Some holiday stuff

My penguin socks kept me warm while I was up in Vermont.
My Dad chose lobster for his birthday dinner (Dec 24th). Those who didn't want shellfish got bacon-wrapped filet mignon. I was not actually told I had a choice beforehand, but had I been asked, I would have had a hard time deciding.
My nephew and Dad made sure to put a chimney-cleaning thing in the wood stove on the 24th, and it worked! Santa fit down the chimney and out the wood stove to bring gifts. Amazing.Not only did Santa fill all the stockings, but he also remembered to put some presents under the tree with all the family gifts.
Now that I've unpacked, done laundry, watched the Patriots game (YAY!), stopped by lab, reviewed proofs of my first paper to be published, and checked on the lab animals, I need to post this, and go pack for New Year's. I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season and Happy New Year!

[I think this is my 100th post too! Stay tuned for #101 in the new year.]

I'm outta here.

Off to VT where my parents have dial-up and you're lucky if your cell phone gets reception.

I hope everyone had a great Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, and Eid-ul-Adha. Happy remaining holidays - Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Boxing Day, Happy New Year!

(Did I miss any or get any wrong????)

A capella

This is an a capella group doing a cute 12 Days of Christmas...One guy breaks out in to the Dreidel song; they all break out in Toto's Africa. Good stuff.

Christmas socks

Random thoughts on dating

One of my friends in grad school is several years younger than me and has vacillated between wanting to date and not wanting to date. She came back from a visit with an old friend all pumped up to date again, responded to a personal ad, did not get a response, and has forsaken dating again. A little while before my brother broke up with his girlfriend, he made the comment that he "just doesn't want to have to date." I totally understand where they are both coming from. It's tiring. You just want to hang out with friends, but you feel there could be more in your life and you go out to look a little for it. It gets old.

An online dating service I am not currently paying lets you see a page of pictures to entice you to pay them. One of the pictures that came up was Mr. Chef (first known as Guy #4, then as closed match #301), who has been active in the past 24 hours. (I would put a link to the old story, but only get an archive web address...Oh, well.) You wouldn't make up your dad being in the hospital just to not see someone again, right? I don't know what to say except, huh.

It makes me think of another guy with whom I kept trying to make plans, but he met someone and did not feel right about trying to get to know two people at once. That is perfectly understandable and I appreciate his morals shining through in all that. But at the end of them email, he added that he still had my number and email if his situation changed. Not to sound egotistical, but I do not want to be a second-choice...at least do not tell me that is what I am.

I am tempted to let my "membership", if you will, auto-renew because there is one person with whom I am communicating who I would like to meet. I could just message him my number, but I am sick and my voice has been relatively absent for almost a week. I don't want him to think I always sound like this.

My roommate has headed home already. It is kind of nice to have the apartment to myself for the week (no offense, SK), but it would also be nice not to be alone alone in the apartment. At the same time, I do rather enjoy sleeping smack dab in the middle of my bed with my amazingly warm feather comforter.

What does "smack dab" really mean?

100 things: 31-40, Holidays

A couple of blogs I have frequented in the past few days (such as here and here, thanks to here, in case you need some reading) have an 8 Random Things meme. I was inspired to do the next set of 100 things, and it is the holiday season. The 'we' refers to various combinations of family members.

31. The Christmas CD I have listened to over and over and over again this year is Sarah McLaughlin's Wintersong. It has a lot of classics, a few new songs, and I like her voice.

32. When we moved to VT, the house's previous owners had planted about 20 Christmas trees in the backyard. After a couple of years, they were big enough that we would walk out in the backyard, pick one out, cut it down, and have it in water within 30 minutes. Talk about a fresh Christmas tree!

33. Growing up, my Mom always made homemade pizza the day we decorated the tree. The crust would rise while we decorated, all the toppings would be laid out, we'd top the pizzas, then we would get to eat in the living room and look at the tree.

34. For many years we had a routine during this holiday season. Thanksgiving was at our house and my Mom's parents (and grandmother for a long time) came. Christmas Eve my Dad's mom and her sister would come up, Christmas morning was quiet, and then the onslaught of relatives started around noon (in a good way). New Year's Eve, my parents would take us out to a nice dinner.

35. My sister and I got a new music box every year. It is the only present I remember being from my parents, and not Santa. When we turned 18, we got the last one and it was a Father Christmas.

36. My parents had their first date, dance, and kiss on New Year's Eve. They always got a little sappy and we pretended to be disgusted.

37. The first year my parents told us we could stay up until Midnight on New Year's, I totally fell asleep in a chair and they had to wake me up for the apple to drop.

38. On New Year's Eve, my family always played the new games we got at Christmas.

39. Even though my sister has been married for nearly 10 years, I was the first child in my family to miss a Christmas when I lived in China. Luckily, I got to spend it with two college friends (KHC & Molly).

40. In high school, I played in the bell choir and recorder ensemble at my church. The recorder ensemble had soprano, alto, tenor and bass recorders and played at a tree farm before Christmas. If the only recorder experience you have is from elementary school, you are really missing out. The sound of all those recorders was amazing (if I do say so myself).

Christmas Spirit

I saw this at Danielle's and can not resist an online quiz. :)

Your Christmas Spirit Level: 65%

You have a lot of Christmas spirit, and it's evident to most people who know you. You love most things Christmas, and you do your best to make sure everyone has a great holiday. While you like the more commercial aspects of Christmas, you truly know what the spirit of Christmas is about. You're all about giving, being kind, and sharing the spirit of Christmas with everyone you know.

Do You Have the Christmas Spirit?

I never said...

...I liked shoveling in the freezing rain. My roommate and spent at least an hour completely clearing our driveway (which is about 2 cars wide and 4 cars deep and had 3 cars in it). This is my car before we started. It was windy too. The front of my car was nearly clear, the back had many, many inches of wet heavy snow.
This is the Mound O' Snow from the bottom half of the driveway that I was doing. The fence is under it. My roommate did the front part of the driveway and the sidewalk in front of our house.Guess what the plows have already done?
That's right, plowed in our driveway.
And why do people think they have places to go when the roads are one car wide and still snow-covered?

Size doesn't matter

My parents paid for 13 feet of Christmas tree this year, and my mother is convinced it is much taller than that. Here is my brother-in-law, standing on an 8 foot ladder, putting lights on:
Here is the final product. If you look at the bottom of the tree, there are a few more ornaments than on the rest of the tree. That is where my niece and nephew picked an ornament out of the box, turned right around, and put it directly on the tree. I am sure my parents have spread them out a little by now.

Lyrics #12

I am not sure this is exactly a holiday song, but I have been listening to holiday music and this was on a mix my sister made for me:

If you were flame
I'd allow myself to be consumed completely
Were you wind I'd wish you to pass through me
But now I know that the skin just veils the soul

Uh-oh

I think there is something drastically wrong with me.

I like walking home from campus at 9:00 at night, down the middle of the street, while (most) people are out shoveling their sidewalks.

I like shoveling.

I don't even mind driving in the snow, as long as there are not a bunch of people who do not know how to drive slow in the snow also on the roads. *

The quiet, white, snow-covered everything makes me happy.

I did not listen to music when I walked to campus this morning so that I could listen to winter.

*This also has to do with the fact that I am not a driving commuter. One woman in our department spent seven hours getting home, rather than the usual 45 minutes. I did spend 5 hours on a 3 hour drive at night in the snow once, with no one else on the road. That was fine - I could take my time and sing in the car!

Orange-pumpkin roulade

I have never made one of those rolled-up cakey things with the filling, which is apparently called a roulade if you go by the name of this recipe. I always figured it was too hard to roll it all up without the cake part tearing. It actually is not too difficult if you follow the recipe! I got this from Self and apparently has a lot of vitamin A making it healthy. It tasted too yummy to be healthy though.

I am an Uber Cool Light-Weight Nerd

After looking up why cereal is referred to as breakfast cereal (Danielle asked!), and seeing a Nerdy quiz here, I had to know...



THEN, I went and took the new version of the quiz. :)

Holiday food

I saw this at Squirl's and Danielle's.

You Are a Gingerbread House

A little spicy and a little sweet, anyone would like to be lost in the woods with you.

What Holiday Food Are You?

Happy Hanukkah!

Happy Hanukkah everyone!

Today my advisor was going through the list of menorahs that she and her wife have had in recent years. Each one has come to a dangerous end. I do not know why they thought that a styrofoam menorah would be a good idea. She likes to burn beeswax candles, which are apparently hot burners, so glass menorahs have shattered. There was a metal one that tipped over. Luckily, they have been smart and are around when this happens and keep the candles away from their Christmas tree.

Most years, my sister, brother, or I have a Jewish friend spend Christmas with our family. The past couple of years, Hanukkah has been right around Christmas. This has been a wonderful opportunity for my nephew and niece to be a part of other religious traditions. After Christmas last year, my sister went to pick my nephew up at school and the teacher asked if she could ask an awkward questions - did my sister and her family celebrate Hanukkah? See, the teacher thought she knew who in the classroom celebrated what holidays, and then my nephew went on and on and on about lighting candles and singing prayers. He apparently still talks about Hanukkah, I am sure letting everyone know that he celebrates it at Christmastime.

The Christmas Tree Saga

I pulled in to the driveway yesterday, and my roommate ("R", for roommate, from now on) was still at work. I wanted to run some errands, but I had a tree sticking out of my trunk. Being the stubborn/determined person I am, I decided I would get the tree in to the apartment, in water, run my errands, and my roommate and I could fix the tree when we were both home. As you can see, it was not very straight when I left for errands,. After wiggling it in the stand, I decided it would not tip over while I was gone.

R and I straightened the tree out as much as we could in the cheap-a** stand I got at the grocery store, bent that very top point over to stick the angel on, and put the lights on.

We even got most of the ornaments on the tree by the time R's boyfriend came over. We had accepted that the tree was a little crooked. We had even used some cardboard to help give one bottom branch more support to hold the tree a little straighter. Well, R's boyfriend is a boy, and so by default, can not let a tree be crooked. He used some wood to try to hold the tree straight, but it was no better, and maybe even worse than R and I had been able to do. Apparently the plastic of the stand was actually bending even though the tree was well within the specs of the stand.

R reminded me that I had a metal tree stand in the basement. I had totally forgotten that I had this stand. We all came to the conclusion that it would be worth it to try to switch stands. It certainly could not be any more crooked! Off came the angel and the most breakable and heavy ornaments. R and I loosened all the screws, R's boyfriend lifted the tree out of the stand, and R and I set up the nice, sturdy, older, metal stand. You can see how the picture above has a green stand and this one has a red stand. Plus the tree looks a little straighter. :)

All of the ornaments and Victorian tinsel went back on. Now we have a nice, straight, decorated Christmas tree.

The lights are on a timer, and you can see our house when you turn on to the street. Every time I get home, I can see the lights in the window and it makes me smile.

I am totally returning the cheap-a** stand.

I thought I grew out of my awkward phase!

You Are Donner

The most loveable and sweet reindeer, you're also a total dork! Why You're Naughty: You keep (accidentally) tripping the other reindeer while flying. Why You're Nice: You're always smiling, even if you've fallen flat on your horns.

Which of Santa's Reindeer Are You?