On the way home from work yesterday I stopped by the yarn store, and after imposing on the very helpful clerk, I managed to find green and gold yarn. Then I went home and while I waited for Richard to get home I started on one of the little hats.

The instructions weren't kidding when they said these things go fast. By the time we left for my company's holiday dinner last night I had finished half the hat and today not only did I finish hat number1, but I also whipped out hat number 2. They're very cute hats – all bright green with sparkly gold tops and little rolled brims. I felt almost as if I was cheating somehow because it's only one stitch – really no pattern at all – so it went incredibly fast. Granted my hands feel permanently cramped into little knitting claws and I have interesting pains in my left hand from holding the yarn, but I've only got one hat to go. This means that I might possibly be inspired to make a few adult-sized hats as well. I am making no promises, however. Three may just be my limit.

The holiday dinner was fun. There are only seven of us in the Sacramento office so it was a small group, even with some of us bringing spouses or boyfriends. We went to Mace's, which is a nice and expensive restaurant in a rather snooty and expensive little shopping center. We (the entire group) split a seafood cocktail that came in a martini glass big enough to float someone's head, and then there were salads and there was chicken and steak and salmon and Kobe beef, and finally there were desserts. Half the group had a caramelized banana torte, but considering my feelings on bananas, I opted instead for a marvelous apple crisp that was covered in brown sugar streusel. I don't think there was a single one of us who didn't eat far more than we should have, and by the end of the dinner we were all leaning back in our chairs eyeing our unfinished desserts blearily and looking forward to going home to try to sleep off the excess.

As for today, it's mostly been about the hats. The one exception was the arrival of the pet sitter to get a key and a tour of the house, and to meet all the cats (or at least the ones who would come out to say hello). And I got the second hat finished just in time because this evening we're finally restarting the old AD&D game that had been on hold for the past six months. I zipped upstairs to scribble out this entry but now it's time to rejoin the little group and enter the world of sorceresses and feline familiars and searches for arcane artifacts, and all the laughter and fun that accompanies these games that we have missed so very much in its absence.