nye 2008

we're off to catch our flight to Phoenix (and yeah, that timestamp is accurate!). see you next wednesday!

back to the grind

i'm back at work this morning, but i can't say i'm sorry. getting up this morning was a royal pain after napping yesterday afternoon and then staying up too late last night with J, but it's nice to be back at work - i crave the routine of getting up early, coming in, drinking a cup of coffee, checking my email, balancing my checkbook - all of those anal-retentive activities that make my mornings enjoyable. i'm a nerd in nerd's clothing.

and best of all, my annoying red voicemail light is OFF. no voicemails! hooray! voicemails are the worst way to start off the day.

happy christmahanukwanzaakah!

J and i had a great day, lounging around the house after being up late last night (and early this morning) playing Santa Claus. last night we baked oatmeal cookies and had a dinner of leftover ham, potato salad, and baked beans. this morning Princess got a new bedroom suite (THAT required some creativity) and the entire set of Wizard of Oz Barbies, among other things. J and i exchanged gifts, and Santa brought us a new chess set.  right now we are watching "It's A Wonderful Life," and when that's over Guitar Hero is ON.

here is a picture of Princess in her Christmas dress before going to church with her mom last night:

check out those french braids! I'm becoming an old pro.

christmas at mom's

last night we did Christmas at Mom and Stepdad's house. they'd just gone through an 11-day stretch with no power (lovely midwest ice storms), so dinner was scaled back to hors d'oevures and we all pitched in. their refrigerator had gone out, too, so they are now the proud new owners of this awesome and totally enviable side-by-side refrigerator with the freezer on the bottom as a pull-out drawer. drool.

you know you're a grown-up when you start coveting other people's kitchen appliances.

Princess got tons of stuff and we did the requisite stockings and dirty santa exchange, from which we emerged with an XXL OU t-shirt and a tabletop fire pit and duraflame starter logs (presumably to torch the OU shirt with - my sister and her husband and I are the ONLY OU fans in the house), a really really obnoxious singing Santa/MP3 player that we conveniently forgot at Mom and Stepdad's, and a Cooties game and a Barrel of Monkeys that J gave to my stepsister for my niece. and that was just the Dirty Santa exchange.

Stepdad brought back pearls and pashminas from Milan for all the girls, and Princess made out like a bandit with lots of great books and toys from Mom and Stepdad, including a baby doll that she has not put down all weekend. she's named it "Michelle" and it goes everywhere with her.

Mom and Stepdad had a photographer come out and take a family picture of all of us. I'll post it when the photographer puts it up on her site. for now, here is a picture taken by my sister, who could not figure out that you have to actually put your face up to my SLR and look through it the old-fashioned way, instead of viewing the image on an LCD.

my stylist went overboard with the layers and I have a semi-mullet right now, so forgive the frizz. I'm working on it.

christmas festivities

tonight we went with Princess and her mom to see the Utica Square Santa Claus. it was good, Princess wasn't scared, we got pictures, etc. etc.

we also ate dinner at P.F. Chang's. i don't understand what the big fuss is about P.F. Chang's. as far as Chinese food goes, it's pretty pricey, and the food is mediocre at best and seems so mass-produced. back when i didn't eat meat i always got the tofu vegetable stir fry, and it consisted of tofu and haphazardly chopped vegetables that were partially cooked, and a bunch of giant pieces of uncooked onion. blegh.

this time i ordered the lemon scallops. the scallops were large but gritty - clearly they'd not been washed correctly. my portion was half as big as J's spicy chicken - and twice as expensive. not to mention that the sauce was made from chopped fresh lemons - with the pith included. lemon juice, good. lemon rind, good. lemon pith? hell to the no! talk about some bitter sauce. next time I'm going to think twice about waiting forty-five minutes for a table.

the obligatory first post

i have Blog Envy. there are a handful of blogs that i read every week - college friends, family members, blogs that are related to my profession, blogs for sheer entertainment. i adore them. every time something funny happens in my day-to-day, i think about how i wish i had a blog so i could share it with everyone. but then i come home and zone out to reruns of MythBusters on the DVR while i peruse BoingBoing on my MacBook, and the next thing you know the evening is shot.

'sides, i could pick up the phone and call ya'll, but i'm lazy like that.

i have aspirations that i'll post regularly - weekly, daily? but in reality, let's just hope that i don't lose interest after the first three posts.

baby steps. i'm easily distracted.