They sent me an email, to which I replied quickly, and then two days later they called to ask if I'd gotten it, and would I call them back and let them know? I had to explain to them that if they send an email, I will send an email back. I'm not going to follow up every email with a phone call alerting them to be on the lookout.

Two days after this, I got another email from my dad, making no reference to the one I had sent him, and then they called me again. "Dad wants to know if you got his email?" And then they were guilt tripping me that I hadn't responded immediately. Oh, no. We're going to nip this in the bud here, because my parents are not going to find yet another thing to make me feel guilty about. They sent me to Catholic school; wasn't that enough?

They are quite cute though. My mother called me on Thanksgiving and left me a message in the form of a song. There wasn't much of a tune, but it was an interesting effort. Here are the lyrics. "This is your mother / Happy Thanksgiving from me to you / And from Dad to you / Dad sent you an airmail / And-- oh, uh, sorry-- / Dad sent you an email / And did you get it? / Let us know... / We also sent you a card / Did you receive it / By mail? / So have a good day / Enjoy the turkey / Your sister is laughing / Because I am singing / Bye bye Monique!"

Thus, my mother.

I worked on Thanksgiving.

On the one hand, it was good. I got extra money, and we closed at 3:00, so I still had time to go to the turkey dinner that Joey was having. On the other hand, every single person on earth wanted coffee on Thanksgiving morning. Dollarwise, we exceeded an average day's business by about 25%, and we closed six hours early.

The last time we were so busy, it was a nightmare because it was the day of the street festival, everyone wanted a Frappuccino, and everyone was so pissed off that nobody tipped us. Yesterday, our customers felt tremendously sympathetic that we had to work on Thanksgiving. A bunch of people said, "Thank you for being open! Thank you for working today!" as if we had much of a choice in the matter. But anyway, we got lots of dollars in the tip jar, and people were nice to us.

And at least we were overstaffed-- the Starbucks by my house had less people working, and they did almost exactly twice as much business as we did. I can't even imagine that; it felt like we were so incredibly busy. Maybe I'm just spoiled, though.

I went to Joey's dinner at her new apartment. She was wiped out from cooking all day, and my whole body ached, since I had been on my feet for seven hours without a break. There were a whole bunch of people there from her work, but I pretty much just talked to her and Laurie. I had spent seven hours smiling at random people, I needed a break from that too.

Fortunately, the party was a scattered sort of affair, and I was able to hide in a corner with my god-cat, Spangle, and eat a giant plate of turkey. Yum.

When I got home, I made a beeline for the hot tub. The thing with our hot tub is that it's roughly the temperature of molten lava. I love super-hot hot tubs, but this one may be going a little far. I can actually smell my flesh beginning to cook when I sit in it too long.

But it did the trick on my sore muscles, and for that, I am grateful. I gazed up at the stars (because it's completely dark out there, and that's basically your only option for hot tub entertainment) and thought about what I am thankful for, which is pretty much everything. But that's just me-- going through my life feeling randomly happy that I'm alive. There's no lack of thankfulness in my soul on any day of the year. It's one of my good qualities.

And now, it's December.

Time to make contact with my Los Angeles friends-- and plan the annual holiday party! I have been missing people like mad lately, especially my sister and Tim, with this achy sort of yearning feeling that would be most appropriate in a Leann Rimes song. So if you live in Los Angeles and are my friend, let's talk. Let's plan. Let's get together, yeah yeah yeah.

Also, there's shopping to be done-- I already took advantage of the huge employee discount we get this week, and got some gifts for some people. I know there's something vaguely tacky about giving Starbucks presents (at least I know my parents will think so, even though they are the cheapest people alive) but I? Am poor. In case nobody noticed.

And, shit, I'll be graduating from school this month. Which means I have a final paper due in a week, and I need to get my thesis out to the rest of my advisors, so there's work to be done first, but still. Holy crap. Graduating. That's going to hit me like a ton of bricks in the not-too-distant future.

So much more to say, but so few minutes left before I have to go to sleep. The one thing I most hate about myself is my utter inability to wake up in the mornings. (Or afternoons.) If my alarm clock goes off and I haven't gotten eight or nine or ten hours of sleep, I will sleep straight through and wake up, magically, at exactly the moment when I am supposed to be at work.

Speaking of which, I have to be at work at five in the morning on Tuesday. Normally, I go to sleep at five in the morning. I have no idea how I'm going to reverse my Circadian rhythms in the next 48 hours. I think we're going to need a bigger alarm clock.