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Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Loot
Call it the year of the TV! J.T. and I made out pretty good with the TV this year. Actually, the TV is unchanged. But we now have a new DVD player, Direct TV (no more bunny ears!!!), a Nintendo GameCube so I could get the new Zelda game, Dance Dance Revolution for the PS2, another couple games, and tens of hours of movies, including the first season of Babylon 5 and a grocery store bag full of duplicate James Bond movies from Mom. Whew! All in all Christmas was nice. It was without my great aunt this year which was sad for all of us. She is dearly missed. Food was good as usual. Mom made out like a bandit - when the presents were all passed out, they were so piled up around here you almost couldn't see her! Then the classic pinochle. Boy did I get my bootie kicked...twice... :( Wednesday, December 24, 2003
Merry Christmas Eve!
Traditionally, this day has planned festivities, but this year, we're just hanging at home. We did something Sunday. We did something Monday. That should hold me through until Christmas (although I'm dying to see what's in my stocking!) Up until 6 or 7 (or is it 8?) years ago, it was tradition for me and my parents to drive to my grandma and grandpa's little apartment for Christmas Eve. My aunt's family would come too and we'd open presents and eat lots of food, including the beloved crab dip, and grandma's special punch in that one punch bowl that only saw the light of day once a year. We had 2 tables - the "adult table" and the "kids table". Even as I got older, I still sat at the kids table, usually with my cousin and her grandpa, who was a big kid in disguise. That cousin was close in age to me. We'd usually play in the back bedroom while the adults mingled and talked about things we didn't care about. I don't know how it started, but one year, we found some small, lunch sized paper bags and made puppets. It evolved into a puppet show. I have no idea if our little stories had plots. One year, her grandpa even made us a stand up "puppet stage" that we could hide behind. (What did we hide behind before that???) Hey! It was kind of like those silly Fandango ads!! Tuesday, December 23, 2003
I guess I need new New Year's resolutions to go along with my new blog title. Resolution number one is to figure out what I'm allergic to in my bedroom. I walk around the house just fine, then go to bed and get all sniffled up. I bought a book called "The Complete Allergy Book". Sounded definitive. Today was our first day of opening Christmas presents. J.T.'s mom was nice enough to give a gift to our undeserving cats. A mechanical mouse that runs around in circles, says "nay nay nay nay nay", then plays dead waiting to be touched again before it starts its taunting routine all over again. Jo Jo the Zen Cat is not so interested, but Harvey is borderline obsessed. When the mouse plays dead, Harvey can't help himself - he has to touch it. He's obsessed because he hasn't "figured it out" yet. You can see the tiny gears moving behind his eyes as he works on a problem. Too smart for our own good if you ask me. Credit where credit is due. They were both good today. We finally got a Christmas tree up. Or rather J.T. picked out and put up the tree while I spent the latter half of the day recording band stuff. ($3.99 tree special at Home Depot!) The cats insist on drinking the tree water, but so far the tree is still intact. Tomorrow we may brave ornaments. Such a full day for both of them - they're conked out on the bed. Mmmm so cute when they're asleep... Sunday, December 21, 2003
First round!
It's almost been a year. Time to think of a new name for my blog... Today marked the first of the Christmas festivities. An extended family dinner at my mom's house with my parents, Grandma, and my mom's niece and her family - including new 7 month old baby grandchild, Hunter (if you're doing the math...that makes my mom a great-great-aunt!) Their house has never seen a baby before. The couches must have tasted good because Hunter kept trying to eat them. The youngins got to open a few presents; I gave my cousin a complete "reference" on dragons, that included swatches of "scales" and "membranes" - a clever and creative book, beautiful really. I think J.T. was jealous. :) The food was good, as usual. Dad was excited to do something on the rotisserie - anything, really. He just wanted to use his new toy. The turkey was really great, and inspiring since our Thanksgiving turkey has not been interesting the last couple years. We may have to experiment with the grill. All in all a nice evening. Tomorrow: lunch with J.T.'s mom and a little gift exchange before she heads down south to see J.T.'s brother. And maybe, just maybe, we'll get our Christmas tree... Friday, December 12, 2003
While I was in Germany, I taught a class for a week with a coworker. We taught in Boeblingen, but he's from Colone. He sort of played host, but mostly because he could speak the language - he wasn't from around there, and as I learned, southern Germany can be different from other regions. Anyway, we had way too much fun teaching this class. We spent probably 4 out of 5 evenings hanging out together, eating non-German food like Thai, Polynesian, ... Actually I ate my fair share of German food - probably more than the average German in a 2 week period. I like spaetzle. And the cheesy spaetzle (kaesspaetzle) which is what mac n' cheese *should* be. And southern Germany is very into "meat and potatoes" which I can't complain about. Certainly there were BIG beers to be had, but I didn't drink much. The beer was bigger than I was! I think my favorite food was breakfast. Lots of fresh breads. After a couple mornings of hotel breakfast, the other instructor and I started heading across the street to the bakery/cafe and got espresso drinks and pretzle knots, which were like rolls with the familiar tougher outer shell and the doughy inside - mmmmm split and warmed with butter. Oh man. So good. By good fortune, this co-instructor is now visiting out here for two weeks and I've had a couple opportunities to take him out to eat. Excellent Mexican for lunch. Cheap sushi for another lunch (okay), and not so cheap sushi for dinner with J.T. (awesome) - we ordered a boat! And last night he preferred seafood. We were sushied out, and unfortunately, there isn't a good local seafood restaurant. So we drove a bit downtown to Scott's Seafood. He got the seared ahi tuna, and I got red snapper. I think I have to go back with J.T. and order the ahi cause it was damn good. Siggi (this German guy) said of all the times he's been out here, and that's several, it was the best dinner he's had. SWEET! I'm a good host! :) |
