How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

Misty Gravy-Covered Memories of the Way We Were

I've been thinking a lot about Thanksgiving lately. This is in large part because there are just two more weeks of school until an entire blessed week off. Also, I'm flying out to DC to visit a bunch of friends there. I'll have what I believe will be my fourth Thanksgiving with Katie (correct me if I've missed one, Katie.) And I'm heading up to Princeton to visit my friends Sharon and Eili there and get a tour of the campus. Oh, and hang out with Sharon's elementary schoolers on Wednesday. On my vacation from school, I am going to school. The key difference here being that I will not be in charge.

Anyway, all of that thinking about Thanksgiving has me recalling some Thanksgivings past. The one I thought I'd tell you about was my first Thanksgiving away from Wisconsin. It was in DC in 1999. My friend Karin, who worked with me at the time, was hosting Thanksgiving for anybody with no family in the area. Everybody had to bring one Thanksgiving side dish or dessert. And a sandwich topping.

We had turkey sandwiches with stuffing, potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, various other vegetables, cranberry sauce, bread, and pie. Then we watched Home for the Holidays in order to make ourselves feel better about not being with our families. I don't remember a whole lot else about that day, except that we laughed a lot and it was a really, surprisingly good day.

I had just moved to DC that August and only started my job there the month before Thanksgiving. I'm not sure I had any idea of what I might do for the holiday before Karin invited me. It's not likely that I had high hopes for my Thanksgiving that year. It was also sort of my first grown-up Thanksgiving, on my own as a non-college student adult. I think maybe it made me feel a little more confident in my ability to do the whole living on my own thing. I got a job. I made some friends. I found a place for myself.

Thinking back, it's astounding the impact having gotten that job has made on the entire rest of my life. It was in the education field and helped lead me in that direction. It was during summers off from teaching civics with them that I got my first job doing reading remediation. I wouldn't even have known about the reading job, had it not been for one of my coworkers, who went on to be my roommate in New York. I'm not sure I would have gone if I hadn't had a friend also interested moving there. Several of my closest friends to this day are former coworkers from that first job out of college.

Including Karin. Since that first Thanksgiving together, she's gotten married, gotten ordained an Episcopal priest, and had two adorable kids. It's hard to believe that it's been ten years since she was kind enough to invite a 22 year-old with a thick Wisconsin accent over to her Thanksgiving orphan holiday. Thinking about that makes me feel old, so I prefer to focus on how I'll see her again in just two weeks back in DC. My home away from home for the holidays.

Downward Spiral

Before

What the?

Ah, French braided pigtails. What can this costume be?

Plus make up. Looking better.

Wait...uh oh.

Oh no.

Yep, there she goes.

Downward spiral complete.

Oh, and as for my student thief...I took care of him.

Trust me, he's MUCH cuter now.

Thirty-Two and All's Well

Yes, Internet, I have in fact aged right before your eyes. (Though I will always be young and orange as far as you know since I never do seem to get around to changing that photo.) But it's ok. Because I got my Birthday Turkey!

What's that, you ask. Well, it would be a turkey colored for me by one of my students during her study hall-esque class and left in my box by that teacher. Though it was posited by one coworker that I colored it myself and the inability to stay anywhere near inside the lines was due to shakiness brought on by aging. The same student had arrived that morning with a tiny white flower that she had picked out just for me, most likely from her or somebody else's yard, and wrapped in a Kleenex.

I also got a hand-drawn Birthday Bunny to Mrs. Graghm. If you know her, please don't mention that I have it. I've already hung it up on my file cabinet. And there was the folded up piece of notebook paper handed to me by a sixth-grader that said, in red marker, "haPPy Birthday gRAHAM Rock on". He also drew some red balloons on it. Not 99 red balloons though. There wasn't space and also he is twelve and would have no idea about any song with red balloons unless a hip hop artist has recently made one.

So that was a pretty good haul, I thought, before I even got to presents from grown ups. Which included monogrammed notepad, journal, post-its, and magnet from my friend and teaching mentor; giftcards from my roommates (the gift of guilt-free shopping!); and gerber daisies from my friend and fellow SPED Kristen.

Allow me, as a recent recipient, to digress for a moment to explain the flower thing to you boys. Because I've heard plenty of you act confused about it, including a male coworker just yesterday. The thing is, flowers, as a gift, don't do anything. They serve no purpose, except to be pretty. Nobody needs flowers, which is precisely the point. They are beauty for beauty's sake. Who couldn't use a little gratuitous beauty in her day?

Anyway, this post has a topic! Which is that I had a very good birthday this year, thanks in large part to the many friends and relatives who called or sent cards or messages; my kooky students and equally interesting coworkers; and especially Holly, Jenny, and Kristen. So thanks to everybody who had a hand in making it a good one. If yesterday is any indication, then I'd say that thirty-two looks promising indeed.

Drinks Around America!

We were thinking Saturday night for Drinks Around America! but then our friend and soon-to-be roommate Jenny already had plans and didn't want to be left out, so on Friday morning, we began inviting people for Friday night. Eventually, we even began to tell them the time and location, which was Champps. Eight of us showed up, a pretty good group for something organized on such short notice, and Champps turned out to be an excellent choice for reasons I will explain to you.

Here some of us are:

Jenny and me

Jimmy and Krystal

Not pictured: Holly and a brave friend of hers who didn't know any of the rest of us and the even braver Lynn and Jim who knew none of us at all. Lynn and I follow each other on Twitter and have conversed some through that. She answered my Twitter call for drink suggestions, so I invited her and she and Jim came and, I believe, had a good time. They were both enormously helpful in getting through the list of drinks I'd brought.

Oh yes, a list. Holly googled "drinks with states or cities in the name" (or something along those lines) and I made a list, including ingredients for those we hadn't heard of and thus, weren't sure the bartender would have either.

Did I check them off as we went? Yes, I did. We didn't actually need any of the recipes since the Champps bartender was on top of things. Not only that, but our waitress (Claire, I think) thought what we were doing was fun and came back with a list of even more drinks for us.

Claire was more than compensated for her helpfulness in terms of our tips. We purchased a lot of drinks from Claire.

Cape Cod, Shiner Bock, Sam Adams Boston Lager

Lynchburg Lemonade, Colorado Bulldog

Alaska Pipeline, Vegas Bombs, Alabama Slammers

Which is probably more than enough photos of drinks. You'll just have to take my word for the Long Island Iced Tea, Texas Tea, Blue Hawaiians, Malibu Breeze, and Washington Apples. Meaning that we covered eleven states, ranging from Massachusetts to Hawaii, and most regions in between.

I am sorry to tell you that we neglected the Midwest with our drinks. Champps didn't seem to have Milwaukee's Best, nor was anyone inclined to drink it, and we couldn't think of anything else Midwestern in name. However, the food we ordered was cheese fries and ice cream pie, so there was a lot of dairy there. Hello, Wisconsin!

All in all, it was a very good time and I appreciate my friends' (real life and invisible internet alike) willingness to go along with the weird shit I come up with and then name and then invite them to participate in. Very cool, everybody. And oh so patriotic.

Our Patriotic Duty

Holly and I realized that we had no plans for the Fourth of July. You know, once it occurred to us that it's this weekend already. (How did THAT happen? SLOW DOWN, SUMMERTIME!)

We are thinking, therefore, that it might be our civic duty to invent Drinks Around America! in celebration. You may recall Drinks Around the World! which we created a couple of years back, in the name of cultural understanding. Which is, of course, an important ideal, but not to the exclusion of patriotism.

We're not sure yet where or what we'll drink, which is where you come in, Internet. Of course, we've got our own ideas about how to drink our way around the various regions of our great country (you know, symbolically.) I could tell you what we came up with, but I'd rather just hear what you've got before putting ideas into your pretty little heads. Prefrence may be given to drinks with the actual location (city, state, region) in the drink name, but all those representing areas of our great nation will be considered.

And all capped off with an apple pie shot and two Advil, as Uncle Sam intended.

Coming Clean

It was after ten last night and I was telling Holly about an April Fools trick post that Don Miller had put up on his blog. I should have thought of a joke post, I told her. There's still time, she said.

Indeed. But what would be believable enough to trick people, yet outrageous enough to make a good prank? People will always believe that I'm moving, I figured. I am known to be a flight risk. There would have to be a good reason this time though, what with me having a job and all.

It also had to be something I could think of and convincingly write in a short amount of time. I had to get to bed at a decent hour so I could get to school early so I could attend training for a standardized test that I will not even have to give, barring some sort of staff pandemic. The training on test materials security included this gem: "They always have to be within your eyesight. So within the sight of your eyes." Thanks for clarifying.

A while back, I actually did look into the Peace Corps, so that wasn't entirely out of thin air. The South Pacific appealed to me. For one thing, you know, beaches. But more than that, I had taught students from the Pacific islands while working in DC and always found them to be very sweet kids. I didn't wind up applying, for a variety of reasons, but it's something I wouldn't entirely rule out for the future.

So I'm sorry if anybody is disappointed that I'm not currently quite as do-gooder-y as you thought. If you'd clicked through to my "new blog", you'd have seen the Wikipedia entry for April Fools' Day and been tipped off.

If it makes anybody feel better, I got April Fooled today by an eighth grader with a very low IQ. He said I had a stain on my shirt. Based on the frequency with which I spill things on myself, it was not at all unreasonable for me to believe this and look down to see what it was. Much to my eighth grader's delight.

(I knew, for once, that I hadn't spilled coffee on myself, seeing as how I neglected to put coffee in the machine and just made myself some hot water. Again.)

Anyway, I promise that, at least until next April 1, everything you read here will be almost entirely true.

Born to Run

Not, like, literally run. Because running is hard and also gives me shin splints.

What I am referring to is the urge to not stay in one place. The whole thing where I've moved fifteen? times since college. The thing where, once known, a place loses interest for me.

I know San Antonio. I've been here before and I left. I came back for good reasons. Family and friends and job. It was my best option at the time and I don't regret it.

But the time has come sooner than I expected to tell you that I will be leaving again. Yes, it means that I can't stay in my new job that I like or finish my teacher certification, but I'll be doing something that I've wanted to do for far longer.

Apply a year before you want to leave, the website said. It will have been a year this summer. There are still some steps before then. But if everything goes well, sometime around late July or early August, I'll be leaving for Palau, a tiny island in the Pacific.

I'll be teaching kids there, with the Peace Corps. I will be packing a whole lot of sunscreen.

I've created a new blog to talk about the process of getting ready to go and where I'll be posting updates, as possible from Palau. I hope you'll go and check it out today.

Erin Go Brrrrrr!

(I would apologize for that title, were it not for the vast number of "Erin Go Braless" novelty items I've seen through the years. Mine is downright respectful by comparison.)

My friend Kristen and I went to the St. Patrick's Day parade downtown on Saturday. A week before, I went shopping in flip flops. This Saturday?

Wellies, in case you couldn't tell. Not, like, some sort of hole-less Crocs or anything

I suppose chilly and rainy was much more festive than sun and warmth when celebrating one's Irish heritage. (Not as festive as intended: dying the river green. Honestly, it was hard to tell the difference. It's not like it's generally a crystal blue.)

We watched the parade from just across the street from the Alamo.

If you've never been to the Alamo, I think I can boil the experience down for you, thus saving you the trouble of making the trip.

A) Yes, it is much smaller than you thought it was.

B) Yes, it's right downtown.

C) No, there's no basement.

Done! I'm not discouraging you from visiting San Antonio, but now that you've had your virtual Alamo tour, you can use that time more effectively for drinking margaritas at Casa Rio. Thank me later.

There were some traditional Irish elements:

Some less traditional Irish elements:

And some San Antonio Does St. Patrick's Day:

Not pictured: Durty Nelly's Irish Pub, where we went after the parade for lunch (fish and chips), beer (Killian's Red), and the view. By which I mean the fine Irish American representatives of the FDNY who also chose Durty Nelly's for their post-parade festivities. Upon finding this, Kristen and I had the following conversation:

Kristen: Being married doesn't mean I can't look.

Me: Mmmm...I'm sorry, were you saying something?

Ah, the Irish have given us so much. Music, dance, literature, food, beer, fine looking men, and an excuse to drink heavily in the middle of March.

Also, let us not forget...me!

(Kiss me, I'm Irish!)

(But, you know, probably ask first or otherwise assess my interest in being kissed by you! Because even the Irish have standards! And I have no wish to fight you.)

Happy St. Patrick's Day, Internet! Erin Go Bragh.

I ordered you one of those sweet dress/bonnet/parasol sets. Should arrive in 4-6 weeks.

It's Amy's birthday today! Seeing as how we've been friends since God was a boy, obviously I know what day her birthday is, even without Facebook reminding me.

It's not that I don't like to remember, or even that I didn't remember to buy a card in time.

And Amy is too nice to forget! It's just, I'm not at work this week, so I'm not entirely sure of what day it is, much less date. So even with February giving me advance warning that March would also have its 13th on a Friday, I managed not to connect those mental calendar dots and didn't mail that pre-purchased card until yesterday.

So happy birthday, Amy! From someone who would really like to remember dates and important occasions, but is easily distracted and has a poor sense of time, to someone too nice to hold it against her!

Here's your damn Valentine post

A conversation regarding one of those awful Jane Seymour for Kay Jewelers tacky as hell necklace commercials:

Holly: She says that if your heart is open, love will ALWAYS come to you. Our hearts must be closed. That's why love isn't coming to us.

Me: I thought it was because I'm bitter, commitment-phobic, and don't really like to leave the house. But if Dr. Quinn says...

Requisite New Years-Related Post

Hey, it's a new year. Woo.

Holly and I went out, where we were met by Lisa and Jenny. The bar we chose represented a wardrobe challenge since the band would be on the patio, where it would be dropping to a low in the high 40s but we thought we'd also probably spend some time inside, where it would be plenty warm.

What you'll see in a moment represents my Goldilocks just right dressing compromise. Because I wanted to wear a dress that Lisa gave me with that pashmina I showed you, but that seemed too cold. Then I was going to wear what I wore last year, which was jeans, a silk cami, and velvet jacket, but the cami is ivory and doesn't look so great on my pasty skin without the jacket, meaning I'd have to keep the jacket on while inside, which seemed too warm.

So I went with my go-to going out halter top which looked passable with the jacket. Oh, and there's my new camera and part of my bathroom.

Here we all are, out on the patio. They had heaters, which kept it pleasant for a while, but we did get chilly and go in before midnight.

They gave us hats. Festive!

They also gave us free champagne at midnight. Really, really awful free champagne.

I'm not much of a believer in resolutions, but a resolution to eat better can be very easily kept. I say this because I ended 2008 with a day that consisted of pizza for lunch, a cheeseburger and fries for dinner, queso at the bar, and oh so much vodka. I'm not likely to repeat that performance any time soon, so let's make it a resolution.

I'd also like to retroactively resolve to spend at least one entire day of 2009 doing nothing but watching college football. Because I already did that yesterday, so...you know...success!

Really though, if I were making an actual resolution, it would be along the lines of resolving to make things happen for myself in 2009, as opposed to what felt like a 2008 of letting things happen to me. I will be proactive in 2009. (I will not, however, buy Proactiv in any year, as it is endorsed by Jennifer Love Hewitt.)

Welcome, 2009. Let's see if you and I can't get along.

I swear, I'll stop talking about made-for-TV holiday movies after this post

Holly and I, through our extensive watching of cheesy holiday movies, have discovered that there seem to be two chief ways of finding love during the holiday season. The first doesn't appeal to either of us as it involves reluctantly returning to one's hometown, then getting into a car accident. See, this way, the main character is stuck in his or her small hometown and cannot leave before falling in love with either a new resident or his or her long-lost high school or college sweetheart. This also means learning that city living is empty and unfulfilling and the main character has belonged in his or her hometown all along.

Holly and I are disinclined to return to Coleman, Texas or Janesville, Wisconsin for any extended stay. Beside which, every guy I dated in college or high school seemed to have gotten married shortly after we broke up. I don't know if I somehow made them ready to settle down or so soured them on the experience of dating that they dove headfirst into commitment just to escape the dating world.

Which leaves us with witnessing a crime. See, the other primary means of finding love during the holidays is to witness a crime and then be assigned to be protected by a surly federal marshall or FBI agent who really can't stand you at first but eventually (in the space of a week or so) falls in love with you. We're not sure how we will go about witnessing crimes significant enough to warrant our placement in protective custody, so if you have any ideas, please share.

Obviously, these aren't the only two scenarios, but I went ahead and left out anything involving angels, Santa, getting sucked into a magical snow globe, or being harried single moms of precocious children. I want to be a single mom even less than I want to break down and subsequently settle down in Janesville.

So it looks like I've got to inadvertently witness a mob hit or something, and fast. If I don't start bickering with a sexy federal agent soon, I'll miss New Years, which is my last chance until next year's holiday season. Of course, there's Valentines Day, but I think you have to be a professional matchmaker unable to find a love of your own for that particular holiday to pan out for you in cheesy movie style.

Maybe I should just shoot for St. Patrick's Day. Are there any movies involving finding one's soulmate through consumption of potatoes and green beer? Because I am very much in favor of that.

Good Stuff Tuesdays: Winter Break Edition

You know what's a very good thing? Two weeks off school. The good there is tempered by the fact that, as a long-term sub, I don't get paid for the two weeks (despite the fact that I will spend part of my break - the part at the very end, I assume - grading papers and recording grades online) but the way that I don't have to be in charge of middle schoolers or get out of bed at a time beginning in 6 still renders it a very, very good thing.

Another very good thing is having already done all of my Christmas shopping in one day early last month at Target. Of course, this is easier for me than for a lot of you, since I only have five people to buy for. Thanks to a newly-instituted name-drawing scheme among the siblings and siblings-in-law in my family, I only had to buy for my sister, plus my parents and Owen and Allie. But who doesn't want to buy gifts for babies? I don't know. Crazy people.

The final good thing is something that could actually be helpful to the rest of you, as opposed to those first two, which are really just bragging, aren't they? This is a song that I am a teeny bit obsessed with at the moment, Winter Song by Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles. It's a sad song, but there's a dark beauty to it, sort of like winter itself. Plus, I'm a sucker for some cello.

You can see the official video, which is all kinds of adorable, and hear the studio version here. I can't embed that video, so here's a live version instead:

Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson "Winter Song" Live on Jay Leno 12/9/08 from mmmc on Vimeo.

Seeing as how I didn't get you anything on my lone shopping trip, let's consider that song my gift to you. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, Internet.

Your friendly neighborhood jingle belle

For the second time, I spent a December afternoon ringing a bell for the Salvation Army outside a Walmart. I can freely admit that bell-ringing here in San Antonio does not require nearly the same commitment that it does in a cold climate. The bell-ringers of my Wisconsin youth were always red-faced and nearly frozen solid. I encountered no such hardship this weekend. It was really a very pleasant day to spend some time outside.

Additionally, the people-watching is outstanding when you're ringing a bell. Nobody wants to make eye contact with the bell-ringer, leaving you free to stare openly. There can't be too many better ways to spend a couple of hours than silently judging the fashion choices of Walmart shoppers.

Then again, say what you will about women who wear sequined holiday sweaters, my research indicates that they are 80-90% more likely than the average person to donate. Conversely, printed holiday t-shirts and sweatshirts seem to have no bearing whatsoever on whether a person gives.

Strangely, it turns out that even a lot of people who are donating don't want to make eye contact with the bell-ringer for some reason. For these people, a word of advice: fold the dollar bill into fourths. This eliminates the substantial amount of time you spend trying to simultaneously avoid both eye contact and conversation with the bell-ringer while trying unsuccessfully to cram a too-big dollar into the slot. Or you could just ask me how I'm doing while you work out the physics of getting that bill through the hole. Either way.

And yes, I know that there are a lot of places to donate and a person may even have given to the bell-ringer at the other door on the way in and I personally exist in a perpetual state of cashlessness, so I try not to judge those who walk past. But if you make the decision to go out in the JESUS t-shirt and ballcap, you have to put some money in the bucket. WWJD? JW put some money in the bucket.

Also, if you walk up to give me a flyer for your salon, put some damn money in the bucket. Offering me 10% off on highlights does not in any way (despite what you tried to tell me and, I suspect, yourself about doing me a favor for my volunteer work - I SEE YOU GIVING THOSE TO EVERYBODY ELSE TOO) help the less fortunate this holiday season. And I can't afford to pay 90% on highlights anyway.

Seriously though, it's been a bad year and I've found myself lacking the holiday spirit. This helped. Seeing kids run up with a fistful of change and being thanked by little old ladies just for being there and ringing a bell will do that for a person. I highly recommend that you all give it a whirl.

Walmart shoppers, get out another holiday sweater and fold those dollar bills. I'll be back on Saturday.

Working title for the last one: The Christmas Shoes Two AAAH MY EYES! MAKE IT STOP!

I think I've already confessed at some point my love for holiday movies. And I'm not just talking about the classics here, I mean the cheesy made-for-TV holiday movies too. Some of these are of a much higher quality than others. Take, for example, Eloise at Christmastime. It's based on a well-known character from children's literature and stars Julie Andrews as Nanny. It's a far cry from something like Santa Baby, starring Jenny McCarthy as Santa's estranged daughter. I am sorry to tell you, Internet, that I watched that movie last year. The whole thing.

This year, Holly and I have watched A Grandpa for Christmas and Snow Globe. In Holly's defense, I picked both of these movies. In both of our defense, I don't think they count against us if we made fun of them the entire time, which we did. We also started watching some movie from the 80s starring Mary Steenbergen in which an angel would teach her to appreciate Christmas, but it was so bad that we turned it off.

Angels disguised as regular people are a common part of these movies. As are high-powered executives who don't understand the real meaning of Christmas, estranged families, and precocious children. Somebody's gonna learn a lesson, somebody's gonna find a family, and somebody's gonna fall in love. It's just the way it works.

All of my cheesy holiday movie watching has given me a certain expertise where these things are concerned. So I thought I'd come up with some of my own holiday movies to pitch to TV executives.

Ho Ho Holy Night

Having gotten too many demanding letters from greedy children, Santa decides to retire. An angel arrives to take Santa back in time to see the wise men arrive with gifts for the baby Jesus. While staying at the Bethlehem Inn (Santa and the angel got the last two rooms!) Santa meets and falls in love with the wise-cracking female innkeeper. Santa learns the true meaning of Christmas and he and the innkeeper are transported to present-day North Pole just in time for Christmas Eve.
Cast - Santa: Jim Belushi; Angel: Robert Loggia; Innkeeper: Wanda Sykes; Wise Men: George Lopez, Stephen Baldwin, Regis Philbin; Voice of Baby Jesus: John Travolta

Jingle Belles

Sisters return to their small Iowa hometown at Christmas time when their mother becomes ill. Holly and Noel, once a singing and bell-playing duo, haven't spoken in ten years since their act, The Jingle Belles broke up. Holly is now a divorced mother of a (precocious) eight year-old girl, Merry. They live in New York, where Holly choreographs Broadway shows. Noel is followed from Los Angeles, where she is a jingle singer, by her ad executive boyfriend, Vince. Merry pulls a series of pranks on Vince that reveal him to be a hot-tempered jerk who storms back off to LA. Holly and Noel are forced to come together to preform a Jingle Belles reunion to finance a surgery for their mom. Holly and Noel's old flames from the Iowa holiday performance circuit, brothers Chris and Nick Cane (formerly the Candy Canes) help put on the show. Everybody falls in love backstage and the brothers propose at the end of the show.
Cast - Sick mother: Betty White; Holly: Faith Ford; Noel: Melissa Joan Hart; Merry: whatever Fanning kid is about that age; Chris: Ted Danson; Nick: Mario Lopez; Vince: that guy from Grey's Anatomy no not that one, the other one

Really, the possibilities for these movies are endless. I'm going to make a killing on these things! Feel free to submit additional ideas. I promise, if I sell one, I'll totally make sure you get an Executive Producer credit. Or, like, a baseball cap with the movie name on it. I'll definitely shoot you an email with the time and date that the movie premiers on the Hallmark Channel.

Ooh, what about something with that Christmas Shoes kid growing up to forget the meaning of Christmas and being reminded by an angel who shows him another kid with a dying mom who only wants some pretty shoes in which to meet Jesus? Except Christmas Shoes Kid is a doctor now and he saves her life and they get married! Man, I am ON FIRE!

Grateful, Fourth Annual Edition

As I do this time every year, I have compiled a list of things for which I am thankful. This turns out to be a bit more challenging to do when you're generally pretty unhappy, but I suppose it's more important than ever. They continue to be in no particular order:

My gorgeous niece and nephew, as well as the niece or nephew to come in April.

Three job interviews in two weeks.

The combination of Zyrtec and Nasonex which, thus far, is keeping me almost entirely snot- and congestion-free. This has improved my quality of life dramatically. No, really. Before getting the Nasonex, I couldn't even use the neti pot because I was so congested that water couldn't run through my sinuses.

Twitter, which entertains me, boosts my self-esteem, and sometimes flirts with me.

My generous friend Jennie, who sent me a Starbucks giftcard, which has rendered free all of my eggnog lattes thus far (and counting).

My extremely generous landlord and roommate who have been allowing me to freeload since arriving here.

The camera that my parents are buying me for Christmas, which will allow me to cop out regale you with photo posts of such riveting subjects as my haircuts and any shoe purchases that I may make.

Oh, and I can take photos at inauguration, which I get to go to in under two months!

To see Barack Obama sworn in, for which I am also thankful.

My new friend Jeanene, who makes jewelry that I can actually recommend that you fellas buy for the women in your lives since it is one-of-a-kind and in no way cheesy.

Lower gas prices.

Coffee.

Potatoes in all of their glorious forms, excepting the tot.

Paolo the MacBook and his friends, Tim Gunn the iPod Touch and the printer who shall remain nameless. (What? Naming a printer would be weird.)

All of you, for hanging in here with me. By that I mean both the real life people who have had to adjust from the me who existed pretty firmly in the emotional middle-ground to the me who is sad a lot of the time and also you invisible internet people who continue to come here even though things have taken a turn for the serious in the past several months.

As always, you are invited to leave your own list of things you're grateful for in the comments. And enjoy your turkey.

Strong Dislike Monday: Holiday Edition

I am a pretty big fan of Christmas and normally you wouldn't find me speaking ill of the holidays (this post regarding holiday songs I despise, excepted). But I'm in a pretty bad mood and like anybody else, I find some holiday stuff annoying. So I thought I'd go ahead and bring back Strong Dislike Monday to give all of us the opportunity to vent some holiday-related spleen. You know you want to.

The first item on my list at the moment is the whole notion of a War on Christmas. Emily Twittered this link recently, to an article about a list put out by Focus on the Family. It's a list of retailers categorized as Christmas-friendly, Christmas-negligent, and Christmas-offensive, depending upon whether they use the word Christmas (as opposed to holidays) always, sometimes, or never in their sale flyers. Christians are urged to shop accordingly.

Seriously now. I don't get the obsession. There is more than one holiday going on at the end of the year. How is somebody else (much less a huge corporation) acknowledging that fact somehow offensive to people? If you celebrate Christmas, it shouldn't be any more marginalized for you by this admission than your entire faith is marginalized by understanding that people choose to practice other religions or no religion at all.

And really, if you want to get all purist about Christmas, shouldn't you want the religious celebration not to be mixed up with 20% off at Bath & Body Works? Do you really need your choice of religious observance validated by the person ringing up your purchases at Circuit City? I don't understand.

It looks like this issue is where most of my holiday strong dislike is currently centered. Of course, there are also the Kay Jewelers (and similar) commercials, made-for-TV movies starring Tori Spelling, and inexplicable inclusion of A Few of My Favorite Things in Christmas music playlists. Oh, and the blinking lights! Sure, I can make room for a certain amount of tacky where outdoor holiday decorations are concerned, but I draw the line at the point at which they begin to verge on seizure-inducing.

You are free to share whatever it is that you strongly dislike about the season. Songs, movies, decorations, compulsory work parties, or anything else. Whatever it is that gets your holiday knickers in a twist.

Halloween Photo Extravaganza!

My Halloween weekend (Halloweekend, if you will) began on Halloween morning with a stop at the library near my brother's house so we could vote. Then we went to Sea World for a little while. My brother and sister-in-law live very close to Sea World, so they have season passes and they bought me a pass as an early Christmas present, on the understanding that I would also use it to occasionally take my nephew there in the form of free babysitting.

It is thus now free for me to get in to Sea World, so Dan and I stopped by while Dawn and Owen were at a little Halloween party. We rode the rollercoaster, saw the seal show, drank the free beer (Yay, theme parks sponsored by beer companies!) and had lunch. At Sea World, a slice of pizza comes with a side of fries, which is just everything that is right about America.

Later that evening, Dan and Dawn took Owen trick or treating while I stayed at their house and gave out candy. Owen wore this:

Photo copyright The Picture People

But it got EVEN MORE ADORABLE because the way he waddled in it made the tail wag and he sort of trundled around, all skunk-like in the cutest possible way.

Then on Sunday night, Lisa, Gary, Allie, and I went to the Halloween party at our church. Lisa had the idea that we could wear matchy clothes and one of us wear devil horns and the other one a halo and we could go as the good twin and the evil twin.

We both have the same dress from Amy's wedding, although we hadn't worn them together before because Lisa didn't make the plane to Amy's wedding because of all the vomiting. (Parents! If your child has been throwing up all night, DO NOT SEND HIM TO SCHOOL YOU GIANT IDIOTS.) In fact, I don't think we've dressed alike since we wore marching band uniforms our freshman year of high school.

I found devil horns on sale at Walgreens but no halo. We figured it would still make the point though.

Ok, so we had to explain the costume to pretty much everybody, but hey, we got to wear pretty dresses and our total costume cost was the $1.35 I spent on the devil horn headband.

Gary went as an England soccer (excuse me, football) fan, but he didn't start any riots or trample anybody or anything. Allie went as one adorable baby all decked out for her first Halloween and generally pretty pleased about it.

While all of these festivities were a lot of fun, I still consider the biggest success of the weekend to be the way that I did not buy any deeply discounted post-Halloween sale Halloween candy. Putting on a dress that fit a whole lot better when you last wore it a year ago: the anti-drug.

Happy Happy Birthday, Baby

Today, Owen is one. On Saturday, he'll have his party which will include what I assume will be a dream come true for him: his very own cake, plopped down in front of him and the freedom to go at it. The boy likes sweets and the boy loves making a mess.

I thought we'd celebrate here with a trip down Owen and Roary memory lane. If you've been around here for a little over a year, you know that Roary is the lion-headed blanket I bought for Owen before he was born. Dawn was kind enough to take a photo of Owen with Roary every month, so I could see how much bigger he was getting, particularly since I was a long distance aunt for the first nine months of his life.

Happy birthday, little one.

And many, many more.

Believe me, I have some stern words for Target, regarding their sale to me of a rapidly-shrinking Roary.

Don't let the door hit you, thirty.

Today is my birthday.

I'd really rather it wasn't.

Then again, thirty hasn't been an especially good year.

Thirty has, in fact, treated me in a manner that could get it investigated by the detectives of the Special Victims Unit.

Maybe thirty-one will be kinder.

Let us hope.

A second not-bitter post regarding Valentines Day. I don't even know who I am anymore.

It started with a conversation that went something like this:

Me: You know how I'm not a really girly girl and Valentines Day is a stupid Hallmark holiday?

Alan (getting his hopes up): Yeah?

Me: Well, I'm girly enough.

Alan (hopes now dashed): So I have to come up with something?

I assured him later that it didn't have to be anything big thing, just that if he ignored the day completely, it was going to make me sad.  At which point he told me that he had already ordered something for me, this point coming before the point at which I had any idea at all of what to get him.  Who was the Valentine slacker now?

But then he later (after I had ordered a print for him from Etsy) told me that the gift he had gotten me wasn't all that he was hoping it could be, so he sent it back.  And then he ordered me something from Etsy (it was a Very Etsy Valentine around here!) so it would be something not mass-produced.  I liked his thinking on that.

We decided that on the Day itself, I'd go to his house in the evening and we'd order in since I assumed that all of the restaurants would be packed.  And we all know how I feel about other people.  Except before I even got over there, I came home to find six red roses in a vase on my desk with a card that said "See you tonight."  I bring that up because when I saw it I thought "awww..." but also "if this had been any of those boyfriendless Valentines Days, finding something like that in my apartment would have occasioned a call to the police rather than a :) text message."

Then I got to his house and got the bad news that my present had not yet arrived.  The thing is, as much as I was looking forward to it, I am always more excited about watching other people open the presents I got for them than I am about opening my own.  So I got to do that part and was assured that I would most likely come home sometime this week to find a green gift box waiting for me in my apartment.  Let the breathless anticipation begin.  Good thing I have a short attention span and thus forgot about it for long stretches of time.  Plus, delayed gratification is my second favorite kind of gratification, just after instant.

After Alan opened his print and other gifts (one or more of which may have come from the Dollar Spot) we tried to order food.  I say "tried to" because we were told that between the snow (Of course it was snowing!) and call volume, it would be two hours.  So we did what any reasonable people would do: we drove through Culver's.  Alan was worried that I wouldn't be happy with Culver's for Valentine's Day, but I really, really was, Internet.  Because a) we had just been out the previous Saturday when there were not crowds of couples for a very nice dinner at Johnny Delmonico's (mmmm...steak) and b) I love Culver's like a fat kid love, well, Culver's.

See, I have developed a bit of an addiction to Culver's fries since moving back up here.  I mean, I don't need to go to fry rehab or anything.  If you tried to make me, I would say NO, NO, NO.  And I would stick to that no, unlike some people, because I can quit anytime.  I only eat Culver's fries socially.  It's not, like, a problem or anything.  (I know what that one pair of jeans will tell you, but they are liars and have totally been that tight ever since I got them.)  I don't go around stealing money or anything to support my fry habit.  So what if I get my boyfriend to pay for them half of the time?  That doesn't mean anything.  That doesn't, like, make me some kind of fry whore.  And for the record, it was his idea for us to get a family-size fry to share.

What were we talking about again?

Oh yes, so we picked up our Culver's and went back to his house to watch TV for a while.  And then I waited patiently (as far as you know) for SEVEN WHOLE DAYS to find out what my present was.  I will further have you know that I did not pester Alan for hints on either Friday OR Saturday nights, because I am a mature, grown-up person.  Also, I was pretty sure he wouldn't tell me anything.

Today, I came home from work to find this sitting on my computer:

And inside the green box:

Hydrangea petal earrings in sterling silver.  What can I say?  The man has taste.  And he pays attention.  All of the jewelry that I wear on any kind of regular basis is silver.  Except I don't regularly wear silver earrings because I don't have any that I like.  Or I didn't, anyway. 

(Much more of the artist's jewelry is silver as well.  I see a wish list of additional items in someone's future.) 

(Unfortunately, there aren't any more giving-me-gifts occasions until my birthday, but it can't hurt to have a few things in mind, what with it being only a scant seven months away.)

So that is the story of Valentines Day this year.  Fries, flowers, and jewelry.  Who could ask for anything more?

On Valentines Day and Clowns. You've all stopped reading already, haven't you?

I'm not sure what to write this year.  Seriously.  I always write about Valentines Day.  Something crabby.  Borderline bitter, even.

But this year I have a date.  This year on Valentines Day, instead of receiving a reminder that I am perpetually alone, I am getting a present.  A present, people.

It's a strange new reality and I am understandably, I think, somewhat confused.

Because as much as this cannot be a bitter single girl Valentine post, nor can it be any kind of heartsy flowery Valentine schmaltz-fest.  I'm still me and I don't do cutesy.

So I decided, instead of writing all that much, that I'd just offer you this video.  It's Ingrid Michaelson in her video for The Way I Am.  The scenario maybe slightly different from what you personally have experienced, but it perfectly depicts a feeling that I'm sure we've all felt or maybe continue to feel.  And that part at the end is what we're all looking for, isn't it?

May we all find those people who see us for what we are when everyone else would dismiss us for what we aren't.

That, friends, is as schmaltzy as I get.  Happy Valentines Day or Thank God I'm Not in a Bad Relationship Day or Thursday, as you like it.

And finally, thanks to Sharon for reminding me that no matter how you feel about Valentines Day, V-Day is something we should all be able to get behind.  Why not take this opportunity to go there and see if you can't do something to help?

*There's still time to enter the CONTEST for your chance to WIN the first-ever Superfantastic CONTEST with a PRIZE.  (Provided you're reading this before Saturday.)  Go enter now!

A Lighter Shade of Pale New Year

I can’t tell you folks how excited I am this year about New Year’s Eve.  I don’t know about you, but I usually find it to be sort of a letdown.  But not this year!  This year it’s going to be great.

Because this year I will spend it with someone truly special.

Someone who makes me laugh.  Sometimes he even sings to me.  This will be my first New Year’s Eve with him and I know it will be one that I’ll never forget.  And we’re spending it in the romance capitol of the world: Milwaukee.

I’ll see you there, Jim Gaffigan.

What, you thought all it took was New Years to get me to gushing publicly about Alan?  Uh, no.  But rest assured, Alan will be there too, along with a whole bunch of other people.  Actually, this was the practically perfect Christmas gift I was telling you about.  I gave Alan two tickets to Jim Gaffigan’s New Year’s Eve show and told him he could take anyone he wanted.  As long as it was me.  And what do you know, he’s taking me.  Quelle surprise!

So after work, we’re off to Milwaukee to ring in the new year with the one living person who is even pastier than the two of us.  See you in 2008!

T-Minus

45 hours until I leave for Texas to visit Owen.  I believe other members of my immediate family may be there as well, but I'm not really sure.

Things I am looking forward to about my trip:

-Owen, obviously.  He came topside three months ago yesterday and I still haven't met him.  This is clearly unacceptable.  Fortunately, my brother and sister-in-law did not send me the most adorable picture ever of all time until this week.  Seriously, it's so cute it hurts a little, like the way that really good frosting sort of makes your teeth ache with its sugary goodness.  Yeah, that cute.

-Warm weather.  DO YOU HEAR ME, TEXAS?  WARM WEATHER.

-Three of my very favorite things in the world: friends, margaritas, and queso.  In that order, I think, although it's a tough call with the last two.

-Not doing any data entry for seven whole days.

-Antagonizing my mother.  It's one of my special gifts (just ask anyone in my family) which has been squandered in the past few months.  I mean, I do my best over the phone, but it's not the same when I don't get to see the face she always makes in response.

-My mother's cookies.  Fortunately, she's not petty and won't withhold cookies no matter how much I pick on her.

-My dad's stuffing.  Not that the Stove Top Stuffing I "made" for Thanksgiving wasn't delightful.  I guess I just don't really compare the two since I sort of consider boxed stuffing an entirely different group of food than real Dad-made stuffing.  You'd have to try it to really understand, except you can't have any since I am going eat it all.

-Conversations with my sister which would appear to the casual observer to be serious, but are instead entirely sarcastic.  You know, like this one.  While that one didn't last long due to its exceptional hilarity, we can normally keep these things going for a really impressive amount of time without cracking.

-The Trivial Pursuit Battle of the Sexes Grudge Match.  Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without heated geeky competition.  Just as the baby Jesus intended.  I meant to brush up on my baseball knowledge in preparation for this year's game, but unfortunately every time I begin to think about baseball I immediately fall asleep due to overpowering boredom.

-The Christmas Eve church giggles.  This is yet another tradition, normally involving my brother and me.  Last year, Dan couldn't be there, but Dawn made a good substitute for cracking ourselves up with inappropriate for church comments.  One of these years, my parents are going to stop allowing me to come along.

Things I am not looking forward to about my trip:

-Being up early enough to get to the airport before my 7 am flight.  (Also not looking forward to this: my ride to the airport, a.k.a. Alan.)

-The Texas allergy crud.  I predict I'll spend the bulk of my trip slightly high on Alavert.

-Having to reacclimate to the cold when I get back.  Boo, cold.

-The inevitable five pound (let's hope that's all it is) weight gain.  Notice how about half of the stuff in the Looking Forward To list involves fattening food.

Probably at some point I should begin packing.  And by "packing" I mean "throwing a bunch of dirty laundry in a suitcase along with some flip flops".  Did I not mention free laundry in the list?

For the moment though, back to data entry.  T-Minus 13 1/2 hours of that to go.

The Thankgsiving Recap

Things that I was thankful for on Thanksgiving:

Waking up without an alarm, just minutes into the parade.

That when I popped up upon realizing that the parade had already started, it was to a sitting rather than standing position.  This way when I started to black out from becoming upright so abruptly, I wasn't in danger of falling anywhere except back onto my bed.

What was surely one of the longest, hottest showers in the long and glorious history of long, hot showers.

That all utilities are included in my rent, making that long, hot shower, if not free, then at least pre-paid.

Not having to cook a turkey.

Not having to travel more than a few blocks.

Getting my mom on the phone before my brother and sister-in-law arrived with the baby.  Because when Owen is in the house, my mother no longer cares what I have to say, nor does she speak in complete sentences in response.

The Packers improving to 10-1.

The way my radiator keeps my apartment so roasty-oasty warm that I was able to open a window without freezing to death so that I could air out the bacon smell.  Yep, bacon smell.

Once Thanksgiving is over, it is officially the Christmas season and people have to stop complaining about there already being Christmas stuff out.

Things that I was not thankful for on Thanksgiving:

The world's most giant zit.

That's pretty much all I can think of.

See, this year was what you might call a laid-back Thanksgiving.  I rolled out of bed, watched the parade and the first half of the Packers game in my pajamas, took a shower and watched the second half in some sweats.  I did some food prep and eventually dried my hair and put on clothes that were not elastic-intensive so that I could head over to Alan's around 4:00.  We enjoyed my carefully planned menu, which included Stove Top Stuffing (OF COURSE), roasted red skinned potatoes, and turkey.  Except our turkey was served in the form of turkey club sandwiches on sourdough bread.  Hence the bacon.  Because a) we did not need a turkey for only two of us and b) we did not need botulism.  I am not what you might call an accomplished cook.  I am a half-decent baker, but I did not make my traditional pumpkin cheesecake because Alan doesn't like it, so it would have been all for me.  Even more than I wanted a pumpkin cheesecake, I wanted to continue to fit into my pants.

Seeing as how I was going to be cooking in the kitchen of a 30 year-old straight male bachelor, I brought pretty much everything I needed with me, right down to an oven mitt and dish towel, both of which did turn out to be necessary.  I even asked ahead of time if he had a toaster.  Of course he did.  Except when I got there, he could not locate it.  Nor could he remember what might have happened to it.  Just in case you were wondering what kind of person would date a crazy like me, there you have it.

And that was my Thanksgiving.  Now, if you'll excuse me, this leftover stuffing is not going to overeat itself.

Grateful, Third Annual Edition

Things I am thankful for, as usual, in no particular order:

My radiator heat, which is oh so thorough

Owen and getting to see him in less than a month now

Future Niece or Nephew

Having been able to travel this year to four different states for the weddings of my sister and three good friends

Coca-Cola

The Packers at 9-1

How the two high school friends I had in Madison turned out to still be really cool

The many useful words and phrases I have picked up from my Scrubs habit.  "People are bastard coated bastards with bastard filling" in particular.

Not needing to go anywhere on Friday, much less near any retail establishments

A new season of Project Runway! Finally!

Dark Chocolate Peanut M&Ms

The water temperature in the restroom at my new workplace, which is set to Nigh Unto Scalding, my favorite temperature.  Because the cold water at the old building was really not helping with the perpetual coldness of my hands.

Stuffing Day.  Perhaps you refer to it as "Thanksgiving".

All of you wonderful reader people and especially you extra-wonderful commenter people

Your turn.  Tell us what you're thankful for, extra-wonderful commenter people.

Oh, and happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Turning thirty is like Pandora's box of chocolates.

Thirty feels...remarkably like 29.

But 29 with all of the fun birthday accoutrements. Cards! Phone calls!  Texts! Dinner out (mmm…couscous, the starch so nice they named it twice!) with dessert (mmm…cappuccino Kaluha ice cream graham cracker whipped cream pie thing) followed by drinks (mmm…vodka) and jazz.

While walking between the restaurant and the bar, we overheard yet another fascinating conversation on the street.  Did you know that the lesson behind the myth of Pandora's box is that when you open a box, you never know what you're going to get?  Much like the lesson behind this story is that if you walk around where there are drunk college students, you never know what totally wrong information you're going to hear proclaimed as fact.

One of my birthday gifts from Alan was supposed to be, finally, a game of Trivial Pursuit. We’ve been dancing around this for months. And by “dancing around this” I mean that I’ve been talking a whole lot of smack, despite the fact that I will almost certainly lose. Except we are both old now and after all of the preceding festivities, we were not capable of the level of alertness required for a proper Trivial Pursuit match. I will make sure I get a raincheck and will report back to you with the results. Unless I lose, in which case, we will never speak of it again.

Another of my gifts is a membership to a wine of the month club. Hot damn! The gift that keeps on giving. Giving TWO BOTTLES OF WINE EVERY MONTH, to be exact. Perhaps by the end of the membership I will no longer look at a winelist with the same totally bumfuzzled expression I wear when looking at my car’s engine. But even if I don’t learn anything, I still get to drink lots of free wine. Cheers!

There was one last gift which is…coming soon to a blog near you! Oooh, a cliffhanger! Stay tuned, boys and girls.  You won't want to miss it.

Requiem for a Decade

I've got less than two days remaining in my twenties.  This comes as something of a shock to me.  I don't feel old enough to be thirty.  And yet, I feel far more than ten years removed from my teenage self.

At nineteen, I was a junior in college.  I had never lived outside of Wisconsin.  Never lived alone.  Never worked a full-time job.  I had no idea how wonderful and scary and mundane and extraordinary life on my own was going to be.  But nineteen year-old me had a plan.  She was pretty sure she knew how the future was going to work, because she was going to make it so.  She was right about the part where I moved to DC, but that was about it.

My twenties taught me that plans only get you so far.  And that letting go of those plans can be the brave and better thing to do.

Did I ever tell you that I went to grad school?  I went to George Washington University for two semesters in the evenings while I worked full-time during the day.  I'm glad I went because it would have been a lot harder to up and move to DC with no job if I hadn't had grad school to motivate me.  But I wish I had trusted myself when I knew, after a semester, that it wasn't what I wanted to do.  I could have saved myself a lot of time, stress, and $2,500 if I hadn't stubbornly gone back for that second semester because I didn't think I could drop out, lest everyone think I was a quitter.

My twenties taught me to loosen up.  And to stop caring so much about what everybody else thinks.

I'm still working on that, but it's a lot better than it was.  This is one of the primary advertisements you get from people over thirty who are trying to talk you into being ok with this particular milestone.  They say that in your thirties you become a lot more comfortable in your own skin and stop caring so much about what other people think.  I don't know if that's true or not, but I guess I'm about to find out.

I really hope it is.  I don't want to care what anyone else thinks of me being thirty and still lacking in direction.  I want that to bother me because it bothers me, not because other people might judge me.  I want to be sure that I'm applying for the jobs I'm applying for because I think I want them, not because of how they'll look to other people.  I don't want to take on anyone else's worries about where all of this is going.

My twenties taught me to be ok with, even enjoy, uncertainty.  And that most people won't understand that.

Not knowing what the future holds can be scary, yes.  But it can be exhilarating too, if you look at it the right way.  And no matter how you look at it, it's true for all of us.

I didn't know at nineteen that things wouldn't work out the way I wanted them to.  I didn't know that I wouldn't get a job on Capitol Hill or finish my masters or get married and buy a rowhouse in Eastern Market by the end of my twenties.  But I also didn't know that I'd live in New York, or spend a month in Europe, or make friends from all over the country and the world.  I didn't know how much I'd grow to love my independence and learn to trust myself.

Who knows, in ten years, what I'll have to say about my thirties?  I hope I'll be able to say that my thirties taught me to be bold, that I learned how to stop letting fear of failure keep me from trying.  I hope I'll have accomplished things that I haven't even thought of yet.  I hope my thirties turn out to be as surprising, yet good, as my twenties have.

I think maybe I'm ready to let go of my twenties.  I enjoyed my them.  I lived the way I wanted, for the most part.  I learned a lot about the world and myself.  I crammed quite a bit into those ten years. 

Now, in a way, I sort of feel like I'm finally growing into my age.  I've always felt old for a twentysomething.  Maybe I'll feel more...in context or something in my thirties.  And, of course, my thirties are rapidly approaching, whether I think I like it or not.  It only makes sense to, if not welcome them, at least not struggle against the inevitable.

So, farewell twenties (although not until Saturday).  Thanks for everything.

Valentine's Day: Whoop-dee-frickin-doo.

I'm not sure why I feel compelled to post about this at all.  But I will ask you this one question, Internet: is 9:45 am too early to begin eating chocolate on Valentine's Day, do you think?

If you'd like to actually read something amusing about this most superfantastic. of all days, go here.

And have a good one.  Or have some chocolate.

With Valentine's Day approaching, a note to men.

No matter how many skillions of commercials may tell you otherwise, most of us do not want a diamond heart pendant for Valentine's Day.  That is all.

Be it hereby resolved...

In the year 2007, I resolve:

• yet again, not to stab anyone.  So far, so good!
• to also keep up with the no divorces resolution from last year.  Fortunately, it seems easy enough to get any drunken Vegas marriages annulled, so no worries this weekend.
• to start eating better.  Just as soon as these dark chocolate chocolates are gone.
• not to shout obscenities at the television during any football games, right up until the Packers' first game of the next season.
• that no matter how superawesome they may look in the commercials, I will not see any movies starring Justin Timberlake.
• to assemble a team and begin training in earnest for a run at representing the US in curling at 2010 Olympics.
• in an effort to combat the formation of fine lines and wrinkles, absolutely no more facial expressions.
• to spend more time on airplanes.  This resolution sets the bar pretty low since in 2006 I spent absolutely no time whatsoever on airplanes.  Which obviously is unacceptable.
• no more bathroom related posts.  Unless I think of something really funny.
• to encourage those around me to show their patriotism through blind, unquestioning support of our President.  Ha!  Wouldn't it be crazy if I were actually like that?
• not to turn off my alarm and go back to sleep for half an hour on a work day.  (Too late.)

And you?

Christmas Photo Spectacular!

Perhaps I should not make such wild claims.  Maybe not spectacular, but Christmas photos nonetheless.

First I present my holiday baking spree.  I was asked by my mother to bring cookies and a coffee cake.  It just so happened that the frozen cookie dough and frozen coffee cake that I had purchased from coworkers for a child's softball team and school PTA, respectively, had come in last week. 

That skinny piece of raw, frozen dough on the left grew overnight into this:

I lovingly baked it and hand-frosted it using the included frosting packet.  It is important to note here that the fact that both desserts that I brought happened to start out as frozen pre-made dough should not indicate that I am lazy.  I mean, I am lazy, but I do actually enjoy baking.  No, this indicates that I am a huge sucker where school fundraisers are concerned.

But the holiday packaged food preparation frenzy did not stop there!  This final one did double-duty as a dessert item AND giftwrap.  My homage to Jim's pranking of Dwight on The Office by putting Dwight's stapler in Jello, here we have my brother's Best Buy gift card encased in lemon Jello:

Amy, look!  Your Christmas cactus is nothing if not a punctual bloomer.

I spent Christmas Eve and Day with my parents, sister, brother, sister-in-law, and our good friends Laurie and Jim.  My brother had to work too late to make it to Christmas Eve church, so he and I were prevented from getting our traditional Christmas Eve service uncontrollable giggle fits, much (I'm sure) to my mom's relief and my dad's disappointment.  He made it in later though to assist with the traditional tormenting of our mother.  In his church absence, Lisa, Dawn and I did manage to make several inappropriate church jokes.  I should not be allowed to sit by people.

On Christmas Day we ate ourselves silly with a big stuffing lunch, which also included such side dishes as turkey and ham.  Then we exchanged gifts.  I noticed some trends forming in mine.

The political trend:

For the record, I do not hate Republicans.  Hate the ideology, love the ideologue, people.

The blog trend:

Dooce and Real Live Preacher represented, of course.

Finally, the calendar trend:

When every member of your family buys you a calendar, does it mean there is a perception that you are unable to keep track of what day it is?  I'm thinking yes.  Isn't it great when your family really gets you?  Now that I live in the tropics, I regularly have to think hard about what month or even season it is, let alone day.

I learned this Christmas that if you comment loudly and regularly for months on end about how your claddagh ring is not only cheap and crappy but also a little too big, such that it tends to fall off when your hands are cold (which is almost all of the time) your parents will eventually catch on and buy you a nice new one that not only is made of real silver but also is your actual ring size. 

Seeing as how my parents had been so very intuitive (they also gleaned from my caffeine addiction and perpetual singleness that I might like a one cup coffee maker) I was really hoping that they would like the portraits that my siblings and I had taken for them.  Here they are opening the package.

Pop quiz, hotshot.  Are my parents:

a) wondering aloud yet again about how my brother got such a pretty girl to marry him?

b) laughing about how Dan's hairline is inching ever closer to where my dad's currently resides?

c) really excited about their present?

If you said c, give yourself a gold star!  Because they loved the photos which were taken by the lovely and talented Melissa, assisted by Doug of Eli Photography.  Allow me to recommend either or both for all of your portrait needs.  I mean, I showed up with unusually flat hair, an ill-chosen sweater, and eyes which squint when I smile (Melissa: More smile, Lori!  Less squint though!  Ok, but now smile and keep your eyes open.  Wait, what's wrong with your eyes?) and she even made me look good.

Photographic proof of above statement would be inserted here, were Typepad not refusing to do the same.  In fact, Typepad has been uncharacteristically reluctant to deal with any of these photos, meaning that I have spent literally hours working on this post and also possibly pounding on the table and yelling a little.  I might have given up, were I less committed to your...oh hell, it's not like I had anything else to do today except attempt to remember that I had laundry in (crap, laundry is still in dryer!) and make a quickly-forgotten mental grocery list for a trip out among the people that I failed to ever actually take.

I can't even remember now where, if anywhere, this post was going.  So I will sign off now while I still remember about getting the laundry out of the dryer.  Perhaps tomorrow I will even venture out so far as the grocery store for bread to make sandwiches from leftover turkey and also milk, necessitated by the chocolates I received, dark chocolate stuffed with even more chocolate.  And coffee!  That's what else was on the list!  If I call you from the store tomorrow, will you remind me?

The Gift

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end...

-Isaiah 9:6-7

In this world of chaos and uncertainty, may the peace of Christ rule in your heart this holiday season and on without end.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

All I Want for Christmas

1. A job where I actually get to use my brain and perhaps do something that matters to me and/or the world at large.

2. Good health insurance.

3. Sleep.

4. For my left boot to stop squeaking.

5. Jeans that actually fit.  (Hello, The Gap.  Could you please bring back the style of jeans that I loved?  Please?  I promise, I will buy enough of them to make it worth your while.)

6. George Clooney.

7. One of those books that is so good that you can't wait to finish it but almost don't want to because then it will be over.

8. Fat free eggnog not to be so horribly bad and non-eggnoggy.

9. Self-discipline.

10. An exterminator.  If I find one more giant roach in my shower I will absolutely lose my shit.  (I have not discovered any of the four of them while actually in the shower or this would have happened long ago.)

11. To get to see all of my friends around the country who I miss.

12. The time and money to accept gracious hospitality offers in England and Japan.

13. No more mountain cedar pollen.  Ever.

14. An end to war, poverty, suffering, disease...you know, all of that bleeding heart liberal crap.

15. Ten straight days off from work.  Oh wait, I already have that!  Starting Saturday!  If you need me, I will be sitting on my couch in my flannel pajamas reading one of the six books I picked up last night at the library.  You can stop by if you want.  Just don't expect me to be wearing make up or shoes or pants that don't have an elastic waist.  (I got a head start on my reading last night with the beginning of Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, which I already adore, just like everything I have read by Anne Lamott.  You should read her stuff too.  You'll thank me.)

And you?  What's on your list?

Intolerable Acts

I make no secret of my unabashed love of Christmas music. I think it’s a real shame that we only get to listen to it for one month a year, but I suppose that therein lies much of its allure. It’s just such happy music and fun to sing along with. All of that said, there remain certain Christmas songs that I will not tolerate. These seem to be proliferating every year. The current list includes:

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer – Just when my faith in humanity was restored by the canceling of OJ’s book and TV deals, this song returns to remind me that things are indeed pretty bleak.

Santa Baby – Sex, greed, and Santa.  Sounds like a Dateline expose. 

Do You See What I See – A star with a tail as big as a kite? That doesn’t even make sense.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town by Bruce Springsteen – I will listen to this song for the first five minutes. The next forty minutes of Bruce repeating ever more loudly and vehemently how Santa Claus is coming to town, not so much.

The Christmas Shoes – Has there ever been a song, nay ANYTHING as maudlin as this? I can’t imagine it, but if there were it would certainly run on the Lifetime Movie Network and star Valerie Bertinelli.

The Twelve Days of Christmas and any of the assorted novelty versions – I do make an exception for the Muppet version. It’s Muppetastic. 

That’s all that comes to mind at the moment, although I certainly do not approve in general of girl or boy bands that add a crappy beat and their own verses to real Christmas songs. But otherwise, I’m down with the carols. Good thing we now have two all Christmas stations so I can flip when one of these crimes against Christmas music comes on. Because I am in need of extra holiday goodness seeing as how it is going to be 80 degrees here today. At least it’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas. In my car anyway.

And in related holiday news, Happy Hanukkah, everybody!

Jingling (Ring Ting Tingling Too)

So on Saturday, I voluntarily went to Walmart.  During Christmas season even!  Why on Earth would I do such a foolhardy thing?

To ring a bell for the Salvation Army of course!  Which is an experience that I highly recommend, by the way.  You get to watch all of the uncomfortable sideways glances of the shoppers who have no intention of giving any money.  You get to see parents try to talk shy children into coming over to you with the money or watch very excited children drop a big stack of coins in one by one while their embarrassed parents try to encourage them to just drop them all in at once, honey!  I even had one little boy come over to ask if we took change.  Adorable.

You get to discover which is your dominant bell-ringing hand and whether or not you have sufficient motor skills to continue ringing the bell with one hand and use a stick to shove money down in the pot with the other.  (I don't.)

You also get to hear some good stories.  I had an older gentleman come over to tell me about when he used to ring a bell at a Target and how people were constantly coming up to him to tell him how the Salvation Army had helped them.  He even got to dress up once in Target's Santa suit and got hug-tackled by children from all directions.  That sounds fun.  The woman who was there before me had a lady come up and tell her that the Salvation Army had saved her son's life and it is only because of them that she has grandchildren today.

And if you are very lucky, luckier than I was, you get to see a man attempt to flee Walmart with a stolen flat screen TV and be chased down by Walmart patrons after the greeter woman who was chasing him has fallen down.  This happened just before my shift.  Curse my rotten luck!

Except not, because for the price of only one hour of my time (it was supposed to be two, but the man from Salvation Army had to come early to pick up the buckets) I received my very own free copy of A Christmas Story You've Never Heard.  I highly recommend this book.  I do not, however, recommend that you decide at a time of night when you really ought to be sleeping that you will pick it up and just read one or maybe two chapters.  Because you will not.  You will stay up entirely too late and read the whole thing.  Trust me, I know.  I hear it makes an excellent Christmas gift.  Unless the sister for whom you purchase it goes and rings a bell and gets her own copy before it is even Christmas.  Then it becomes a treasured personal keepsake, right Lisa?

We also bought our tree yesterday!  It was honest to goodness and I kid you not the very first tree that we looked at, but the price was right and it looks and smells quite wonderful in our living room.  Tonight: decorations!  We might even have to put on a little Perry Como Christmas music.  Why yes, Perry, I would love to accompany you on a sleigh ride and/or walk with you in a winter wonderland.  Thanks for asking!

My Big Fat Texas Thanksgiving

One thing I forgot to mention that I am thankful for: my crazy insane extended family.  (Repetition intentionally used for emphasis.)

See, my dad's side of the family is huge and also crazy.  We always lived in Wisconsin and would have Thanksgiving with just the five of us and also my Grandpa (my mom's dad) for most of my life.  There was parade watching, eating, and football watching all carried out in a mostly orderly manner.  Now that we live in Texas, we were invited to family Thanksgiving at my aunt Nancy and uncle David's house.  We were told that, including us, there would be twelve people.  Which, if we had been thinking, we would have rounded up since obviously there were actually nearly twice that many people coming.  Twenty-three Grahams crowded into my aunt and uncle's house and let me tell you, Grahams are not small people. 

This is due, in large part, to the official Graham family pastime, eating.  When we have a reunion, we plan a few years in advance and after the date and place are chosen, meal planning begins.  Years in advance.  We take it seriously.  So just imagine how an eating-intensive holiday went.  We are fortunate to have several talented cooks in the family, among them three generations of school lunch ladies who know how to cook in large portions.  (My cousin Linda, last in the lunch lady line, has two teenage sons, neither of whom were amused when my sister asked them which of them was going to carry on the family tradition and don the hairnet.)  Probably I did not need the second helping of stuffing and mashed potatoes with gravy, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.  And if you think that in addition to turkey, ham, and miles of side dishes, there were not also five different desserts, then you have clearly not met my family.

The other thing that we take seriously is the art of scaring each other.  The origin of this tradition, as near as we can tell, was when my dad as a kid would catch june bugs and throw them at my aunt Jody.  So now there is pretty much always a fake roach and/or rubber snake around at every family gathering and it never ceases to fool people.  The high point of the rubber snake joke came when my cousins put a huge one in their parents' bed that was apparently so convincing that my uncle Bo SHOT IT WITH A SHOTGUN  (this is Texas, folks) leaving of course a rather large hole in their mattress.  Then there was the time we roasted a pig on a spit when we rented a ranch for a reunion and the head and legs were arranged to look like the pig were sleeping in the bed of one of my female cousins.  The screaming could be heard all the way to Oklahoma and parts of Kansas.  Which sort of makes the little lizard that my cousin's son Kyle threw on my cousin/his aunt Laura on Thanksgiving look pretty tame by comparison, but it was still enjoyable for all of us.  Well, except Laura.

Then once the dishes were done and all reptiles had been taken back outside, there was a white elephant exchange with gifts that Linda and Laura had bought.  Of course there was lots of stealing other people's gifts, in many cases things that the stealer did not even want, but just took to be obnoxious.  (Mostly this was my Dad and his protege in obnoxiousness, my cousin Brent.  Who, coincidentally, is Kyle's father.  We assume he is quite proud.)  After the white elephant gifts were gone, there was Pictionary and the men loudly and repeatedly complaining about getting all of the hard words, right up until one of my cousins got "heart" and my brother got "Wisconsin".  Bunch of whiners.  And then people started leaving and, in what may be a first for us, we concluded an entire family event without one single person getting thrown in the pool.  Mostly, I believe, because the nearest pool was several blocks away. 

And there you have a peek inside the wild world that is a day with my family.  Or one-third of my family, anyway.  Tip of the iceberg, people.

Grateful, Second Annual Edition

Things I am thankful for this year, again in no particular order:

• One last chance to live with my college roomie and all around good buddy Amy before she heads off for the Pacific Northwest and Joe.

• Living in a city with other liberals.

• Puppy love.  Literally.  The puppies, they love me.  I like them ok too.

• You.  You know who you are.

• Friends whose weddings give me good excuses to go on trips and also to see them again after it has been FAR TOO LONG.

• Also having an excuse to hang out for three days with Holly, particularly in Vegas!  Yard of margarita, here we come!

• Reruns of Scrubs on Comedy Central.  Gosh I love that show.

• A really great temp job.  Because let’s face it, this temping thing could have really sucked.

• The $10 bottle of STELLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAA! and Melissa for telling me that it existed.

• People who leave me sweet and funny comments and even keep coming here when I don’t manage to post more than twice a week on any kind of regular basis.

• A new computer that will stay on for as long as I want it to!

• The music of KT Tunstall.  The lyrics make no sense to me whatsoever, but I sure do like to sing along in my car.

• Everyone who has been supportive about this lunatic NaNoWriMo thing.

• That November, and with it NaNoWriMo, is almost over.

• A long weekend and thus several days to sleep in.  Do you hear me dogs?  SLEEP IN!

• I know I said this last year, but it bears repeating: it is almost Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year and I don't care whether you agree or not!  I love it all.  The lights, the trees, the decorations, the cards, the presents, the music, the movies, the parties and general merriment.  And let us not forget the eggnog.  Mmmmm...eggnog.

How about you?  Got a more profound list?  Or something even sillier that really does fill you with gratitude?  Here's your chance!  Also, tomorrow in addition to being Thanksgiving, is my parents' 38th anniversary!  Everyone say "Happy Anniversary, Russ and Mary!"  Because that is a long time to put up with any one person.  Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!  I think you deserve extra stuffing this year.  Go ahead, unbutton your pants and have seconds.  I won't tell.

Yes, one half of my pictures are of cake products. Do you have a problem with that?

Jenny apparently doesn't think I can pass for 24 anymore.

But she still makes one hell of a cake.

Amy skirted the age issue all together by making capuccino mug cupcakes.  See, it's a chocolate-covered wafflebowl with a chocolate cupcake inside.  And lots of frosting.  Which really is the important part.  Don't you think?

Not edible, but pretty.

It's possible that I already spent all three of the Target giftcards that I received.  I started with this.  Then I got this, this (but in pink) and this.

Then on Sunday, we rested.

The end.

You say it's your Birthday? Well, it's my Birthday to(morrow).

It would be tempting, as I face down this 29th Birthday, to dwell on the things I don't have (say, for instance, a permanent job) or haven't accomplished (e.g., finishing a novel, getting married, skydiving) so I have decided to compile a little list of accomplishments in order to make myself feel better about my newly advanced age.  Here is Lori's Birthday List of Achievements and Interesting Life Experiences So Far.

Visited 32 states and one federal district.  Coming soon...Nevada!  (If you live in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, North or South Dakota, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, or South Carolina, can I stay with you?)

Stepped foot in 1 ocean, 1 gulf, 2 seas, and 3 Great Lakes.

Been to 3 continents and 12 countries (if you count Belgium, which I do, despite only having ridden through on a train).

Seen 2 natural wonders of the world (Niagara Falls and Grand Canyon).

Attended professional football, baseball, hockey, and soccer games, and rodeo.  (Also attended professional wrestling match as a child, but this hardly seems to fit in the same category.)  [And basketball!  I knew I was forgetting one...]

Drove a tank.

Attended Inauguration, Senate confirmation hearings for Colin Powell and John Ashcroft, and saw Supreme Court in session.

Appeared numerous times in The Janesville Gazette, the paper of record in Central Rock County.

Attended live taping of 2 TV shows.

Sold 1 magazine article.

Been to top of Sears Tower, Hancock Building, Empire State Building, Washington Monument, Eiffel Tower.

Watched Packers win Superbowl (seems likely to be a once-in-my-lifetime event.)

Saw several shows on Broadway and many more off.

Brainwashed Indoctrinated Educated hundreds of students.

Frolicked in rain.

Had 3 distinct hair colors (although 2 were short-lived).

Read a lot of good books.

Had picture taken with John Edwards, Sterling Sharpe, Mickey Mouse (not all together).

Authored wildly popular weblog.

Attended Christmas Tree lightings at White House and Rockefeller Center and Macy Day Parade.

Ran around on hallowed sod of Lambeau Field without shoes.

Ate the perfect pain au chocolat while walking down Champs Elysees.

Met, befriended, and loved many wonderful people.

And now Lori’s Birthday List of Things to Accomplish By Next Birthday (The Birthday Which Shall Not Be Named).

1. Get job in chosen field.
2. Skydive.
3. Try Korean food.

And finally, Lori’s Birthday List of Things to Accomplish on Birthday Weekend

1. Consume tasty beverages.
2. Eat cake. (Which, since I am the admin and choose the date of the monthly Birthday celebration, can be easily accomplished by close of business tomorrow!  Am Birthday overachiever!)
3. Enjoy company of family and friends.
4. Gracefully turn 24 years old for sixth consecutive year.

Black Tuesday

Let's begin with Valentine's Eve, shall we?  I was in SuperTarget, looking for this shirt, which my friend Vicki was wearing for her own V-Day observance.  Remember how I told you the thing about my ankles being bad?  So there I was, walking along when suddenly my boot heel went out from under me and my right ankle, the feckless wimp, did nothing to stop it.  I thought for a moment that I was going to recover, but it was not to be.  I landed smack on my knees between two racks of yoga pants.  On a positive note, the ankle was not sprained, so I was not forced to hobble, or worse, hop on one boot all the way out of SuperTarget.  Ideally, I would wear nothing but sensible, flat, rubber-soled shoes to avoid this type of situation, but what fun would those be? 

(And also, the worst ankle sprain I've ever suffered happened while wearing tennis shoes.  I was walking down some extremely uneven porch steps and landed on the side of my foot.  I also scraped the hell out of the back of my hand, but did not drop the campaign literature that I had been in the process of hanging on doors.  Now that's commitment.  Or total inability to make good split-second decisions.  Because I so would have sacrificed those door-hangers if I had realized that it meant keeping all of my skin.)

So anyway, I discovered when I got home from Target that my fall was executed in a spirit of great patriotism!  Because it was in keeping with the falls of several members of the US Olympic team.  Sure their falls happened while propelling themselves over sheets of ice or hurtling down snowy mountains, but allow me to say that Target linoleum is nothing if not slick.  Sadly, as is the case for so many Olympians, my fall put me out of medal contention.

Valentine's Day itself dawned bright and beautiful.  Sunlight streamed through my bathroom window, the better to see the new zit above the corner of my mouth by!  And then I went to the pool and got all ready to swim.  Then I pulled my swim cap over my hair, at which time it promptly ripped right up the back.  And I decided to pack it in and go home since there wasn't time to drive to the store, buy a new swim cap, drive back and swim enough laps to make it worthwhile before it was time to go to work.  (I know I haven't talked much about the swimming recently, but rest assured, it continues.)

Then for the real high point of my day.  I got to work to find a dozen roses and a balloon on my officemate's desk.  No big deal until she complained about it being embarrassing and how her boyfriend should have had to come into their meeting to deliver them so he'd have to be as embarrassed as she was.

Valentine tip #1: Whining about receiving roses for Valentine's Day makes you sound like a spoiled princess, upset that you didn't get that gold-plated pony instead.

I did, however, receive a box of Godiva chocolates from one of my students, God bless his mother.  And Newsweek still loves me, judging by its prompt appearance in my mailbox.  So it was an exciting night full of current events, dinner (I cooked, Internet!), Gilmore Girls, and Olympics with the roommates.

And now, if you'll excuse me, a new swim cap is not going to buy itself.  Nor will its cousin, a spare swim cap.

All the tacky tackiness

"...but truly, for mine own part,  if I were as tedious as a king, I could find it in my heart to bestow it all on your worship. " ~Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing

(Look at that--Shakespeare!  Let it not be said that Superfantastic is not a high-brow and literary blog!  Just before I get to the good part where I make fun of people and mock things!  Which is coming right now!)

Apparently quite a few people in the San Antonio area (and around the nation, I suspect) were feeling as tacky as The King (God rest his soul) and found it in their hearts to bestow all of that tackiness on their children's teachers.  Seriously, people, if you are at a loss for what to buy your child's teacher, I have two words for you and they are GIFT CARD.

But fortunately, for your blog-reading enjoyment, all too many parents did not receive this sage advice in time for the 2005 gifting season.  Which begat the First Annual Post-Christmas Re-Gifting Party.  All but two of us were teachers (well, one school-based speech language pathologist, but she receives the same variety of crap as the rest of us) and one non-teacher scored her gift from a teacher friend.  Some of these were secret Santa gifts gotten from other teachers, who seriously ought to know better.  Or else they were having the re-gifting without the party.

Anyway, we gathered for a little brunch and white elephant exchange of unfortunate gifts, which included several scented bath products, some ill-advised jewelry purchases, a few dollar store-eque holiday decorations, and one fiber optic nightlight.  But none of these bad gifts could hold a candle to the mother of all bad gifts, the Titanic of bad taste...I give you, the Jesus clock!

It's a graven image that also tells time!  Note how the hands resemble antennae sprouting from the baby Jesus's forehead!  Enjoy the fine faux-wood finish!  I ask you, how better to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior than with a fine quality Family Dollar, Inc. plastic timepiece!

What teacher wouldn't love to display this mantle clock/homage to the nativity in her home or classroom?  Probably you should ask the teacher who lovingly re-gifted this piece of crap to another unsuspecting teacher. 

And to the parent, whoever you are, shame on you!  I want you to write "I will not buy any more cheap and useless crap for my child's teacher" 100 times.  Well, get to it!  And this is definitely going on your permanent record, Mister or Missy.  In ink.

Auld Acquaintance and whatnot

Happy New Year, folks!  Who can believe that it's already 2006?  Because I really can't. 

I can remember being in 2nd grade and we figured out how old we'd be in the year 2000.  I'm sure I had some trouble with this assignment as it was math-intensive, but I do remember finally realizing that I'd be 23 and really really old.  And then Y2K was upon us and everyone flipped out and people thought I was crazy for taking the electricity-powered Metro into DC, fearing that I'd have a long and dark walk back to Virginia once civilization as we knew it came crashing down around us.  When, in reality, I had a good time watching the big show at the Lincoln Memorial, hosted by Will Smith, featuring performances by lots of random people paired awkwardly and also lots of John Fogerty because the Commander-in-Chief was there and apparently Bill Clinton loves him some CCR.  Then there were ridiculous amounts of fireworks, followed by a lot of people leaving at midnight just before Bono showed up and did a show.  Suckers!  And of course there were the drunks who splashed around in the reflecting pool despite the fact that it was well below freezing.  Good times.  I almost had the feeling back in my feet by the time we walked the mile or so to a Metro stop, where lo and behold, everything worked just fine.  It just doesn't pay to worry.

This year was quite a bit more sedate...a party at my sister's and friends' house.  We busted out my Texas Hold 'Em for Dummies set that I received for Christmas and I won the game.  Nevermind that no one I was playing against had ever played before.  Neither had I, but apparently I've watched way more Celebrity Poker Showdown.  Also there were Taboo and Outburst and homemade queso.

New Year's Eve always gets me thinking about resolutions and how I never make them because I am apparently just critically undermotivated.  Or realistic.  I saw Wanda Sykes on the Tonight Show recently and she said she makes the same resolution every year: not to stab anyone.  So far she's kept it every time.  So maybe I'll steal Wanda's because I feel pretty confident about my ability to go a full 12 months without stabbing a single person.  Or I could go with Friends' Ross's resolution of no divorces this year.  I'm pretty sure I could pull that off as well.

Sure, I could go the traditional "I'll work out more, eat better, be nicer to people, blah, blah, blah" route, but really how long would any of that last?  And how do you measure be nicer to people?  How about if I resolve to be less crabby?  (Resolving not to participate in fantasy football in '06 may be helpful here.)  Perhaps I could resolive to make an attempt to be just 5 minutes late all of the time instead of 10?  But none of this crazy give up chocolate or coffee craziness.  See the less crabby resolution above.  These would definitely be at odds.  Because sometimes a girl just needs a mocha.

The Christmas Roundup

So how was your Christmas?  Mine?  Oh, pretty good, thanks for asking.

It was my first Christmas not in the frozen tundra.  Sure, there was that one year when we went to Florida but we didn't leave until Christmas day so we did the freezing cold/snow thing for the whole run-up to Christmas, allowing me to get in the proper holiday spirit.  And yet, this year on Christmas Eve it was in the 70s here.  How is a girl supposed to dress for Christmas Eve church under those sort of conditions? 

(This girl decided to wear a suit, of all things, because she owns three and has had no occasion to wear one since leaving DC.  Which is just a waste of decent clothes and pretty, pretty Italian shoes gotten for free from a co-worker whose aunt brought them back for her and whom they didn't fit.)

Anyway, my sister Lisa and I did the Christmas Eve thing at her church, followed by Chinese delivery with Lisa's roommate Jenny.  Who opened a gift comprised of whole box of baking utensils, about which she was actually excited.  I, for obvious reasons, received no baking utensils this year.  For which we can all be thankful.

Then on Christmas morning, Lisa and I went to my church and then on to our parents' new house here in balmy South Texas.  Of course, it is NEVER balmy in my parents' house, so I packed a fleece and warm socks to ward off the "Mom's having hot flashes" chill.  We sat down to dinner and I, apparently having narrowly edged out my sister for the "most religious person at the table" title, was chosen to say the blessing.  I was hungry, and thus it was brief.  The real highlight of the meal was a pumpkin dessert made by my brother, which was apparently one part pumpkin goo, nineteen parts butter.

Then on to the gifts.  The role of present-hander-outer was played by my brother whose lust for gifts and impatience for opening them rivals that of any kindergartener you know.  We are required to make at least one guess before opening anything, with my sister and I always using "diamond tennis bracelet" as a standard fall-back answer. 

So there we were, my brother dividing gifts into piles for evenness of distribution, my dad loudly and regularly reminding everyone that the largest gift was for him (it was a grill, which he knew full well) and two of us repeating the phrase "diamond tennis bracelet" every time another box came our way.  No diamond tennis bracelets this year, but I did receive some sweatpants for wearing to the pool that were wrapped in the box for a heating pad endorsed by George Burns.  My mother never gets rid of anything.  Ever.  For any reason.

Which, thankfully, includes receipts.  Not that I was thinking of returning anything...

Once the presents were opened, wrapping paper cleared, and the grill and my new copier/printer/scanner/fax converted to footstools for my dad and I, the Packer game was turned on.  Which brought no holiday joy to anyone except my traitorous brother who turned Bear fan back in the 80s.  Not that he didn't pay for that decision later in many years of the Bears sucking.  And then he moved to Baltimore a few years ago and became a Ravens fan.  Good move, Dan.  Excellent timing.

Finally the Trivial Pursuit game was produced.  The Trivial Pursuit battle of the sexes grudge match is a big geeky tradition in our family.  We women, tragically short on baseball knowledge, lucked out with a fashion question on the sports & leisure category and narrowly defeated the men.  To be fair, there were four of us (Lisa, Mom, me, and my sister-in-law Dawn) versus just the two of them.  But this is more equal than you might think since my dad knows almost everything.  Too bad for him that the "freakish ability to memorize random and useless facts" gene was passed down to both of his daughters.

I managed to leave without any leftovers, a feat in and of itself.  And that, folks, is an exciting peek inside a glamorous holiday with my family.  God, family, and the Green Bay Packers, in the immortal words of Coach Lombardi.  Who, incidentally, also never bought me a diamond tennis bracelet.

Short Attention Span Caroling

In church, Christmas morning, we were singing Angels We Have Heard on High and we got to the Glo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ria part.  While I was singing along with everyone, my thought process went something like this:

There was some movie with a choir singing this...what movie...right, Girls Just Want to Have Fun...Sarah Jessica Parker sneaking out to dance...Helen hunt created the diversion by breaking into the Bananaman song...Helen Hunt...she was good in Mad About You...she hasn't done anything in a long time...I wonder what happened to her...why do they call it the Bananaman song when it's about Mr. Tallyman?...whoa, in church singing Christmas songs...FOCUS!...I should post about this...it would be funny to list all of these random thoughts in italics with ellipses between...at least I think it would be funny...I'll have to remember to write it when I get home...how can I make sure I remember...Melissa had that idea the other night but she didn't write it down and she forgot...I can't write it down now...in church...SINGING!!!!!!

So now you see the sort of thing that's constantly going on in my head while most people think I'm engaged in whatever is going on around me.  And the reason why it was probably a good thing that I went to church Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Maybe I got enough out of the two services to equal one undivided-attention-type experience.  But probably not.  Aren't you proud of me though for remembering to post this?  And where has Helen Hunt been anyway?

It's Beginning to Feel A Lot Like April, Except for the Mad Shopping Insanity

First of all, welcome to Christmas in Texas:

Now, on to my crazy Target shopping trip of craziness.  I needed four things, one of which I forgot upon entering the store, but which came back to me later.  First, I needed to find the picture frames, which at not-SuperTarget are not where they belong.  So despite the fact that I circled the store endlessly just last week to find the picture frames, I spent an eternity yet again trying to find them.  Item one, down.

Item two was lotion.  Come to find out that Target now makes its own version of Jergens products.  Sign me up.  If you ever come to my house in need of pain medication, you can have your choice of Targuprofen or Targcedrin.  Perhaps you have a cold and can't sleep?  How about some Targquil?  I swear, if Target made cars, instead of a hip and trendy Ford Focus, I'd be driving an almost indistinguishable Targcus.  Or a Forget!  Ha!

Item three: a hairdryer.  Recently I've been going through hairdryers the way most people go through Target Brand Raisin Bran.  Or is that just me too?  Anyway, I located the hairdryer department where there were 60,000 almost identical hairdryers to choose from.  The last one I had was the cord-keeper, which was also the one I had before that.  Since both of these had tragically short lifespans, I thought I'd go crazy and get a different model.  So basically I  closed my eyes, lunged forward, and bought the one that I blindly knocked off the shelf.

The fourth and final item: sunglasses.  I've had the same square tortoiseshell sunglasses from TJ Maxx for over 2 years, which I believe is 37 in sunglass years.  Except that the tiny screw on one side constantly falls out, and finally despite the fact that I love these sunglasses, I give up.  I bought a similar pair last year at Wal-Mart which I recently lost.  In general, my style is fairly casual and I typically don't buy anything too, well, interesting because 1) I don't really like people looking at me and 2) I don't believe I'm cool enough to pull it off.  But for some reason, I feel that I can pull off huge Jackie O/Audrey Hepburn shades.  You know, with my t-shirt and jeans.  So I tried on some massive round black frames, but they had weird squared off corners on top.  I tried on different colors of J-Lo shades, but the little nose pad things got stuck in my hair when I put them on top of my head.  I refuse to wear anything mirrored.  If you love mirrored sunglasses, more power to you.  It's just a lifestyle choice that I refuse to make. 

I wound up getting essentially the very same square tortoiseshell sunglasses I've been wearing all this time.  Except apparently that little bend where they go over your ear is just too pedestrian for Isaac Mizrahi's discount couture sensibilities.  So these sort of stick awkwardly back into my hair.  But I had been in Target with the screaming children and the frantic parents and the scent of Starbucks trying to lure me over there and off my budget for several hours (or, you know, 25 minutes), so I had to finish the list and Get Out of Dodge.

Only two shopping days left!  Just in case you were wondering, I prefer silver over gold and my mp3 player is busted.  Or you could do as the Christian bookstore radio commercial I heard today advised and Give the Gift of Jesus.  Apparently He is on special over there.

When ADD and French baked goods collide

I had a plan, folks.  Which can only lead to one thing: unmitigated disaster.

It was last Friday and we were hosting a Christmas Party/Dessert Buffet (or as I preferred to call it: the holiday sugar orgy) and I had the afternoon to bake fudge-mint brownies and a buche de noel cake (from the French for "giant Swiss cake roll"), clean the entire house, and become party-presentable.

The plan was: 1)bake the buche de noel cake, 2)bake brownies while buche de noel cools, 3)fill cooled buche de noel with cool whip, 4) clean house, 5)shower.

So I started baking the first buche de noel.  (See that word first?  That's what we in the business call "foreshadowing.")  I didn't exactly read the directions though and instead of beating the sugar in with the eggs separately, I combined it with the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt) but went ahead with the cake.  While it baked, I did make the brownies.  Still on schedule.

Then I opened the oven to find a cake that was half charred/half bubble.  No problem.  Throw away cake, put brownies in oven, start making buche de noel #2.  Remember the thing about the sugar.  Check.

Once you bake the buche de noel, you need to roll it up in a towel that has been covered with powdered sugar.  So I did the sugared towel thing while the cake baked and then went to pour the leftover powdered sugar into a baggie, but thought wait, I should leave this in the bag so I can tell the difference between this and the flour in the baggie....NOOOOOOOOOOO!

Holiday Baking Tip #1: If you use powdered sugar instead of flour, your cake will NOT turn out.

Because of course the flour was not so much flour so much as it was powdered sugar from the time I made the buche de noel for my company Christmas party last year (which I might point out not only turned out on take 1, but my boss was sad that I couldn't make it to the party this year because I couldn't bring the cake.  Which may not say much for my boss's desire to hang out with me, but should prove to you people that I can in fact bake a mean buche de noel given the correct ingredients.)  So I tossed yet another cake, drove to HEB, bought flour, and executed an edible, if not perfect buche de noel upon my return.

Ta-Da!!!!!!!!!

The Ghost of Christmas Alone

I have had a revelation.  Christmas is not all about me.  Whoa.  Ok, I suppose this might be apparent to the rest of you, but I was more shocked by this idea than I'd care to admit.

This came to me while I was in the midst of a full-on holiday-induced pity party because I'm single and will have to go to holiday parties with no date when everyone else will have a husband/fiance/boyfriend and I'll be the only single one there and even the high school boy is bringing his girlfriend and everyone will be giving me single person pity or asking when I'm going to get married or maybe talking to each other about how sad it is that I can't find anyone and how it's a shame since I have a good personality and don't even get me started on New Years because the entire holiday is built around parties which require dates to avoid patheticness and being the only one standing there with no one to kiss at midnight.

For whatever reason, this year has been exponentially more difficult on that front.  I had no boyfriend last year at holiday time and yet, the joy and merriment of the season was in no way reduced due to that fact.  This year my state of aloneness is threatening to suck the joy out of the most wonderful time of the year.  I feel myself turning into that girl (who, at holiday parties can honestly go one of two ways: sitting in the corner crying in her eggnog OR sitting in the corner having an ill-advised drunken make-out with a male co-worker of questionable attractiveness.)  If I continue down this path, I fear that the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come will show me scary bitter old woman Lori who chain smokes, has nineteen cats, and who the neighborhood children believe is a witch.  Yikes.

So there I was, staring at the Christmas tree and feeling sorry for myself.  When it occurred to me that Christmas is not, in fact, about me.

The joy associated with the holiday is meant to come from one event, the birth of Christ, which does not vary from year to year based on my level of personal happiness.  Every year it is just as amazing and awe-inspiring as the last.  God Almighty chose to give up heaven for 33 years to live as a human, hurt, cry, suffer, and ultimately die an excruciating death.  And He didn't come down riding on clouds.  He came as a helpless baby, dependent on a very young first-time mother and her not-quite husband.  And He did it for us.

And all of these parties are supposed to be in celebration of that.  An event to which no shepherd or wiseman is reported to have brought a date.  Because it wasn't about that and it still shouldn't be.  They were drawn there out of a need to worship the newborn King.  Whereas I've been spending my holiday season bowing down at the throne of what everybody else thinks.  No more.

So I found my Christmas joy again.  This year I just had to look a little bit harder.

No progress, however, in locating my New Year and (GAH!) Valentine joy.  Anybody know where I can get a good deal on some cats?

Good news! And photos!

I recently got an email from my sister with the subject Best News Ever! which contained this vital piece of information.  Apparently some person wrote into some magazine, the name of which I have forgotten, to ask whether cookie dough or cookies had more calories.  Now you're thinking the same thing Lisa thought and the same thing I thought.  They're the same, stupid.  Except, apparently not.  Apparently the baking somehow releases extra calories, so the dough has less.  Making it a sort of cookie light diet food!  I present this fact as a public service.

Now on to pictures of our Christmas-decorated house!  Because I can't think of anything to write!  And the Christmassiness is real pretty!

The tree!  Pretty, no?

Not enough tree coverage for you?  I have close ups!

Brett Favre and me as a brownie!

I made this circa 1979.  Yes, that is scotch tape.  Maybe don't scoff because it's been holding together for 26 years now and supporting as much glitter as they would apparently let 2 year-old me have.

Dear Santa,

Please leave us a time machine to go back and convince our landlord not to put up wallpaper.  We promise we've been good. 

Love, the 3 blondes

Kathryn collects nutcrackers.  There are many.  Is it just me or does the one on the right look vaguely menacing?  Whereas if Santa and Harry Potter had a baby, it would be the one on the left.

More to come!  But now I have to get in the shower and become presentable for work.

Thanksgiving in Review

Let's start with Thanksgiving Eve.  I saw Rent, of course, because that was when it came out.  And after that I had to go home and search the entire house to find the recipe for the pumpkin cheesecake.  At one point, I was ready to give up the hunt and get online to download a new recipe, but of course the DSL was doing its evil flashy thing and wouldn't let me in.  So I finally found it and had to go to the grocery store at 10pm the night before Thanksgiving.  Which I do not recommend.

I got what I could think of for the cheesecake on Tuesday night at SuperTarget, except for the pumpkin pie filling, which SuperTarget did not have.  Not so Super if you ask me.   I also noticed that the only eggs in our fridge had expired in July, so I thought I'd get some of those as well.  Plus we were out of Pop Tarts.  So there I was in line at HEB with my pumpkin pie filling, eggs, and cinnamon and brown sugar Pop Tarts and I had to wonder whether the check-out guy thought I was inventing a new dessert.  And then I had to wonder whether a person could make a pumpkin pie with a Pop Tart crust.  And now you're wondering too, aren't you?

So I built the cake and put it in the oven just before midnight.  And then read the recipe.  The part about the baking for 1 hour and 45 minutes.  And also the part about cooling in the oven for an additional hour.  So it was looking like a late night. 

My favorite part of the recipe is the very last instruction.  Chill.  So I did.  For two and a half hours while this thing baked and cooled.

And then my sister called at 9:30 am to ask me to bring something to my brother's that I immediately forgot upon hanging up the phone.  And then I watched some parade and ate some Pop Tarts.  Before getting in the shower roughly one hour late.  There was a parade, people!  Marching bands!  C-list celebrities!  Killer balloons!!! 

So I'm finally on my way out the door, cheesecake and wine in hand, when my brother calls to ask if I have any twine.  Which I do, a fact that I don't remember until 2 stores later.  They need some twine to tie the turkey's legs together so they can begin to cook it.  So no rush, but we won't eat for hours until after I arrive with twine, so get a move on!

Which leaves me driving around San Antonio with the AC on high in an effort to keep the cheesecake cool in the "fall" 80-degree weather trying to find an open store that stocks twine.  HEB, while helpful with the pumpkin goo and all, does not come through on the twine front.  Leaving me no choice.  There was no other way.  To save Thanksgiving, I had to go...to Wal-Mart.  Dun, dun dun...

Where I found twine, remembered I had twine at home, and bought the damn twine already.  The rest of the day was pleasantly drama-free.  The turkey, cooked by my sister-in-law, turned out beautifully.  I ate several metric tons of stuffing.  As well as some mashed potatoes, green beans, and cheesy bread.  And cranberry sauce.  The kind that retains the shape of the can.  Oh yes.  It's not Thanksgiving without can-shaped gelatinous cranberry substance!

Several days later, after we had digested, we ate some cheesecake.  And then I brought the rest home.  Over half a cheesecake.  Expect several extra chins in my near future.  Because pumpkin cheesecake is a terrible thing to waste and a wonderful thing to eat for breakfast.