Addresses in the (screened) comments. They're going out this week!

Gearing myself up to do the holiday shopping thing and realized... I actually don't have much of that to do.

Aside from M's family, there are only a small handful of people I should buy for. M and I have decided to buy a couple of bits of furniture in lieu of anything for each other (beyond stocking stuffers and whatnot) and I'm not really in close contact with most of the folks I've bought for in the past.

There are certainly a lot of people I would be happy to buy for, but it might be a little weird if I did because we haven't done that before. I wouldn't want them to feel obligated. Much as the point of the act is to just do something nice for someone you like, there's still that whole cultural tally-keeping thing that makes that weird. I wouldn't want to give something seemingly out of the blue and then have the poor person wonder if they're now supposed to do the same. Meh.

Pity, really, because I do kind of like to do the gift shopping thing. I don't really go for shopping-as-sport normally, but I like seeing something and thinking it'd be perfect for someone I know and nabbing it. Kind of sad to not be doing much of that lately.

I also, however, like baking, and will merrily force cookies even on total strangers, so I'll prolly do that regardless. ;)

Sorta playing hooky today. I do actually feel crappy, but I didn't want to creep out my boss by telling him the real reason (nor that a few hours in bed with Advil and a heating pad will likely cure it.)

If If we had more than one car, I'd probably have gone in after my attempts at self-healing, but with M's car still busted up in PDX, that just wasn't an option, so here I am. I'll probably work from home later for a couple of hours anyway (they finally gave me remote access! Yay!)

Looking forward to seeing mrdorbin and southplains for dinner tonight, and subjecting them to my culinary experimentation. Muhuhahahah!

Also doing a bit of seasonal hall-decking later this afternoon if I'm up to it. The house still isn't 100% moved-in, and we're a bit exhausted from efforts that direction over the past several weeks, so we aren't planning to do much this year, but I did drag out a couple of the boxes of sparklies and we may do a small tree this weekend if we're not in PDX. Looks like many folks in our neighborhood do go all-out, though, so next year should involve some fun with outdoor lights and such. Not that I'll be doing inflatable snow globes or plastic reindeer or any of that. Eesh.

Think good thoughts for M, who's about to go do an Important Work Thing that will (we hope) change things for the better for him there.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love having havdrake around? It's been great, especially with M in PDX this week. It's just nice to not be rattling around with just the furbabies for company. I may be sleeping alone, which sucks, but I'm not actually alone, which is great.

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Working both Thursday and Friday this week, which kinda sucks, but I'm at least getting remote access (I hope) so I can work from home instead of trying to brave the tryptophan drunks on Thursday and the shopping-addled crowds on Friday. I should be able to just set up a mail alert for the newswire and otherwise just bake cookies all day or something, which would be nice.

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Am officially sick of all things Twilight. The whiny loser and her stalker boyfriend can go away now, thanks. (Why yes, working in entertainment media occasionally does suck. Sigh...)

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Still seem to be fighting off some random crud of some sort. I've had swollen lymph nodes, muscle and joint aches and stiffness, exhaustion, low back pain, night sweats and occasional mild fevers for months, now, and I can't see any reason for it. I was thinking it was just related to stress and the physical demands of moving, but even when I'm supposedly well-rested and haven't done anything physical, I'm still in near-constant pain. Some days are worse than others, and sometimes come with congestion and a mild cough. There's too much other stuff there for this to be perimenopause, so it's not that. Theoretically, swollen glands and fever mean an infection, but I have no idea where or what kind. It's really quite annoying.

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Kind of looking forward to doing the holiday thing in the new pad, though it'll be scaled back significantly from where it'll eventually be when we're not just coming off the move and work chaos and such. Already planning out my baking, and trying to decide exactly how much hall-decking I have the gumption for. I love the pretty, but getting it there and back again is kind of a pain.

First, the good:

My parents sent me this gorgeous piece to add to my Willow collection. I love it!

And then the bad:

About an hour ago, I heard a crack and a muffled crash from outside. It didn't sound that terrible, so I assumed it was a chunk of snow breaking free from a roof and sliding off.

( Sadly, no. )

The good news is that it's supposed to rain tomorrow. RAIN! Beautiful, gorgeous, snow-melting rain!

We're hoping it clears enough that we can get out tomorrow and run some errands and then head down to PDX sometime Saturday. Theoretically, it's not supposed to get below freezing again for the next several days, so we may be safe. Hopehopehope.

One of the good things about this wild election is that it's bringing all the ignorant bigots, theocrats and jingoists out into the open where we can see them.

The bad thing is that it's bringing all the ignorant bigots, theocrats and jingoists out into the open where we can see them.

*twitch*

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Finally have a mostly free weekend to get caught up on the six tons of projects sitting around. I won't be able to make a serious dent in it all until after my contract ends (only one more full week left!) but I'm hoping I can at least clear out ~350 unread emails and go through the stack of snail mail sitting on my desk. I actually have an empty laundry basket, too. Just the one. But it's progress. I may also clean out my fridge and freezer, since there's stuff there that's probably been around since the Pleistocene. Sadly, M's got a bit of a cold, so he won't be able to help much. I just hope I don't get it.

I'll probably also see if I can assmble some sort of costumes for sapphoid's party next weekend. I have a sort of idea for mine, but I need to figure out something for M, too.

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And on that subject, a meme, gacked from blot

Do an image search for Halloween plus the year you were born

( Huge but cute pic )

Happy solstice to all y'all who celebrate it. I'll be doing my own yearly thing in a little while. Was considering staying awake long enough to welcome back the light, but am feeling decidedly unwell, so I'm going to pass out early.

Cards are out to many of you, and to those whose addresses I didn't have, have a lovely time with what's left of 2007, and a grand 2008.

Want a card/newsletter from yours truly this year? Comment (screened) with your address. I have a few of yours already, but in case you've moved recently or I forgot to write them down last time, please refresh. Danke.

For those interested in sending one my way, I'll have my address in a locked post momentarily.

You may get these around New Year's instead of Christmas, but they'll be on their way eventually this week.

So, we were visited today by a couple of folks from a local Baptist church. On a whim, I decided to invite them in. I usually just turn missionaries away, but there was something about these two--an older woman and her young protegee--that just struck me, and I wanted to actually talk to them.

At first, I just listened to what they had to say about their church. It was the usual stuff--we have services twice Sundays, etc. Then they started in with the "saved" stuff. At that point, I explained to them that, although I was raised generically Christian, I'm not religious anymore, save for a small non-deistic pagan streak.

I could tell they were a bit taken aback. I'm sure they're used to a lot of different kinds of responses, but a pagan atheist probably was at least unusual.

Then the younger one, regaining her composure, changed tacks. She asked me if I was really happy in my life as it is. I had to answer her honestly. I'm not. Comfortable, yes, but not happy most of the time. She asked about my goals in life, and what mattered to me, and what kind of legacy I wanted to leave.

The more we talked, the more I got this weird feeling in the back of my head, like she was understanding parts of me I usually keep hidden--the parts that maybe question some of my rabid feminism, and think that maybe life really would be more fullfilling if I stripped it down--made it simpler and just concentrated on the basics of what women are "supposed" to do. I've been sort of a housewife for a long time, but even as much as I hated having crappy jobs, I hated being domestic more. But somehow, her explanations of everyone and everything in the natural world having its place and purpose--and that I was probably fighting mine, making me unhappy--made sense.

In the hour or so that followed this, we talked more about my life and what I wanted from it, and about God and duty and thinking beyond the physical world.

The net result of all this--and this is a doozy, I know--I'm going to church tomorrow (today, technically.) I guess I just want to see what all the fuss is about. The churchies have always seemed crazy to me, yeah, but they're happy. And I can't really argue with that. So maybe there's something to this God and religion thing, and just being what the world thinks I'm supposed to be, instead of fussing and fighting with it all the time.

( Religion makes sense, in a way )

Happy Christmas to those who celebrate, and to my Jewish friends, I hope your festival last week was lovely. And happy Kwanzaa and Boxing Day and all those other lovely days around the world.

We sort of do the Christmas thing, but it's mostly a cultural habit. We pretty much just stick with the seasonal trappings and otherwise roll our eyes at the flood of heavily religious cards that come in from well-meaning relatives.

My holiday was actually a few days ago. I did my yearly tarot ritual and am happily welcoming the light back. Though I don't really believe in tarot's predictive abilities, the cards' meanings give me a way to think about the passing year and about what I have ahead of me the next year. I'm always too busy when the calendar year turns, so I like having a week or so just to be at peace and think about my place in the world.

It's been such a full year, and such a successful one for me. I hope I can sustain this momentum for at least the next two terms. I think so. Next term should be fairly calm, with the exception of my features class. I already have a topic in mind for my main story, though, so I hope I'll be ahead of the game when the term starts. The prof is the guy I had for my newswriting and reporting classes, and I adore him, so it should go relatively well.

I also added another class to get me up to full time so I can get my scholarship disbursement. I lucked out and got the last slot in a history of jazz class that meets at a very good time between my other two MWF classes. I've been meaning to take a class like that for a while anyway, and it will be a good respite for me from the other stuff.

It may depress me a bit, though, since it's been ages since I've taken a music class, and it'll remind me of what I lost when I dropped out 12 years ago. I really wish I could find a program that didn't have piano proficiency requirements, or that would let me waive them so I can finally get the music degree I should've had. But, since I was never able to convince my profs at PSU that I can't play because my stupid double joints lock up when I try to play chords, I doubt I'll be able to convince anyone else. Musicians are all supposed to be dextrous, right? Meh.

Ah, well. As long as I can find a way to get back to singing eventually, the degree doesn't really matter all that much. It's just frustrating that I spent four years on it, and was only a few classes away from finishing it, but I just couldn't get through those last few classes and the keyboard stuff. I probably could've made it through the theory stuff if I hadn't been sick, but without the keyboard harmony component, I wouldn't have passed anyway. Just not meant to be, I suppose.

Looking forward to a very quiet week, and hope I can see some more folks I've missed.