A Lizardbreathian Year in Review

So, I only have about 33 minutes left of 2009 as I type these words. By the time I actually send my post out to rest on the thin strands of the interwebs, it will likely be deep (aka minutes) into 2010, and this year will be behind me.

So I feel like I owe you all, my tender and devoted readers (Hi, Jill in Romania!) a kind of recap of what this year has been like for me.

And I will do it with a list. Because. I feel like it.

1. Unemployment - So...the economy has been a little low lately. Although it's showing signs of perking, kind of like the plant you thought would be okay for the three weeks of vacation you took in the heat of midsummer with all the air conditioning turned off in your house, and you come back and it's basically a vaguely green puddle collapsed around its pot and you pour about a gallon of water over it just so you can tell yourself that you did all you could to save it, and so water seeps out the bottom and gets your tabletop all wet and after about a week one of the leaves starts lifting itself up just a little, as though the force of gravity was almost too much for it to bear. Yeah. The economy's been like that. And, unfortunately, although they're being used more than ever, libraries currently seem to be on the list of non-essentials when the funding pie is getting dished up, leaving the hefty slices to go to crazy things like fire departments and schools and stuff. (Ahaha. Of course I know that these services are essential. Pleasedonotsendmehatemail.) And the library gets that piece of burnt crust that's left over in the pan after all the other pieces are taken out. So, they're naturally not able to hire new librarians, so the recently graduated librarians (aka me) still remain jobless. Sigh.
   
2. Job Hunting - This has been my task for the past many months. Although, I have liberally sprinkled the in-between-hunts bits (and the avoiding filling in yet another lengthy and unnecessary application bits) with watching all five seasons of Lost and doing some freelance writing for my bro-in-law, who is a fantabulous foot doctor and is being way kind enough to pay me for it.
3. Whining about being unemployed and having to spend my time job hunting - This is an activity I engage in whenever people ask me how I'm doing. I'll kind of make a wry little grimace and then proceed to harangue them with anecdotes about libraries that are closing all around the U.S. and about how there are on average 2.5 billion applicants for every library position and that the human resources department are now using resumes as an alternative fuel source to save on heating bills. So, sorry folks. You know. If I've ranted at you for awhile. You're forgiven for clamping your ears shut and running away.
   
4. NaNoWriMo - I completed this for only the second time (although it was my second attempt as well, so I've won every time I've attempted it--yay me!) and I was, to put it frankly, totally proud of myself. Of course, I haven't touched the novel since. It's currently sitting at the point just after what I consider to be the most exciting scene I've written so far. So it's been kind of scratching at my brain, trying to get me to write it. And I'll probably give in. In January.
5. Family - Despite being jobless, and despite getting bouts of severe anxiety every time I remember that I have to pay over $500 a month now for the next ten years to repay my student loans (all this without a job...hmm...), I actually really, really love being here. I do get twinges of missing Boston now and then, particularly the awesome folks I hung with out there (shoutouts to school, work and church buddies!), but I'm loving life in the West. And I'm loving catching up on Gilmore Girls with my mom. And seeing an entirely adorable baby niece get progressively chubbier cheeks. In short, I may complain, but life's pretty darn good. So, I guess I can say 2009 was pretty darn good, too.
   

Five reasons why I am (surprisingly) not bitter today:

First of all, let me confess that it still really, really bugs me to be sitting next to some (loudly) kissy couple who are somehow both sitting on the other's lap while waiting for the T in some underground station or other, where the sounds of smacking lips and giggles reverberate with a strange persistence unexplained by science.

Maybe that means I'm still bitter? Not sure.

BUT, I'm not bugged by Valentine's Day today. Not even a little. And let me tell you why:

1. There is not anyone I'm currently pining over. Somehow, I think being single on Valentine's Day becomes about ten times more difficult when there's someone you desperately want, who for some inexplicable reason doesn't want you. I am more than happy not to be in that state right now (and I hope never to be in it again), so the most angst I could muster up today would likely be in the form of a faint nebulous longing, or perhaps general irritation. Nothing big, like heart-wrenching, soul-tearing, cry-into-one's-pillow yearning. Nope. Not this year.

2. I have a brownie mix and two pints of Ben & Jerry's in the freezer. (Er, just the Ben & Jerry's is in the freezer. Not the brownie mix. That would be weird.) 'Nuff said.

3. I don't have to pretend to be social when I don't want to be. If I want to stay in to read a book or cross-stitch or watch Master and Commander or Superman Returns or Persuasion, (and I often do), I can. No one is pushing me to go out into the freezing cold wind (although 'freezing cold' doesn't quite seem to convey the lacerating nature of Boston's winter air currents) to go to a movie I didn't really want to see anyway. Although, I guess this could be a bad thing as well as a good thing. But right now, I'm seeing it as a good thing.

4. I get really tense in crowded situations. Which would make dining out tonight (usually pretty much a must on V-day for any couple in which the male part does not cook) an opportunity for jittery nerves which would slowly and irrevocably evolve into a full-blown panic attack.

5. I like me. I like me right now. Which means that I like me on Valentine's Day as well as on a day that isn't Valentine's Day. Which means that I'm not going to stop liking me and start being unhappy just because it is Valentine's Day. I like that I'm going to be a professional librarian (cross fingers, please!) within the next few months. I like that I like books and dogs and PBS and that I have brown eyes.

So frankly, Mr. St. Valentine's Day demon, you're going to try a heck of a lot harder to get me to feel bad today. Like maybe make my refrigerator break so my ice cream all melts and I can't consume it while reading a delightful novel after all. (Not that I want to give you any ideas or anything. So you can just ignore that last bit, okay?)

Look, I won't trash your traditions if you don't trash mine.

Every family has its holiday traditions.

Every family.

And I know that in some families holiday traditions consist of who is able to belch the loudest during the commercial breaks of the Rose Bowl. Still others celebrate holidays by dredging up all the old family dirty laundry that's been comfortably buried in piles of other dirty laundry for years and years and is now crawling with mildew (yes, mildew would crawl in this situation) and possibly young families of mice.

Others carol, tell tales of the histories of their people, light candles, swap embarrassing and heart-warming stories about the childhood exploits of blushing siblings, take road trips, watch movies, put together puzzles, do enormous amounts of baking, visit neighbors and elderly relatives and soup kitchens and heck, maybe even animal shelters.

My family does a lot of that too.

But our most persistent holiday tradition?

We get sick. Very, very sick.

And this year we played out our ol' familiar tradition in style.

The sickness can come from any direction, really, and it doesn't have to be any kind of sickness in particular, just something that knocks the majority of us down for at least a day or two, just enough to significantly reduce the amount of quality family time we're able to spend together during the holiday season (that is, if you don't count competing over who gets the highest recorded fever as 'quality family time').

This year, my older sister and her family got sick first. They all started experiencing some significant abdominal distress a couple of days after my youngest sister's wedding (the last of the girls to marry--other than me--hah!) but thought it had moved through and on by the time they came to my parents' house on Christmas Eve.

So they came, and we played and laughed and watched movies and ate cake and caroled around the piano and told embarrassing (and sometimes heart-warming) stories about each other. And it was great. We even thought we had escaped a general family sickness, since my older sister's family appeared unlikely to pass it on, and although my mom had been quite sick with a flu-like cold during my sister's wedding, (extremely unfortunate, but she fought through it like a trooper), the cold didn't appear to be spreading.

This is why my onset of nausea after eating Christmas dinner was somewhat distressing. But even more distressing was vomiting bits of turkey and mashed potatoes out of my nose a few hours later. And hearing everyone else vomit their assorted semi-digested eatings later that evening, in the middle of the night, and into the morning and afternoon of the day after Christmas, including my two-and-a-half-year and six-month-old nephews. (In fact, probably the worst part was hearing my six-month-old nephew crying because he was hungry, but couldn't eat because A: if he did eat, he was likely to throw up and B: my sister hadn't eaten anything for about 18 hours, and thus didn't have any mammary-produced sustenance with which to feed him.)

We're all feeling pretty okay now. A cleansing of the entire system (the entire system, I assure you) and plenty of ginger ale, juice popsicles and an assortment of bananas and toast has brought most of us back to about 90% of normal. And my sister and brother-in-law (parents of the two nephews) who had intended to stay with us only a few days have now spent many more days with us, due to being all sick and unable to get up and stuff, so that's been a boon of sorts.

And you know, I've been thinking. In all honesty, I'd take the 'puking and/or feverish colds every holiday season' over 'family fights and not speaking to each other every holiday season' any day.

So, I guess if we have to pick one terrible family tradition, this one isn't the worst. Maybe, when it comes to holidays, something that 'isn't the worst' might be pretty good after all.

Merry Christmas, everyone. And a happy, HEALTHY, new year.

Tying up loose ends

This is the post in which I am SO going to catch up.

Yes, that's right--I am going to fill you in on all the happenings of the last severalish weeks, those happenings which I failed to relate because I am just a lazy blob of goo.

Glurp.

(Uh. That's the noise that goo makes?)

In any case, lemme talk about New York City.

Okay--first of all, I had no idea that Boston was just a small town until I went to NYC. It's true! I got there and the buildings just went on and on and on forever. Seriously. There's no way that many buildings can be crammed onto Manhattan island. It defies the laws of space and time. And it's not just that buildings go on forever--the skyscrapers go on forever! It's like you're in this man-made system of canyons and mesas and...really tall steel hills and stuff. It's crazy! And BIG. And BUSY. And there are holy-hecka lots of people.

And I had a hard time with the humidity, but I think that was more just an adjustment from Utah weather (roughly 20% humidity on the wet days) to eastern weather (about 80% humidity on the dry and 'refreshing' days).

So, my roommate and I went down on the bus, which was actually fairly cheap. On the way down, I brought a couple of books to read and ended up spending most of my time just looking out the window. I do that on trips, whether it's by plane or car or train or stagecoach, and I'm not quite sure why. Maybe I just want to catch a glimpse of all those intervening places I've never been (and likely never will be). Also, I love seeing things I've never seen before. Like this morning, while my whites and darks were dutifully getting washed, I meandered up into the neighborhoods near my apartment. And even though I got rather wet when the rain decided to say, "To heck with all you Fourth of July Celebrateurs! I will be dastardly weather and foil all your plans! Haha!" I loved seeing the green of trees I'd never looked at before, loved the slightly misty unfamiliar landscape, spotted by blue and maroon and dark brown and bright yellow houses that were all tucked back behind bushes and stone fences.

But hey--I was talking about NYC, right?

Anyway--so we got to the bus stop and towed our luggage over to where you can get day-of discount Broadway tickets. Where we waited in line for awhile. And then we got tickets! To Gypsy! (And it was pretty fantastic, I tell ya what.)

We dumped our stuff of at our hotel, which was located about a block over from Rockefeller Center. And here's a view from our window (on the very topmost floor, thankyouverymuch):



Yah. It's like that. Everywhere.

Okay, and here's the huge gold dude that's in the middle of Rockefeller Center:


Yep. Don't know what else to say about him. Except that he really IS that gold-looking in real life! Pretty fancy stuff.

Okay, so that evening, we stopped off at the M&Ms World Store and indulged ourselves in purchasing bags of M&Ms in unusual colors. The mix in the picture below is called 'Whatever Colors Lizardbreath Happened to Find Interesting.' Also, I was reading my scriptures at the time? Tail end of Omni, looks like.


The next morning, my roommate and I tried to go see the Statue of Liberty all up close and personal. Unfortunately, I slept well into the morning, and so we didn't get to the ferry until rather later in the day, at which time the line to board was roughly the length of Manhattan Island. So, we opted to take pictures from the shore:


Aaand, I decided that this old couple was pretty fantastic. So, I snapped their picture in front of the Statue of Liberty. (I know--I'm just so generous.)


Because we were in that part of Manhattan, we decided to go see the World Trade Center site, and on the way we saw this fantastic old building that used to be the Old Customs House:


(I'm just so into juxtapositioning! Aren't you?)

Also en route, we saw Trinity Church (yes, of National Treasure fame):


And Wall Street (here's the sign for your viewing pleasure):


The World Trade Center Site is currently a very large pit under construction in the heart of the city.


I've always felt a little disconnected from the events of September 11th, mainly because I was on my mission at the time (basically a month before I came home), so everything I knew about it was second-hand, people we visited giving accounts of things they'd seen on TV in hushed voices with widened eyes. I saw a few still photos, but no TV coverage until a year after I'd been home. So, I don't know--seeing where all this happened made everything more tangible to me, and I feel like I moved a little closer to being, like all the other Americans, someone who was part of the events of that day.

Um.

So, on with the journey?

That night, my roommate and I went to see Curtains, starring David Hyde Pierce. And it was. Holy. Fantastic. Also fantastic was that the cast of the musical signed programs and whatnot on their way out of the theatre after the performance. So, we got to meet them all. Including DHP himself. Did I already say fantastic? Well. Double it.

And here I am (darkly) in Times Square, which we passed through numerous times during the weekend on our way to and from stuff. Yeah. About NYC being crowded? Pictoral proof, folks.


And here I am, attempting to be clever with the mirrors in the hotel room. Yeah. Good times.


On Sunday, we decided to expand our cultural horizons by attending Mass at Saint Patrick's Cathedral. Also, it was about a 2 minute walk from our hotel room. Then, later, we changed and went up to Central Park, where we relished numerous delicious skyscraper-and-parkland juxtapositions like this:


Gorgeous. And way fun.

And then we came home!

And now I am completely tuckered out from recounting all (er, well, 'most of') my NYC adventures, so I will cease and desist. At which you give great cries of thanks.

Oh, also, Happy Independence Day! I am even now deciding to stay home and watch the fireworks on TV. Mostly because I don't feel like braving the combination of heavy crowds and possible rainshowers. And I'm just so comfortable here with my computer. And.

And I'm a lazy bum. Bother.

It never does feel different.

It's 2008.

And, like every year, we get together as a family and drink sparkling cider and watch about the last 60 seconds or so of the countdown to the new year and then we all shout, "Happy New Year!" and then my parents go to bed while the rest of us play video games for another few hours. (And blog.)

And I don't know why, but every time that final countdown rolls around and we spring over into the new year, I always expect to feel just a little bit different, and always inevitably feel pretty much the same as I felt at 11:55. Or 8:42. It's like waking up on your birthday morning, knowing you've just put a +1 onto your age, and finding yourself astonished to still be indisputably you, only older by the night of sleep you just had.

I wonder why I keep thinking I should feel different, why I keep expecting these tiny moments to seem significant. My experience over the past (nearly) thirty years has made me realize time and again that moments, while you're in them, rarely feel significant at all. It's usually only in looking forward to moments or looking back on them that things seem to gain weight.

I'm not sure why that is. Is it wishful thinking that makes us think moments ahead will feel important? Is it hindsight that allows us to perceive our pasts as significant? And why do we not feel it at all in the present?

I don't know any of it. And my Boston clock says it's 4:41am, and my Utah clock says it's 2:41am, and my biological clock simply says it's DARN late/early/aTimeIShouldBeInBed, so I probably won't meander any longer tonight. Er, this morning.

But...well... Happy New Year anyway.

And happy 400th post, while I'm at it.

Happy Happy Christmas Morning!

This morning the four unmarried children in my family sat around the Christmas tree with our parents and opened gifts. It was lovely. Small, and intimate and lovely.

But for all of you who weren't here with us, I just wanted to send out a general: Merry Christmas!

Because I'm thinking of you too.

Have a wonderful Christmas day.

The For Real Deal

Okay, folks.

I just want to get this right out of the way:

It's my birthday today! For real this time!

So, for all of you who have already wished me a happy birthday on my pre-birthday-celebration post, thank you.

For all of those who have not done so, you have until the end of today.

That is all.

(Ohyeah. And extra points if you know what the title of this post is from.)

Joyeux anniversaire, un peu tôt.

(Translation: Happy Birthday, a little early.)

Happy Birthday to ME! Early!

Today was a wonderful, marvelous, very good day. I went down to see my Uncle & Aunt down a ways southwest of Boston. I spent most of the time sitting in the kitchen, talking with my aunt and two girl cousins and enjoying the antics of the toddler daughters of said cousins. But I also spent some time outside, enjoying my Aunt & Uncle's beautiful yard, which you can see here:


And here:


(By the way, can I just confess that I find it amazing and wonderful that here in the east the un-landscaped bits of your yard turn into FOREST? How cool is that? You have to WEED freaking TREES. Haha! So cool!)


And also, I found a pansy growing in a crack between some stone steps. Yeah. So. Here's a picture of it.

Aaaaaand, speaking of flowers, here's my happy early birthday present:


But the best (early) birthday present of all? Knowing you all are here, reading my blog, being my friends. Awwwww.

No, not really. Really it was the Black Forest Chocolate Cake with Fresh Raspberries. (It was so good, I HAD to capitalize it.) And I have one piece left over. And to save my pancreas, I'm not going to eat it tonight. No, no. That pleasure will wait until after church tomorrow. Oh, the joy of anticipation!

Ohyeah and fireworks.

Er. Yes.

One of my companions (the one from Texas) told me once that this was her favorite holiday.

So, in her honor, I wish you all a happy Independence Day!

Addendum: Hoorah! I just got to see the fireworks! From my window! I didn't actually go out to watch them because I'm just that lame. (Seriously, people; I'm actually not kidding about this.) But I'm so happy! Because there they are, bursting above the trees, making me feel like America isn't really sliding downhill faster than a miniature poodle in a greased sled. (Uh. Weird image.) And also I don't have to ride the T home when it's impossibly crowded. And also I don't have to stand in the rain for hours waiting for the sparks to fly.

So, yes. I'm happy.

Bleak

I once sent myself a box of Conversation Hearts on Valentine's Day.

It wasn't so much that I wanted people to think I had a boyfriend. (Slim chance, that.) It was more that I liked Conversation Hearts and I wanted to eat some.

Now I'm ashamed.

Because I realize Conversation Hearts are pretty gross anyway.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Pajama Girl (Or 'Pyjama Girl' if you're British)

We are a family of many Christmas Traditions.


These include Putting Up Christmas Decorations While In a Tiff With Each Other, (which actually didn't happen this year, oddly enough...), Teasing Siblings Mercilessly About How Much They'll Like the Present I Bought Them (which only I practice, I believe), Getting Sick of Candy Neighbors Bring Over and Eating It Anyway, Trying to Watch the George C. Scott "A Christmas Carol" and Falling Asleep Halfway Through It and Then Waking Up to the Awful Screeches of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.


And oh. We have many more.


But we've never been one of those lucky pajama families, with that lucky pajama tradition. You know--the one where on Christmas Eve, everyone opens a present and it's a pair of new pajamas and you wear them to bed and you're all warm and snuggled in your spiffy PJs and you wake up on Christmas morning and are still wearing them as you open your presents.


And let me tell you--I've felt the lack of this holiday tradition.


Well, this year we didn't get pajamas on Christmas Eve, per usual.


But we did get PJs on Christmas morning! Hwowza! And here they are! (Er, well...here mine are. Everyone else's are not subject to photography. At least not while I am lazily sitting on the couch blogging.) (And no, I am not wearing them in this picture. I'm not quite that...shapeless. Not quite.)

In fact, I am wearing these spiffy and fuzzy and new PJs right this very moment. And you know--they're just as great as I've always dreamed.

And a very merry one at that

I'm afraid I'm a very negligent blogger. So, because I earlier failed to do so, and because most of you are still in time zones where it's still officially December 25th, I heartily wish you all a very Merry Christmas. I hope it was lovely and joy-filled for all of you.

And also because I've been awake since about 5:30 this morning, I think that's all I'll say. Merry Christmas, everyone.

And God bless us, every one.

What is like falling in love

I've remembered what this was now.

It's music.

Like the music I heard last night, some pieces ethereal and some rousing and energetic. It felt very much like falling in love, that sensation that flares in your chest and rushes out to your shoulders and down to our feet, making you want to race something and strain your legs against the earth, but also to stand unmoving on the crest of a hill while the wind blows through you.

Saying that it was lovely stuff would be true but not accurate. But I can't really think of anything better to say.

For those of you still in Utah (darn few of you), if you have the chance to attend the MoTab Christmas concert with Sissel (who, by the way, has convinced me that I really can become an instant fan of a Norwegian Singing Sensation who, despite an admittedly odd haircut, has one of the loveliest voices I've heard in ages) then you will love it. Period.

If you don't have a chance to attend, at least tune in to the weekly MoTab Sunday morning broadcast at 9:30am (Mountain Time) on KSL for a brief taste of it.

You know. If you feel like it.

A Slightly Irregular Wish List

For all of you out there who are thinking about buying me a smashingly wonderful Christmas gift, (i.e. none of you), I have finally found a gift for me, one that I will love and cherish and adore for the rest of me days.

Now I know that the spirit of Christmas is all about giving, and believe me, I would never have risked my flesh and unbroken bones in the mass of shoppers on Black Friday (i.e. the day after Thanksgiving) to find those few perfect gifts that also happened to be on sale if I weren't interested in giving, giving, giving away just like the Little Stream.

But, because I've had trouble thinking of exactly what I wanted to receive, (I usually just buy stuff I want...when I have enough money...), I thought I would make it easier for any of you. Who happen to want to give me stuff. Um.

In any case, while I was working in the Juvenile section of the HBLL at BYU, I ran across an old picture book called The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine. The pictures are basically cutouts of Victorian-era engravings, and the story is a hodgepodge of strange events and bizarre characters, including a pirate who has knitted his own beard. I was wowed. I wanted one for myself. (The book, not the beard-knitting pirate, although that would be cool too...)

However, when I went to try to find the book, I discovered to my everlasting dismay that it was out of print.

Alackaday!

And yet what were my triumphant rejoicings when today I received an email update about news in the Juvenile Lit publishing industry and found that The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine has been reissued! (They were great indeed. Er...my rejoicings, that is.) And I looked! And it was there! On Amazon!

So, for those of you who are just racking your brains (ouch!) trying to figure out exactly what to get lil' ol' me for Christmas, here's your hint, your one major hint.

Except...if more than one of you intends to get this for me, I would have several copies of The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine. And then I would have to donate copies to local elementary schools and literacy programs in South America, and the poor children would be very confused about the strange disjointed tale and would probably end up working in some terrible industry, like fast food, because they were so disturbed by it.

So maybe I should just buy this for myself. Yes. Yes. Just nevermind this whole blog post.

Please.

For one thing we give thanks above all

I must admit--I can be a bit of a scrooge. I'm the one who winces when coworkers break out their Christmas music CDs the day after Halloween, the one who glares at the Christmas decorations that appear on store shelves right next to the swimsuits and beach balls.

Fortunately, by the time Thanksgiving rolls around I'm usually resigned to the idea of the Christmas Holiday Season finally being here, as well as a bit ashamed of my reluctance to enter into the spirit of said season. That was the way I felt today, or rather last night if you want to be particular.

And I suddenly realized what a serendipitous thing it is that the holiday of Thanksgiving is just a month before Christmas. It's Thanksgiving that makes us remember that all good things come from God, from the turkey & jello salad to the birth of a new nephew into the family. Then, just as the holiday closes, we're rushed right into another even busier, hectic holiday season. But this holiday is the celebration of a life for which we should give the greatest thanks of all.

On this Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for my family and for all the wonderful, delicious food which is, even now, bulging my stomach out to indecent proportions.

But most of all I'm thankful that God did choose to send His Only Begotten Son, and that the Son perfectly obeyed the will of His Father in all things, both setting an immaculate example for us to follow and freeing us from being trapped forever by our own stupid, persistent errors.

I'm finally grateful for the Christmas season. I'm finally being a little more grateful for Christ.

Of Haircuts and Happy Birthdays

I had a good day today.

Without going into too much detail, let's just say that I got a good haircut (my opinion of which is, of course, subject to my attempts to style it tomorrow morning...) and I got to buy books (two novels by Ursula LeGuin, plus Bleak House and Middlemarch) and eat LOTS of Italian-style food (mmm...delicious Italian-style food...) in which marinara sauce figured a prominent role.

However, there is one thing that would have made my birthday perfect: if my nephew had been born today. Now, he's got only a little over two hours to make the date, and I have a feeling he...well...he just won't make it. My poor younger sister has been longing for this baby to pop out for many days now and my nephew is just being stubborn. (Methinks he likes the womb.)

So, while it would have been cool to share a birthday with my sister's kid, still it'll be fun to just share August as a birthday month with him. You know, it's kind of funny--I arrived rather early into the world (I was actually born 19 days early, which means I was due on September...lemme think here...*counts days on her calendar*...September 12th) and this baby seems determined to stick it out in his mother's abdomen for as long as possible.

Okay--I'm exaggerating. The kid's actually not due until August 31st, but we're all still anxious to see him anyway, and find out whether he resembles my sister or her husband more and whether or not he'll be bald for the first year or so of his life, and whether he'll be a towhead like his parents. (Genetically speaking, it's pretty likely.)

Anyway--huh. Kind of diverged on my topic here. So, long & short of it: Good Birthday. Good Haircut. Gooooooood cake. Good night.

(Oh--and about Boston...I want to get out there more than ever, but I'm still uncertain about how I'd do it all, and I'm uncertain about the timing, and I'm REALLY uncertain about my own ability to handle a move like that. So. We'll see. Oh, and I just found out that some MSN study has found Boston to be one of the top 5 drunkest cities in the US. Go figure. But then, maybe I'd help even it out a little. You know--with my absolute non-drunkenness?)

An early "Happy Groundhog Day" to you too!

Okay--this post is just for fun. As my family sat together this past Monday during FHE, my mom mentioned that my brother Peter's "Hump Day" (or half-way mark to you uninitiated) for his mission was February 2nd (tomorrow). So, as part of our family discussion, we decided to send him a little something to commemorate.

Attached is what we did. (Well, I did the drawing, and my mom wrote the words. Yep.)

So, it's not deep, and it's not profound, and it certainly won't change your life for the better, but I hope you enjoy the pic at least a little.

(By the way, I think if you click on the image, it'll make it larger, so you'll be able to see the fine details of this near-masterpiece.)

Er. Yah. Hope you likes it.

Nothing Says "Winter" Like Shoveling Snow

Okay, it's officially winter. There were hints of it before, (pretty heavy-handed hints, at that), but now it's here in earnest. Over the night, a storm plopped down about 4 or 5 inches onto our driveway, which, when I woke up, my siblings and I (in consequence of our non-rent-paying positions) had to shovel up, preferably before my dad got back from the hardware store. It wasn't so bad, but it was co-old.

While we're on the subject, can I just say that romantic comedies are totally unrealistic? Well, they are. My gathered family members (remember, we had Thanksgiving dinner today instead of on Thursday) have spent the last couple of hours watching You've Got Mail, a movie that I really actually enjoy. Most of the film is taken up with entertaining and angry banter between the two leads, until they realize that they're actually in love with each other (surprise, surprise). So, for most of the movie, their interactions seem utterly realistic. (There's nothing quite so realistic as two people who loathe each other.) It's at the end, when they finally meet and acknowledge their feelings for each other, and the Tom Hanks character (Joe Fox) says some really cheesy lines. I've always been slightly uneasy with them, but I'm usually so preoccupied with the wonderful feeling that at last these two characters get together that I've previously failed to notice just how dumb some of his lines are. Yeesh, I mean, "Don't cry, Shopgirl. Don't cry." Come on. So it's every woman's dream. So what?!? It gives us all unrealistic expectations, and believe me, that is the very last thing we all need here. *Grinds teeth a little.*

(Do I sound like an angry girl who spent the day watching her married sisters smooch their husbands? Good.) Anyway--not that I'm that angry. Or bitter. Or whatever. Yeah. I'm not. No, really. Don't get that look on your face; I'm completely serious. *Blows a raspberry in a rather irreverent manner.* Twerp. Well, happy snow anyway. I mean, happy winter. Er, happy...shopping season? Happy, happy...Meal o' Thanksgiving.

Happy Thankee Day

No turkey today. Well, there's actually a turkey that's in our fridge defrosting, but we haven't eaten any turkey today, nor will we. Truth be told, today has just been kind of a clear-out-the-garden-because-it's-going-to-snow-soon and dad-work-on-getting-the-bathroom-ready-for-laying-tile type of day. We're having pot pies for dinner. (Yippee.)

No, no. Don't feel too sorry for me. Really, it's okay. We'll be having Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. There are many reasons for doing this, mostly because it's our year to have everybody home for Thanksgiving, but my younger sister Becky can't make it because she is, probably at this very moment, driving back from California with her husband and two kids. So, we're just postponing things for a couple of days. Frankly, I'm really okay with that. Today has (for the most part) been a day to relax, and if we were to have the full Thanksgiving spread today, most of the day would have been spent in hectic preparation of food, trying to keep neices & nephews from wrecking anything important, and trying to avoid minor family quabbles.

So, while there's no cranberry sauce, and no candied yams, and we aren't sitting around the table listing what we're grateful for, it's still been a pretty good day. And Saturday will be even better.