Real Life...

...happened yesterday.

I liked it a lot.

First, I read a couple of chapters of Eldest before getting out of bed. I re-read Eragon already and hope to finish re-reading Eldest before the 22nd. We're going to Utah for a few days before Thanksgiving and Brisingr is slated for the trip.

Then I got up and put Tinkerbell on the computer for company and entertainment while I folded laundry from week before last. Then I sorted last week's laundry and put a load into the washer. Over the course of the day I managed to wash every dirty piece of fabric that I used over the last week. Unfortunately, this creates a bit of a problem since I don't have enough storage space for all of it when it's clean (especially with my new Obama t-shirt collection) but I managed - somehow - to get it all squeezed in somewhere so it's out of sight.

Then I got started on taking down the Halloween decorations. My goal with this project was to clean out all the plastic totes in which I've stored this stuff for years and reduce the quantity by one full box. It took me a couple of hours but I managed to get everything down, cleaned, sorted and re-packed. I'm giving away several cute pieces that I never put up any more (including the unused brain jello mold that I've had for a decade). Then I put up my small collection of Thanksgiving stuff.

I emptied some storage containers (if the cereal falls into the trash can in one lump, it's finished), washed them and put them away. I cleared off a counter that had had the same collection of flotsam sitting on it since Christmas.

I finally put together the meeting schedule for the Exec Board of the union local for which I'm president (it's been done in pieces before and they were having a hard time with that) and sent it out.

I sorted the last few weeks of mail and pulled the bills to get into the mail tomorrow.

I went to the gym for my 45-minute walk on the treadmill.

When I got home I got cleaned up and DH took DS2 and me to a very nice restaurant for a nice dinner to celebrate Obama's election. During dinner DS2 filled us in on his progress toward applying for grad school at Berkeley. He hopes to get his masters in journalism, something that professors had urged him to do. He takes the GRE next month and will apply for admission spring of 2010. He has enough media classes already that if he takes a few more classes at the community college he should be able to get an AA in Journalism to go along with his BA in Anthropology. After dinner we went to Coldstone Creamery for dessert. Once again, I concluded that they have the worst ice cream in the industry and from now on I will just enjoy the company and pass on the food when we go there.

After we got home I snuggled in for a relaxing evening with my book in my new recliner under my new warm throw. I planned to read several chapters. Instead, I read barely two pages before I was sound asleep.

Stitching happened night before last. I'm doing some embroidery on the sashing on the spring quilt. Once I got some 1/4 inch bias tape sewn down I started twining a vine around it. Not worth sharing a photo yet, but it went better than I'd hoped.

It's nice to feel within the living again. Now I have to write some checks to get those bills in the mail and get ready for work. If I can conquer some of the chaos at school, I should be in better shape from now on.