Happy Christmas...and extended weekend.

The trees at my stepgrandparent's place.

I know I'm behind but I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday weekend. Some of you live in places that saw an insane amount of snow in the last week which made it hard to get places and some of you (like myself) didn't see a single snowflake. Seriously, we've had a great sunny weekend here even though it's been cold...and the fact that Seattle wasn't all drizzly was a feat in itself.

I worked up until Christmas Eve at about 11am which was hard enough, as this year my cousin and I decided we were going to host dinner that night. My grandparents were out of town and everything is usually at their house, so we stepped up to the plate. Well, my cousin suggested it and I went along for the ride because I'd be damned if eventually Christmas Eve ended up at her house once we were old. It's my right, I'm the first child of my mom's (the first of my grandparent's). Anyway...

Pies were made (4 in total, pumpkin & apple) on my part. I forgot how much effort goes in to one apple pie, let alone two of them. Cranberries were made (and then forgotten in my fridge) and turkey with all the other fixings.

We had a great time though, presents were exchanged and then I headed up to my family's place to stay the night in anticipation for Christmas morning. It being an economic turmoil type Christmas there were not a lot of gifts, but still a great time was had. My family picked up a few books for me (in particular Augsten Burrough's latest...a Xmas novel), a Philosophy set (Pomegranate Berry), some dessert wine, pot holders (that match my holiday apron), slippers and a few little things. Later in the day we went up to the step grandparent's house where I managed to get an awesome coat seen below in "jazzberry" (ie: purply magenta).


Despite the drama...you know no family gathering is w/o unless you're cyborgs...or my boyfriend's family (they're so perfect, it's not normal) I had a good night. My stepaunt & uncle got me Criminal Minds Season 4 (top of my list) and Wii Super Mario Bros (hopelessly addicting) which has kept me busy all day. Now I just need to finish cleaning my place since the holiday prep has left it in shambles.

I hope you all had a great holiday & have a great week, I am lucky enough to work for a company that shuts down between Christmas & New Years so I'll go back to work on the 4th. Feel free to hate me, I would if I wasn't me. My little brother will be spending at least one day of the break with me to get away from our parents. The rest of the time will be me trying to figure out my Flip video camera & software and resting up for the New Year.

If I stitch fast enough, does it count as aerobic exercise?

Do you ever get to the point where you say "oh crap! I haven't posted since *insertnumberofdayshere*!"?? Since so many people have signed up for NaBloPoMo this year my Google Reader has been PACKED with posts to read. I do read all of them and even comment on some (come on, I'm not a machine!) but my writing has suffered because of it. I just realized yesterday that it had been over a month since I updated LJ, so let's rectify all of this.

Thanks to all of you who are following Stepping Diagonally, I checked my dashboard today and all of a sudden it's a whole different dashboard. :-) Now the pressure's on to say something witty, or entertaining at least. Can I handle the pressure?? Let's kick this blog post off with stuff I'm thinking about right now:

Waiter Rant (by Steve Dublanica) - I picked this up the other day at B&N because I've been meaning to for a while. From the same named blog Steve writes about his experiences as a waiter with all kinds of truth and humor that I'm sailing through this book quickly. I also picked up Kristen Chenoweth's "A Little Bit Wicked" as well but I'm of the school of thought that I can only read one book at a time. Are you?

Thanksgiving/Christmas - I know there's a few other holidays in there but I don't celebrate any of them...sorry. But if you work in an office you've probably been getting catalogs for holidays cards for the last I don't know...month or two? I finally asked about what we're doing in our office the other day since I wasn't here at this time last year. Who knew that it would be so complicated? But with the invitation from my grandparents for Thanksgiving arriving in my e-mail yesterday it dawned on me how close it all is.

But why does it come so fast? And why is it that the day after Halloween all the stores are decked out in Santa gear? Even more important...why don't I remember to start knitting earlier in the year so I won't have to do it 24/7 until Christmas Eve because I've been procrastinating??

The nice thing is that Starbucks has put out their red cups and brought back all those yummy concoctions for us to partake in. I'll admit, I haven't been to Starbucks in well over 2 months or so, but I'm luckily enough to have one of these big boys in my office (Interactive cup brewer) so I don't have to go out in the rain to get coffee. Be jealous, it's totally ok. :-) The downside is that I'm drinking drip coffee and not a peppermint mocha with peppermint whipped cream and little sprinkles on top, but I will survive.

What is your go-to drink for the holidays?