Month: December 2008

The Holidays have been GOOD to me

I’ve been busy. Mom noted that I hadn’t updated my LJ since Christmas Eve. So while judiang‘s taking a short nap (to get rid of a suspected MSG headache), I’ll see if I can get caught up on my shenanigans.

Christmas Day: Amy called me at 7:30am to inform me that everyone was sitting around drinking coffee, but nothing else was happening. They would continue to do so until I got there. So I got ready and headed next door. They gave me a cup of hot cocoa (yummy) and when I was done, we went into the living room to open our stockings. Santa really likes us – he brings us stockings even though Amy & I are in our 30s and Rachel will soon be joining us. Heh.

After we examined our stocking goodies (nice things like 1GB flash drives & bath salts & socks were in ’em) we had breakfast. Amy & Dad made eggs & sausage, mom had baked a sour dough coffee cake. Everything was yummy.

It was now time to open presents. I handed out presents one or two at a time to folks and we went in order of youngest to oldest. It took a couple of hours and once again, we won at Christmas. 🙂 I got lots of nice things – Treehouse, Fluxx & Monty Python Fluxx from the girls (all Looney Labs games and mucho fun). Shirts, a nice outfit, Logitech wireless mouse, new barcode reader (my old one went kaput), books, and other things from the parental units. I got the girls a record player that hooks to a computer for ripping albums into MP3s. Mom got a JBL external speaker system for her new iPod Nano (well, new for her – it’s the 2nd gen I gave her for her birthday a few weeks ago). It’s red like her Nano & her Shuffle. 🙂 Dad got some books he’d asked for and some toys which he hadn’t. Heh.

We eventually had Christmas dinner – chicken casserole, green beans, cottage cheese, cranberry sauce (from the can), etc. It was very yummy as usual. Later we had apple pie & ice cream for dessert. (It was a free apple pie from Market Day. I’ve been lucky – this is the second free pie I’ve gotten from ’em. And like the first one, it was wonderful.) Mom, the girls, and I played Monty Python Fluxx and enjoyed ourselves. Rachel won the first game and I won the second. We switched to pinochle with me & Amy as partners. We kicked butt. Twice. Heh.

There was a lovely sunset that day, so I tried to get some photos of it. I haven’t downloaded ’em yet to see how they turned out. If they turned out OK, I’ll post ’em later. We spent the end of the evening planning for the Anderson gathering the following day.

Boxing Day: The plan was that Rachel and I would go to Kroger in the morning to get a few key items. I was called in the morning to say that we needed to head out even earlier than planned. No problemo. I headed next door and daddy made me an Egg McMikey sammich to-go. I took the last of the apple juice with me as my to-go beverage and Rachel drove us to Kroger. We got a number of things required, but not everything. So I recommended the Dollar Tree (which I needed to go to) for some things and Meijer for the rest. The only thing we were unable to find was a “live” centerpiece that was on sale. (Everything else Christmassy was on sale – even at the Dollar Tree.)

We got the house ready & food prepared. In lieu of an expensive “live” centerpiece, I trimmed a few pieces of mom’s holly shrubs to serve as decoration. A few bright red ornaments were added, too. It was minimal, which made it look rather nice. I also had a few things I was preparing for the dinner. I molded my cheeseball onto my tree-shaped plate. Made some Reuben dip. Baked some corndog minis.

When 2pm arrived, we all sat in the living room awaiting family. And they began to pop in. Surprisingly, Uncle Doug was first. Eventually, all of the Andersons were present – for the first time in years. Even my second cousin Eric and his boy (Little Eric) came. Yay! It was lovely to see everyone. Food was consumed, presents were exchanged, Apples to Apples was played. We had a nice day.

Folks were gone by 6:30, which is when we all collapsed. Heh. We cleaned up the place and vegged for the rest of the evening. Mom & I discovered that the frozen fruit dish she made was very tasty when mixed with vodka and Sprite.

Saturday: We shopped on Saturday. After a lunch of leftovers, we headed to Piqua for the mall. There were some exchanges made and new things purchased. I got a couple of small cutting sheets (about the size of a half sheet of paper and nearly as thin) and some silicone egg poachers. We did a booze run on the way home, too. Needed more gin, apparently. Heh.

Sunday: Our main task was to play pinochle and get mom’s card quota back up. (Amy & I still won. Then later, Rachel & I won.) We also played a couple of rounds of Treehouse. That evening, we reconvened at my house for “dinner & a movie.” Although I had originally planned to cook something, that would have required me going somewhere, which precluded playing cards. So we wound up ordering pizza from the local. We started off by watching Amy’s photos from Guatemala. Our first attempt at hooking her laptop up to my TV didn’t work, but putting the photos on CD and playing ’em in my DVD player did work. They looked gorgeous on my TV. Our movie for the evening was Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Monday: Our last day with the girls. *sniff* We went to Tipp City for a day of shopping & eating. Actually, we started out by eating. We went to Harrisons, a nice restaurant in Tipp. I had their French onion soup and their chicken salad sandwich on sourdough. I also had an amaretto sour. Tasty tasty. We then visited nearly all of the antique stores in Tipp looking for a broach for Rachel’s new purse. (Long story – maybe I’ll tell it some day.) We wound up with 3 good choices for it. Mom bought one of ’em, while Rachel bought the others.

Monday evening was a time of card playing (mom & I won) and the girls’ packing. We finished up the day by sitting around and watching the Rachel Maddow show. Heh.

Today: This morning, I set my alarm to get next door before 7:30am. The girls wanted to get off by 8am – they did pretty well & were on the road by 8:15am. I then spent time straightening up my house since my brain has been AWOL and I had confused the 30th with Wednesday. I thought Judi was arriving Wednesday, the 30th. Well, the 30th – but that’s Tuesday. Heh. And then my brain went even more AWOL while I explained to the folks that I was head out around 1:30 to pick up Judi, whose flight gets in at 12:58pm. *sigh* Thankfully they corrected me.

In further brain-fartness, I got confused at the airport and went in the wrong lane, thus missing out on parking. I went through the gauntlet again and parked. Judi managed to find me, somehow. And thankfully her luggage arrived as well. (Yay- she’s moving again!) We headed to the Bookery so we could get our DWMs and then to Jeet India for our Indian Fud. Yum. On the way home, I stopped at Kroger for a few essentials. A call to the folks got a few essentials for them as well. I wound up calling Judi, who was resting in the car, because I’d left my bags in the car & wondered if she’d bring some to me. She did. Yay!

We’ve got no real concrete plans for the rest of today. We might go see a movie. We might stay in. Tomorrow we head to Aunt Becky’s for cards & Chinese Fud. *slaps forehead* I forgot to see what sort of sparkling wine dad wanted for the toast tomorrow night. Well, either tonight or tomorrow, Judi and I will be oot & aboot again, so we could get some then. Hooray for the Holidays!

Merry Christmas!

We (the folks, Amy, Rachel & I) had a lovely time tonight at Aunt Becky’s house. With six kids under age 16, there was a lot of excitement about the holidays. And plenty of toys as gifts. (I even got a toy from Becky. And Deanna gave my cats some cute cat toys.) I gave folks a “chemistry toy” (although it’s almost art) this year which turned out to be a hit. I hope the Andersons (whom we’ll see Friday) will enjoy it as much as the Shorts did. 🙂

Anyhoo, tomorrow it’s just the five of us. I think we’ll have a wonderful Christmas. Probably the best ever. (Well, they usually are.) 🙂

Merry Christmas to all of you as well! I hope Santa was good to you this year!

Baking Day 2008

The annual tradition continued today – mom & I celebrated Baking Day. I headed next door at 9am with some extra baking sheets & my mail to be mailed. I returned home after 10pm. Heh. Over 12 hours of baking – mom & I are devoted.

Saturday, we went grocery shopping – big time. We spent an hour or so in Sam’s Club getting bulk ingredients (and I bought some short bread cookies – yum!) and then went to Kroger for even more supplies. A short stop at Dollar Tree so I could get some wine bottle wraps I’d seen before (but didn’t know I’d need). The crafty gift I’m giving could use those wraps. 🙂

Yesterday was to be my cleaning day, and I did get some stuff done. But when I returned from a (very very cold) walk, mom waved me inside the house. She was popping corn for crackerjack. So I came in & started helping. When I made the sugar coating for it, I followed the directions which said “light brown or white sugar” and I used the first option. Apparently when Gramma made it, she always used white sugar. Whoops! No matter, it still tasted yummy and when we made the second batch, I used white sugar. So now we have two-tone crackerjack.

Before I’d come over, mom had already made her ice box cookie dough (butterscotch cookies). Then while I was there, she made the dough for the Lindy Cookies (chocolate chip cookies). Both doughs went into the back porch, which in this weather is like a walk-in freezer.

This morning I headed over at 9am as I said. Dad made me an Egg McMikey sammich for breakfast – yummy! (I think the pat on the paper towel wrapped sammich is what gives it the best flavor). Then mom & I got to work. We started by baking the Lindy cookies. Then it all becomes a blur – we made lots of doughs & baked lots of cookies. Around 1pm, mom & I were getting pretty hungry. Dad was out at the Lake getting some things and we forgot to suggest he bring home lunch. So I headed to Covington & got us a sweet onion chicken teriyaki sandwich. We resumed baking again.

I had a bit of a break when I made the balls for the peanut blossoms upstairs & watched some of Jumping Jack Flash while doing so. (It was ironic since just the night before, I was telling mom that Jumping Jack Flash is one of those movies that I can watch anytime it’s running on TV. Heh.)

At the end of the evening, when we broke down & had supper (chicken sammich for me, made with the chicken mom cooked today for Christmas Day dinner of chicken casserole), we baked the gingerbread & sugar cookies that we’d gotten from Market Day. I had picked up some white cookie icing and green & red cake icing at Jo-Ann’s a few weeks back. I had a ball decorating cookies. And they look really cool.

Anyhoo, when all was said & done, we made the following items:

  • Crackerjack

  • Lindy Cookies

  • Ice box cookies

  • Cheesecake Cupcakes

  • Floor sweeping cake (caramel pecan dreams)

  • Nipple cookies (peanut blossoms)

  • No Bake cookies

  • Aunt Alma’s pecan cookies (it was soooo good to have those again)

  • Sugar cookies

  • Gingerbread men

It turns out Amy & Rachel are racing ahead of the storm and on their way home tonight. They spent last night & today in Chicago visiting friends, and are currently on their way to us. Expected arrival time is around 2:30am. Here’s hoping the way is easy!

(I love Christmas time!)

Icky Icy

It didn’t look like much, but today we had ice, icy fog, icy rain, and icy mist. And that gave us icy sidewalks and icy streets. And also gave us closed school. So I had the day off and used the time to put my Christmas tree up. Yay!

I kept thinking I’d go out when things cleared up more in order to get stuff so I could bring something to the teacher’s Xmas luncheon tomorrow, but it never did look any better as the day wore on. So tomorrow, on my way in, I’ll pick up something at the gas station (Doritos or something). It’s not what I’d planned (home-made Chex Mix was what I’d planned) but at least I won’t be freeloading (like usual).

Here it is, second calamity day of the year, and it’s not even Winter. 🙂

A weekend celebration

Ah yes, it does feel good to be done with my classes for a month. Yesterday, we had two things to celebrate – the semester ending and mom’s birthday. So I headed next door midmorning so that we could head up to Piqua for shopping & a nice lunch.

Elder-Beerman was having doorbuster sales until 1pm, so that was our first destination. Although I didn’t get anything, the folks had some successful purchases. By the time we were done, we were all suitably hungry. Mom chose Red Slobster for lunch. Tasty tasty! We got their coconut fried shrimp appetizer and drinks (amaretto sour for me). Then when we ordered our main courses, we all picked shrimp again. Heh. I got their shrimp linguine. We’d decided while there to stop at Kroger on the way home for cake & ice cream (and other essentials).

We returned to the mall where Beerman is and did some more shopping. (I again managed to not spend anything. Go me!) Then we headed to Jo-Ann Fabric & Crafts for craft supplies. Alas, they had no glass bottles like I need for my Xmas gips this year, but they had some cookie decorating stuff that I wanted (and was on sale). So I picked that up and some itty bitty plastic bags (also for the Xmas gips). At Kroger, I bought the cake & ice cream for mom. Then we headed to KMart for the last few items on dad’s list. By this time we were all ready to be done. Thankfully, we were. Heh.

Once we were settled back home, it was time for mom to open presents. She got a GPS unit from herself and dad. (Wasn’t she thoughtful?) It’s a Garmin Nuvi 350. It’s really cute! She got some ’round the neck headphones by Jensen, a power plug for iPods, and a regifted iPod Nano 2nd generation (Product Red) from me. I thought it would match her Product Red iPod Shuffle that she got for Mother’s Day. 🙂 (Well, when the new iPod Nano came out with PURPLE, I had to upgrade…) I then worked a bit on her PC getting some playlists onto her iTunes (grrrr, I do hate iTunes) while dad got the cake & ice cream ready. It was very tasty.

When I got home, I resubscribed to World of Warcraft and revisited my little toons. Although I prefer City of Heroes, it is also fun to play WoW. (I’ll resub to CoH Tuesday or so which will let that subscription go until classes begin.)

Today’s Grand Adventure spawned in part because of yesterday’s failed trip to Jo-Ann’s. When I asked a store person about glass bottles, she admitted they didn’t have any, but (in a quieter voice, looking around to make sure no one was watching) she suggested that I try Crafts2000 in Springfield. When talking with my Aunt Becky last night, she recommended Crafts2000 too. So I put Crafts2000 into my plans for the day.

I played WoW until 11am, then called Crafts2000 (since they were open finally) to see if they did have glass bottles – colorless with stoppers or screw caps. The lady there was pretty sure & directed me to someone on the floor who concurred. 4 aisles of glassware, they said. So after I got my hair cut, I headed off to Springfield.

Wow – they weren’t kidding. They had just what I was looking for and then some. Square bottles, oval bottles, round bottles – and all $1 each! 12″ tall, nice & thin. Even a funny looking one (which I’m not sure will work with my plans, but we’ll see.) I will eventually show off what I’m doing with these bottles, but as there are recipients of them who read this list, I shall refrain for now.

There really isn’t a lot of nice eating places in that end of Springfield, so I headed to the Upper Valley Mall (which I’d not been to in years) and wound up eating at the Chinese place there. Mmmm, Mall Chinese Food – in a class by itself. General Tso’s (should have gotten the bourbon chicken) and orange chicken and lo mein. Plus some crab rangoon (the nicely sweet type – yummy). I was able to finish reading Jane Eyre (which I have on my phone) while there.

After finishing my perusal of the mall (they STILL have 2 bookstores there – yay! B.Dalton & Walden), I returned to the parking lot, set my phone to direct me to the Piqua Mall (AKA Miami Valley Center Mall), and headed off to see a movie.

The Cinemark Theater at the Piqua Mall has moved out of the mall proper and, on Friday, opened in their new location just outside of the mall. I decided to watch Delgo cuz I figured it’s not something likely to be crowded (it wasn’t) and that ought to be seen on the big screen (and can likely be missed as a DVD purchase). I enjoyed it – lots of fun eye candy – despite the pedestrian plot. If you do go see it, stay til after the credits. Heck, simply reading the credits was a hoot.

I returned home after the movie, invited myself next door for more cake & ice cream, and am now back home & typing this up. Tomorrow starts the last week of school for 2008. Should be a nice week. Maybe I’ll get the house decorated this week. 🙂

Nearly done! Woot!

Well, I think I have both of my final papers in nearly presentable formats. I’m letting them stew overnight, now, so that tomorrow evening I can reread them with semi-fresh eyes. Both dad and judiang pronounced my essay well-written, so that makes me happy. They both also offered up useful suggestions. Using the comments from two classmates and my professor, I think I have gotten my research proposal more ready for prime time than before. There is still work to be done on it, and I hope my professor makes more helpful comments. I’m considering using that proposal as possibly the basis for my Master’s Thesis, so any suggestions he has will help immensely.

Anyhoo, tomorrow after work, our teacher’s union is having an informal gathering at Applebee’s so I’ll definitely be going there. Then that evening, I’ll reread the papers, correct anything else I notice, and turn the fuckers in. Whew!

Saturday should be a fun day. In celebration for mom’s birthday (and the end of my semester) the folks and I will go out to eat somewhere and do some shopping at JoAnn’s (I need some supplies for Xmas gifts I’m making this year). I’m also hoping to go see a movie or two this weekend. And definitely re-up my WoW subscription. (I’ll hold off a couple of days before re-upping City of Heroes so that I can be playing it right up until classes begin again.)

So yay – I can just smell freedom and it smells great!

Winding down the semester

Ah, my brain is fried. I’ve been working on my research proposal for my research course and my brain is full. But I have turned in the rough draft (very rough) to be reviewed by two of my classmates and my professor. Then I’ll work on updating it for turning in by December 12th. The rest of the stuff in the class I’ve gotten an A average on, so it’s just this last paper for the grade. I’ll also be evaluating two of my classmates’ proposals/projects. Hopefully I can come up with some helpful suggestions for their papers.

Likewise, the course on Science, Technology and Human Values is winding down too. I’ve gotten an A average for all of the essays thus far (the last one was my third 95% – woot!) We’ve still not received the final participation grade (though I’d gotten 20/20 for the first half of the semester), so I don’t know how I did there. Our final grade for the course will be a 5-10 page essay (the others were 1-2 page essays). I haven’t even started that one. Or picked the topic. But that’s what tomorrow is for. Heh. The final paper for this course is also due December 12th.

Just one more proper semester of university work, followed by a summer and fall semester working on my Masters Thesis (which I think I’d like to base upon my research proposal).

So, December 13th (which also happens to be my mom’s birthday) will be a day of celebration. I might even resubscribe to WoW for a month then. Yay!