Best Xmas Ever?

Let me be the first to point out the boldness of that statement. However, in light of recent developments this holiday season, I am willing to put myself out there by saying that this year may wind up being the best Xmas of my existence.

First was the surplus of money in my bank account at the start of the holiday-spending season for the first time in my adult life. It caused me much glee because for once I knew that I would be able to successfully gift all neccessary persons without stressing balls about a lack of fundage. Next was the rediscovery of my ability to knit. My grandma (Glenda to those who knew her) taught me the highly useful trick when I was roughly eight years old, but after she passed away I stopped knitting and slowly forgot that I knew how. Well, upon the dawning of this new age of knitting I have learned that I'm not only fairly good at it, but that I also very much enjoy creating stuff out of yarn and have become thusly inspired to attempt to make a little money doing it. More to come on that topic in future blogs, I assure you.

Thirdly, I came across a wonderful magazine segment that contains a dozen recipes for cookies that I had never considered making before. Gift idea? I think so. So in the past week I've been in a baking/knitting frenzy, but its been so gratifying to see all the things I've been able to create. Next was the excitement surrounding the annual Toys for Tots drive at work. Last Friday I happened to peek into the solitary box that had been set up, only to see that only six toys had been deposited, and with the drop-off deadline swiftly approaching, I felt a personal responsibility to take action. As I passed people in the hangar, I harrassed them for not putting a toy in the box and began threatening busted kneecaps if the guys didnt get it together and donate a toy. At one point I offered to even go buy a toy FOR them if they coughed up some cash and, lo and behold, somebody called my bluff. People started handing me cash and I started getting excited about the possibility that I could actually make a difference. First $50 accumulated, then $100. I got Alicia involved and in one day we raised $305! The next day her and I went on amassive toy-buying adventure and we were able to snap up nearly sixty toys to put in the box. By the time everthing was said and done, we had two huge boxes filled to the top with toys for underprivleged kids. It warmed my heart and the response to our efforts was so positive that Alicia and I have decided to do it again next year and expand our efforts enormously.

Lastly is possibly the biggest reason for rejoice. Shaun asked me to start picking out a ring. :)

Holiday Madness

This is my first time attempting to blog from a mobile device. I'm so hip, it hurts. With any luck, I will manage to capitalize and punctuate within reason while not falling victim to the only-somewhat-useful Autofill. Autofill gets a big kick out of tricking me into saying things like, "I'd really like a cheeks sandwich" when I text from said mobile device, causing me to look like an idiot and confuse the textual recepient at the same time. Stupid Autofill. Someone needs to come up with a context assistant for it.

The holidays are in full swing and in the midst of my childlike christmas joy, I'm becoming increasingly burnt the hell out. I have nine varieties of cookie to bake, several people that I have yet to shop for, a sizeable pile of presents to wrap (which will consequently grow larger once my shopping mission next weekend is accomplished), and one knitted scarf to complete in the next two weeks. And lets talk about that scarf for a second. That bastard will be FOUR skeins worth of yarn when its complete. Ridiculous. The happy news is that so far, my christmas spirit is still holding up quite well. In fact, I continually have to repress the irrational urge to buy/make gifts for every single person I know. I feel that such an attitude is perhaps endearing, but I'm still sane enough to realize that beyond the time-management complications that would come with attempting to be a one-woman gift factory, it would surely plunge me into financial ruin. So if you only recieved a tepidly funny christmas card from me, try not to take it too personally; I wanted to get you something that you might actually keep, but that damn money tree out back is still not blooming.

My fear this christmas is that my knitted/crocheted creations won't excite the recipients nearly as much as they tickle me.

This concludes the first-ever mobile device blog. For the record, Autofill attempted to pull a fast one on me exactly five times.

Family Business

After nearly six long years, I have reconnected with my little sister today. My excitement and joy are beyond description. I thought for certain that I had seen the last of her, but indeed she exists in her native N.C. and is not only all grown up these days, but she is also a full six inches taller than me. I had a delightful time stalking her on Myspace while we caught up a little via my favorite form of communication: the text message. 

I'd like to take a moment to digress so that I may wax poetic about my love of txting. Its title is quite apt; dropping that one innocent e makes typing the word more expedient. Why bother taking the time to look up a contact, press Send, enjoy the music while your party is reached (which is usually a shitty recording of a shitty song), in order to communicate to said party that you wish to know "wuz up"? In the same time frame I can use txting to recite a minorly abbreviated version of War and Peace to my chum and still discover just WHAT is up. 

Anyway, my sis, who I will call S for the purpose of this blog as she is still a minor, has tuned into this incredibly cute teenager who is apparently a very skilled equestrian. The last time I saw her, she was roughly 10 or 11 so it came as quite a shock to see present-day pictures of her. She actually looks like SHE could feasibly be the older sibling. I am looking forward to getting to know my sister again.

In related news, my little brother officially has facebook. It's a big day. 

Phone Tag

All I want to do is speak to one semi-intelligible, breathing human being about the Culinary Arts program. I may be biased, but it seems like such a small favor from someone whose job its supposed to be to woo me into choosing the school in question. Damn Art Institute, why do your phone jockeys elude me so?

I've been coming to the slow and sickening realization this year that the majority of the population is, in fact, on the cusp of de-evolving back into grunting, ignorant cave-folk. I think it really started to hit me during the build-up to the presidential election. Each day, just when I was certain that people couldn't possibly be more misguided and judgemental, some moron would utter something so ridiculous and un-founded that it blew all previous stupidity right out of the water. Some of my personal favorites:

1. Obama is a socialist and plans to redistribute wealth (realize that this is coming from the mouth of someone who is barely making ends meet, bitching about the idea of rich people unassing some wealth).

2. Sarah Palin should be Vice President because she's hot. This comment came not from an over-sexed college oaf, but from a rational, grown man of roughly 35.

3. Obama is a Muslim. Apparently not being a Christian is the same as being a terrorist.

4. Obama is in fact a terrorist. OBVIOUSLY, Obama rhymes with OSAMA, duh.

There were of course many more examples, but I don't wish to belabor the point. At any rate, hooray for our soon-to-be Pres, I'm looking forward to seeing someone give a State of the Union without sounding like a complete dumb ass.

Its already starting to feeling holiday-y. Every year it happens earlier. The evil subliminal Christmas message has already started working on me. I went into Meijer for approximately 20 minutes on Sunday and by the time I left I was ready to go home and start dragging out all the holiday decorations. I also had a strange urge to bake many pies and give them to people. The holiday music in the store penetrated somewhere deep within my brain apparently, because at the sight of wrapping paper and stockings I began to get giggly and if I remember correctly, I believe I actually jumped up and down at the thought of making custom-adorned sock-shaped receptacles for Shaun and myself, in which I would place small goodies for him and he would do likewise after much hen-pecking by me. I think Shaun either pretends to hate Christmas, but secretly pines for it, or he actually does hate Christmas and is dreading my inevitable frenzy of holiday binge-baking and 1st degree apartment-bedecking. He'll just have to suck it up and pretend to enjoy eating christmasy delights and receiving gifts. He's so abused....

Only 43 shopping days left.