Monday, December 19, 2005

It's the mooooost wonderful tiiiiime of the year

And why is it so wonderful, you ask? Because:
  • Christmas trees & the "halls" are all decked with holiday cheer
  • My Christmas shopping has been done for more than a week
  • All presents are wrapped and ready to go
  • All my cards have been sent out (about 50 - including color copies of the annual update & photos), with the exception of the one card that I need an air-mail stamp for, since it's going to Belgium
  • All my holiday baking is done
This year I went all-out with the baking. I made a fruitcake (another one; I'm not counting the underbaked one I did a few weeks ago), two lemon pound cakes, peppermint candy-cane sugar cookies, Mexican wedding cookies, almond-orange and almond-raspberry jam thumbprints, break-n-bake chocolate chip cookies (OK, so not EVERYTHING was from scratch, so sue me), and the annual marshmallow fluff fudge. I thought about making shortbread cookies too, but that just kinda seemed like overkill. Heh.

Now all I have to do is pack up the goodies in tins for Rugrat's teachers and the neighbors, and I can officially sit down with a big ol' glass of wine and call it good. Whew!

Monday, December 5, 2005

Oh, excellent!

I came across the coolest video today: Lotion by Greenskeepers. Seriously, you MUST watch it. (Warning: not for the faint of heart, or those who've not yet seen The Silence of the Lambs -- too many spoilers.)

Been a while

I know, it's been a while since my last post. So here's the update, in a nutshell:

Thanksgiving was wonderful, except for the fact that I had horrendous allergies all day and even after taking a dose of Benadryl they wouldn't leave me alone. I tried to nap (because that usually helps immensely) but I must have been too excited about seeing family & stuffing my face, because even with the Benadryl fog I couldn't sleep. The food was, of course, delish. And it was lovely to see my cousin Kelly and his girlfriend and baby. :)

A week later (last Thursday) was my company's annual Christmas party. We're a tiny little company so we all went to see Cirque du Soleil and then out to dinner afterwards in SF. Cirque du Soleil was REALLY cool - lots of amazing acrobatics and gorgeous costumes and just...theatrical spectacle, I guess. I was very impressed with the tightrope walker, who balanced way up high on a skinny little wire while hula-hooping about 20 hoops! Afterwards we went to a tiny Basque restaurant for dinner, and had an outstanding meal. Yay for French food!

Speaking of French food, I made a delicious French onion soup last night for dinner. I invited Babydaddy over for dinner, since I knew there would be plenty (and plus it's really, really good and I spent two hours making it, so I thought it would be nice to let someone else enjoy it, too). Yum. My newest addiction is Gruyere. I've been making toast for lunch, with melted Gruyere on top and some freshly ground pepper - for about the last week. Pretty soon I'll get sick of it (I hope! That stuff is expensive) but for now I'm content to scarf the yummy fattening melted cheese every day. Mmmm....cheese...

Also over the weekend, I made cookies and fruitcake. The fruitcake didn't turn out too well - apparently it wasn't cooked all the way on the bottom because half of it stuck in the pan (the NON-STICK pan) when I tried to pull it out. I guess my toothpicks just aren't long enough, because when I stuck it in after baking for 50 minutes, it came out clean. Next time I'll make fruitcake muffins instead. *sigh*