate. It keeps the kids busy while the adults' meals are being prepared. Then kids can also have a bowl of spaghetti with either alfredo or marinara, and that's free too. We weren't even charged for the kids' milks yesterday.
However, Grace ate her entire kids' plate, half of AS's little girl's plate, and a whole 'nother plate the waitress was kind enough to bring out. And that was before she got her pasta!!!
I swear, this girl is going to eat me out of house and home.
And she's only TWO!!!
Once I got home from lunch with AS, I saw J outside washing her car (I was wondering when she was going to get around to it; she abhors driving a dirty car, and it'd been weeks since she'd washed her car) and had to take my new jacket over to model it for her. I had just put it on and zipped it up (it was WARM yesterday, so I hadn't had it on while driving) when I realized that the snakeskin printing was flaking off!!!!
WTF???
I had worn it just the one day, and already the print was flaking off. And if it's washable, what kind of condition would the printing be in after a run through the washer and dryer?
Here's a close-up of the flaking:
I'm so sad. Kurt did such a great job finding something that fits me to a T (both literally and figuratively), but the quality of the jacket sucks. I ended up sending back to the company today and ordering a frosted pink leather bomber jacket. I felt that I should stick with the jacket theme, since that's what Kurt had picked out for me originally. He couldn't replace my gift himself; his email AND internet are both down. I haven't heard from him at all since we got off the phone last night. I really wanted the green bomber jacket, but it wasn't available in an XL. So I had to get the pink. Oh darn.
Can you imagine living without email OR internet, way out in the middle of the ocean?? That poor man!