So long, 2006!

(I’m publishing this early because I’ll be in Arizona for New Year’s, so here it is. Also, here is last year’s post. Looking back, I realize that Arrested Developement made both lists–not that I’m obsessive, really.)

This year I’m thankful for (in no particular order):

Oikos! And the delightful experience of (at last) being a member of a church body

four years of marvellous marriage (to the most magnificent Mitch)

creme brulee from the Mount Bakery (served at the Temple Bar)

Carina Round, The Disconnection

my family, who is made up of very neat people that I love more and more all the time

Arrested Development

Monday nights at Boundary Bay, dancing to the Gallus Brothers

contacts! (Goodbye, glasses)

the blessing of playing shows, and writing songs, and hanging out with people who play good music

shopping at Goodwill

my little bro, who periodically calls in the middle of the night to tell me that he loves me

the motivation to actually read the Bible, and to really study and learn tons

double tall americanos (black) from Caffe Adagio

Jonathan Foer at Village Books, and the brilliant things he said about writing and art

our cats, who make me laugh but who are excellent at snuggling

Greg Brown at the Nightlight, and that awesome rendition of “Evening Call”

four hour evenings at the Temple Bar with Morgan

origami boxes, origami paper

baking, and those amazing macaroons that Ashley made with bitter caramel buttercream filling

riverboating in Missouri (turtles! turkey vultures!)

The Black Keys, Rubber Factory

learning “Hallelujah” on the guitar

and yes, my new Kitchenaid mixer. It’s amazing.

Brave or foolish? You decide.

Somehow I found myself in the middle of the Bath & Body Works REALLY BIG SALE yesterday. Why? Because I wanted a particular kind of lip gloss. Did I wait in line for fifteen minutes to buy a five dollar tube of lip gloss? I certainly did.

Why? I’m still not sure.

I guess it’s cheaper than therapy

We’re fresh back from Christmas at my dad’s, where the event of the evening was my brother’s brand new Wii (I got a Kitchenaid mixer in cobalt blue, which is stinking rad but a whole lot less fun for the whole family to enjoy).

Now, I’ve never been one for video games, not least because the controllers make my hands ache something fierce (I have a medical excuse for this, really), but the Wii is cool. I was actually able to play. We plugged in Wii boxing and went at it.

Watching everyone flail around was hysterical, and by the end of the first round, my dad and brother were both breaking a serious sweat. By the end of the second, they were red in the face and breathing hard, and these are both very fit, very athletic guys. My brother boxed my husband, my dad boxed my stepmom, I boxed my husband and brother–it was quality family time of the very strangest sort.

My first match ended up being against my husband, which was disconcerting because the characters are configured to actually look like the players, and Mitch’s looked remarkably like him. But we got to playing–and I absolutely schooled him. Sure, he was still figuring out to block with the controllers and he won the next match, but I’m not sure he ever even landed a punch that first match–he went down and never got up. It was amazing, really. (I warned him that this bit of info was making its way to the blog, and he assured me that his dignity would survive intact.)

Let’s just say that I’m not used to playing video games, and I’m definately not used to winning, so this, my friends, was a good night.

Order of Festivities

This year is busy as always, but somehow I feel like Mitch and I are finally getting the hang of this “four Christmases in three days” schedule. Our craziest year by far featured no less than five dinners within 24 hours (two Christmas Eve, three Christmas Day), none of which were our own, at our own house. Last year marked the first time we had our own stockings, and this year marks our first official Christmas breakfast–complete with guest. Our weekend looks like this:

Friday night. My dad’s birthday dinner. We put 55 candles on an 8″ layer cake and then lit them all. We call it the “birthday inferno,” because it’s just that dramatic–the cake radiated heat and everything, and when Dad blew them out he splattered wax all over the table. It was rad.

Last night. Carolling/dinner/candlelit liturgy at church. This was great fun, not least because there was a complete overdose on Christmas carols and an honest-to-goodness hayride through the York neighborhood. The church looked gorgeous, the food was delicious, the kids were adorable (and hysterically funny) as they sang “Silent Night” and “Away in the Manger”–also, I got to sing soprano in a quartet (“O Magnum Mysterium”). The whole evening was a whole lot of fun.

Tonight (Christmas Eve). Christmas at my dad’s, with my aunt, uncle and two cousins. Food! Family! Presents! No birthday candles, though.

Tomorrow morning. Breakfast and stockings at our house. Eggs, grits and coffee are on the menu, and our friend Manis will be joining us for the morning. I mentioned that the cats have stockings this year, and I have it on good authority that Santa’s bringing them Fancy Feast, bizzy balls and some crazy toy that looks like a huge fluorescent fur ball with arms. That should be entertaining.

Tomorrow midday. Mitch’s family celebration. More family! food! and presents! This one seems to get bigger and bigger every year. The niece and nephew are back in town, so that’ll be fun–I always seem to end up playing cars and hanging out with the little ones rather than sitting around having sophisticated adult conversation.

Tomorrow evening. Dinner at my mom’s. This one marks the offical closing of the Christmas season with the last round of food, family and presents (and probably a Christmas nap, at some point)–it will be lovely.

So, that’s the madness of our Christmas weekend. Mercifully, all our family lives close by so we don’t have to brave the roads (though I did brave the express lane at Haggen’s this morning, and that was equally scary), and I’m excited to see everyone.

May you all have a wonderful holiday! Merry Christmas.

I can’t believe the Faint came to Bellingham and I missed it!

My heart breaks a little each time I remember this.

(The title of this post is a link to a video of the Faint playing a brand new song at WWU. *sigh*)

Not quite an explosion, but close

When I got home tonight, the apartment smelled like gas. Now, sometimes I think I smell gas and I get all psyched out before finally convincing myself that I’m being melodramatic and should knock it off, but this, my friends, was an actual gas leak. I knew it, down to my toes.

Mitch hadn’t noticed, because he’d been in the apartment all day (ah, winter break), so we both prowled around the apartment sniffling away before finally determining the back left burner on our gas stove to be the culprit.

To make a long story short, a potentially eventful evening proved rather uneventful (thankfully) as a nice man from the gas company dropped by, relit the pilot light that had gone out and assured us that all was, in fact, well and that we would not be exploding or dropping off peacefully in our sleep any time in the foreseeable future.

Or at least not because of the back left burner of our stove.

In other, less morbid news, I finally bough my own copy of the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. Why? Because the one I’d copied illegally onto Mitch’s computer was lost when the hard drive crashed last night.

So far it’s been a rough week.

The aforementioned stockings

(However, my mom did take pity on us this year and she quilted some beautiful new stockings for the bookshelf that have since replaced the Goodwill felt stockings. This picture was taken to accompany the earlier entry, but sadly was only just now uploaded onto my computer. I posted it anyway.)

Addendum to last entry

Also, Mitch gave me a tea pot, to replace the one so tragically broken by our cats (it was a good tea pot–we bought it at an antique store/gas station somewhere in the middle of the state, because the bathroom was for customers only and we needed to make a purchase quickly. It served us well!).

The tea pot itself is adorable, and I’m happy as a clam to have, not only a new tea pot, but one similarly colored to the old one and with the added feature of a little mesh basket for holding loose teas. Best of all? On the box, it says “iPot”. How clever.

Here is a picture of my awesome tea pot.

Happy anniverary to us!

Four years! Yee ha! Mitch gave me this card that made me laugh. It has a picture of a sandwich on the outside, and it says:

“I was walking
to my car,
and I saw this lady
I recognized from the deli,
the sandwich lady, and I
made up this song:

‘You are the sandwich lady!
Come on,
sandwich lady!
Go, go,
sandwich lady!”

So now I think maybe I’m creative.”

Then, on the inside, it says:

“You’re creative. You tell me.”

And then he wrote some cute stuff about liking me.

Stormwatch 2006!

I don’t know how fast those winds are travelling, but they are moving. At work today, I stood in one window and watched my two favorite trees (taller than everything, and side by side) bend too far in one direction then too far in another. Power lines swung between poles that also leaned dangerously, rocked by the wind a few feet forward, then a few feet back. The power flickered and went out for two or three minutes, the front door blew open and slammed shut so often that we finally had to unplug the doorbell for fear of being driven mad by the incessant ding-dong ding-DONG. The whole building seemed to shift around us.

I found excuses to go outside–delivering each envelope to the mailbox separately, sweeping the front door mat (only to have it scattered almost immediately with more debris).