Public service announcement: The next time you guys run 4.5 miles and think, “Gosh, a cold Wendy’s Frosty would be a great treat right now,” don’t do it. The ensuing nausea, cramps and freakish bodily sensations as your stomach struggles to warm up the Frosty in your stomach and pulls the blood from where it’s really needed is NOT worth the delicious taste and feel in your mouth. I’m glad I’m going home after work. I just wanna lie somewhere face-down. Preferably somewhere soft.

Well, the New Year’s plans have been laid. No suicidal sucker-consumer plans this year. No siree. (If you think this post sounds lame, blame the Frosty for sucking the blood out of my brain.) It’s to mom and dad’s house we go, for Chinese hot-pot (“shabu shabu” in Japanese) dinner, early enough that Mr. W can play Techie Superman and set up my mom’s laptop and my parents’ new printer on a wireless network. My mom’s looking forward to introducing Mr. W to this Chinese winter traditional meal in which a large pot placed at the center of the table keeps broth boiling and each person gets his/her own wire ladel to hook onto the edge of the pot, and raw veggies and thinly sliced meats and meatballs are dropped into the broth, the more delicate items isolated within our wire ladel/baskets, to cook in the broth until we take the items out to enjoy in a sauce formulated to individual taste in our separate bowls. The food keeps going in and coming out, and soon the broth is nicely flavored with the combination of tofu, mushrooms, beef, pork, chicken, seafood, etc., and we enjoy the remaining broth as soup. It can go on all night. I personally don’t care for this, as the food comes out tasting the same. But it’s a good way to keep people centralized for optimal conversational purposes. Kinda like a fondue. Oh, and I’m sure my parents want to show off the photos they took Christmas weekend from their trip to Sedona. Mr. W said it’s beautiful there, with lots of rocks to climb. My mom had already emailed me about their attempts at climbing.

There’s supposed to be 2 storms coming this holiday weekend. One is to hit tonight through tomorrow, and the second one, the big one, is expected to drop 2 inches of rain between Sunday and Monday. I guess there won’t be a lot of spectators spending the night on the street in Pasadena this year for a good spot to watch the annual Rose Parade march by. A headline in a local newspaper read, “Hoping That The Floats Don’t Have To.” I’m excited about the rain. My skylight makes the rain plops sound like the tapping percussion of nature’s orchestra. I’m thinking about lighting my fireplace tonight. Just me and my cat. I used to be afraid that Dodo would walk into the fireplace in a temporary light-show induced hypnotic state, but I’ve come to find that cats are not moths, and curiosity has yet to kill this cat in a big fireball of fur. Maybe I should do laundry and vacuum, too. It’s amazing how little time I spend at home messing it up, and yet when I am home I spend more time cleaning than doing anything else.

Mr. W and I are trying to set up game nite this weekend with some friends. I hope it works out.