It is now 8:42pm in Cali, and I’m at disk 3 of the Burning Crusade expansion.  Cyd’s already in bed, with a portable heater in one corner of her room and a humidifier on her nightstand.  They’ve got all night to duke it out and see whether Cyd comes up a winner.  I’m hoping the humidifier will help with her breathing and with the horrible condition of her crispy lips.  I’m pretty sure the heater will work out fine.

Last Friday, our central heating system gave out.  I called the property managers the next morning and asked them to schedule some work.  This being one of the coldest weeks on record for the area, of course, I’m not the only person howling for heat.  So this entire week, I’ve been living like an ice cube in a freezer.  I had to wear my suede carcoat to make breakfast and had to wrap Cyd in my wool jackets each night.  Today I’d finally had it and called the property managers again.  “We’re on day 7!  I really, really need to take a shower!” I said.  They promptly instructed me to purchase a portable heater that they will pay for.  They promise to have the heater dude appear on Monday.

Work has been going along pretty smoothly, with the exception of my not factoring “5 months = 7 months” into my spiffy organizational timeline.  Where I thought I’d have a couple of folks panicked, I now have an entire team panicked.  Will we make it?  Hell, yeah.  Will it be what we want?  Uhm…

Ooooh, disk 4.  And Cyd’s room is nice and comfy compared to the rest of the place.  Guess it’s time to log in and roll up the obligatory Blood Elf!  I think I’ll go hunter for now.  Yeah, that’s it.

(By the way, I have to ask: if you’re a game company and you’re giving away free 14-day trial accounts to people you don’t know, why would you pack guest account keys in the retail box that only give 10-day trials to your loyal customers’ friends?)

Love each other!  Happy birthday, Noa!

On the advice of my pal Keala, while I was up at her place for the New Year’s weekend, I plunked down a whopping $14 for that new hair removal fad, threading.

I suppose I was swayed by the fact that the salon was filled to overflowing with men and women waiting to get everything from a mehndi to massive hairlessness.  There were a dozen chairs.  Women were hunched over the people in them, dangling floss from their teeth.  I ordered the eyebrow and the upper lip treatment…what was I thinking?

It had taken me about a year to grow out my eyebrows to just the right amount of thickness.  I like mine thicker, thank you.  But as Blanca (there’s a dapper Indian name) adjusted the headrest beneath me, I began to realize…frick, this could hurt…

OMFG it hurt.

By the time she was done, it felt as though she’d threaded away all the skin on my face.  EW!  I walked out of there in so much pain it wasn’t even funny, and my eyes and my upper lip were a bright, blotchy red. 

Keala was devastated, of course.  She didn’t suffer any of this when she tried it a few weeks earlier.  I pointed at my whisper-thin eyebrows and cried.

That night (did I mention it was New Year’s Eve?), I sat on the sofa and watched “Jesus Christ Superstar” instead of braving the Hermosa Beach pier for their annual fete.  No amount of moisturizer and ice made it feel better.

The upside is that I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed Yvonne’s voice.  So smooth, so sultry.  I wished we’d sung together before I moved over here, instead of eating our way through her fabulous cooking!  The downside?  My face still hurts =/